Big Sky Permaculture offers community planning services to municipalities and developers for the design of resilient communities. Planning services include:
- Facilitation and Workshops
- Community Design and Integrated Community Sustainability Planning
- Transition Planning
- Local Economic Development Planning
Communities are systems, and have much in common with other systems found in ecology. Interestingly, a community is subject to the same laws that ecologies behave under, and therefore can benefit from the same degree of resiliency found in ecologies. For example, our settlements can be designed and encouraged to ensure that they achieve a state where every element in the community is arranged so that the inherent needs of one element is met by the inherent yields of another. The benefits include:
Resources for everyone. If a community is designed to be truly resilient, the needs of everyone will be met with resources from with the community itself.
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A vibrant local economy
In a resilient community, all resources and energies in the community are circulated and used by the community itself, without any reliance on external industries and resources, such as forestry or mining. Instead, local jobs are created purely from the things that people produce and their connections to the things that people need. -
Efficient use of 'scarce' materials
Everything in a resilient community serves more than one function. For example, stormwater is used to hydrate food producing landscapes, which in turn filter the water to irrigate street trees (today, stormwater is merely focused into stormwater management ponds). -
Resilient and resistant to shock
The aspect that makes a resilient community 'resilient' is because every aspect of the community is in some beneficial connection with other aspects. When resources shocks strike conventional communities, resilient communities are not affected because everything that generates the community comes from within it and is used within it.
You Are a Client If You Are...
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A municipality
We can work with you on a consultant or subconsultant basis to empower community members to develop a sustainable community plan from the ground up. -
A developer
As a developer, you are concerned with the arrangement of community elements in relation to each other within a development and in relation to the greater municipality. You have the opportunity to develop a self-sufficient and resilient community that recycles its energy, resources and expertise within it to meet its needs. We can work with you to apply the principles of intact ecologies to compliment your development plans.
