Designing Ecological Habitats - Gaia Education

integral ecology: Design principles for sustainable Human Habitats 247
C O L L E C T I V E I N D I V I D U A L
I N T E R I O R E X T E R I O R
UL: EXPERIENCE
Individual-Interior: Self and Consciousness
The invisible subjective interior reality of
an individual
Intention: Rich, full-sensory experiences.
Facilitate individual development to higher
levels of ecological self. Provide opportunities
to relate to nature at each level.
Areas Addressed: Human experience of
landscapes, ecological education,
ecological aesthetics, landscape and urban
aesthetics, environmental psychology,
personal identity, 1st-person phenomenology.
Tools: Integral aesthetic awareness of the
designer, role-taking, design for nearby nature,
access to natural recreation, visual impact
assessment, view-shed analysis, environmental
education, and educational landscapes.
LL: CULTURE
Collective-Interior: Meaning and Worldviews
The invisible, intersubjective, internal realities
of groups
Intention: Come to agreement on how to
design and live with nature. Manifest rich
symbolic human-ecological relationships.
Areas Addressed: Civic dialogue, fitness to
cultural context, cultural regionalism, sense of
place, Genius Loci, historical and cultural
landscapes, collective values, meaning of form
languages, ideas of and relationships to nature(s).
Tools: Charettes, community visioning, public
input processes. Pattern Languages of the
building culture, multiple intelligence
communication, visual preference surveys,
symbolic design languages, civic design, urban
design with nature for community identity,
shared knowledge bases.
UR: BEHAVIOR
Individual-Exterior: Organism and Part
The visible, objective, external reality of
an individual
Intention: Settle the land with minimum
impact and maximum health. Conserve
resources and reduce flows to
environmental sinks.
Areas Addressed: Resource conservation
and efficiency, reducing water and air pollution,
habitat conservation, farmland, wetland,
and forest preservation.
Tools: Best Management Practices (BMPs),
ecological monitoring, performance standards
such as TMDL, conventional engineering,
flood zones, stream buffers, slope protection
rules, conservation easements, NRCS techniques,
urban forestry.
I IT
WE
LR: SYSTEMS
Collective-Exterior: Social Systems
and Environment The visible, interobjective,
external realities of groups
Intention: Fit settlement pattern to natural
pattern using principles of ecological order
Making cities work like nature.
Areas Addressed: Bio-regionalism, spatial
pattern of habitat, ecological restoration,
greenway and park networks, ground-surface
water system, pedestrian-bicycle networks,
building-transit-open space patterns.
Tools: GIS landscape analysis, urban design,
zoning, including special historic, cultural and
environmental overlays, comprehensive planning,
site review processes, design guidelines,
development and building codes. Pattern Languages,
land trusts, parks foundations, Low Impact
Development (LID), Smart Growth, ecological
engineering, science of landscape ecology,
contextual thinking, network thinking.
Figure 11.5: Green Infrastructure in the Four Quadrants
mode of inquiry or methodology used to investigate it. As a result, Integral
Ecology identifies eight methodological families that need to be utilized,
on their own terms, for comprehensive knowledge of any given ecological
reality. In short, Integral Ecology recognizes that different approaches to
ecology and the environment are the result of a spectrum of perspectives
(‘the who’) using a variety of methods (‘the how’) to explore different
aspects of the four terrains of nature (‘the what’).
Only by becoming increasingly aware of the who, how, and what of
environmental issues can we truly integrate the multiple voices calling for a
more just and ecologically friendly world. Only in such a world is there the
capacity to generate sustainable solutions to complex multidimensional
ITS
Green Infrastructure
in The Four
Quadrants.