"Planning" is an irritatingly vague term, because it encompasses all the scales of design above that of the individual building, from the city block to the region. The scale of planning I delight in is neighborhood design. It's not a well defined professional area, being larger in scope than most architectural commissions, and smaller than most planning is focused on.

I have been studying this scale of the human environment my entire adult life, and have been fortunate to find opportunities to apply the lessons learned.

As I say in the seminars I give on neighborhood design, the tremendous resource we are leaving untapped in ecological design, the resource that, uniquely, is begging to be tapped, is human community. We are starved for social spaces in our culture, spaces where we can casually rub elbows with others.

Given this deep innate hunger, ecological design that pays as much attention to the social environment as to the natural environment will have the unique potential to alter the course of our culture as rapidly as it needs to change.

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Camp Stevens Heydendahl Center St. Gregory Monastery Pine Lake ES Center Camp Latgawa

Wallowa Lake Wrightwood Mon. of Perpetual Adoration Odwalla Facility