This is as good a time as any to introduce some of my ideas on Community Design. The proposal for the Mile High Business Alliance was rejected and I have resigned from the Board. They are focused on what I call organizational imperatives. They are focused on those things necessary for the organization to survive. I am not particularly interested in that phase of the organization's development and it would be unfair to those who are interested to remain as essentially a distraction. The Board and Staff are competent to work through this phase and I look forward to opportunities that will arise in the future.

Principles of Community Design for Permaculture Practitioners is an outline of the concepts that give guidance for developing community. I don't expect anyone to follow it just from the outline. I think it is a full day workshop in visualizing the pattern of community. Our good friend Jason Gerhardt has agreed to participate in refining the presentation. Hopefully, we will be able to present such a workshop in the near future.

The outline is based on David Holmgren's 12 Permaculture Design Principles. The numbering of the Principles is Holmgren's . . . to avoid confusion . . . the arrangement is mine . . . based on the cycle of community development. If you get about 2/3rds of the way through the cycle, you will come to Principle 4, Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback. This is the principle I apply in reacting to the decision of the Business Alliance.

The mission of a gardening team, the way I visualize it, is to tend to the relationships of the people and other living things around us. We are already participating in that pattern of interactions and it is that pattern of interactions that determines the characteristics of the habitat in this locality. It is in our collective interest to improve the capacity of the habitat to provide what people and other living things need to thrive. In that process, every individual is entitled to pursue what they need to thrive, and that often includes the survival of one or more organizations. It is at a third level, considering the needs of all the individuals and all the organizations, and how they impact the habitat, that a gardening team operates.

In the case of the Business Alliance, the rejection of my proposal is feedback. The proposal is not currently a good fit with their focus and goals. I can either try to change the proposal so that it does fit, or wait for things to develop at the organization, or a combination. To try and force the issue now would only damage the prospects of the organization surviving this imperatives phase and reduce the likelihood of opportunities to collaborate in the future. I will apply self regulation and focus my efforts on other opportunities . . . such as refining the presentation on community design.

There is unrealized human and biological potential at all levels of the system, beginning with each handful of soil and extending to human organizations with planetary range. Developing the technology is about understanding how to create new repeating interactions that engage that potential. Each time we are successful creating a repeating interaction it changes the pattern of the habitat. The task calls for slow and steady testing of the effect of new interactions feeding back into decisions on next steps.

The efforts of the API gardening team have resulted in new interactions with bees, a new relationship with the Grange, new relationships with gardening teams forming in other neighborhoods, and any number of opportunities for collaboration. There will be plenty of time to work on our relationship with the Business Alliance . . . if we do not burn any bridges.