| LAND PLANNING/CONSERVATION
Our work to date has served to remind us that human community is a part of, rather than merely an “impact” to natural systems, and has further focused our work from the strategic deployment of human land uses as tools for the protection of the natural and cultural, to an effort to link these systems to the preservation and creation of storied landscapes, places imbued with meaning and spirit. In order to best work within these landscapes, the land planning component of our practice is now primarily focused on two fronts: - Design support for strategic conservation investment:
- the identification of threatened rural and near-wilderness landscapes of critical ecological importance and
- the development of strategies to ensure that they are enhanced, protected in perpetuity and returned to the conservation marketplace with added value
- Design of conservation-based rural communities and eco-tourism/resort venues:
- Rural areas, particularly in the mountain west and Hawaiian islands are the focus of significant growth, bringing both stresses to, and opportunities to enhance and protect rural and indigenous cultures and ecological fabric
- Eco-tourism, the fastest growing segment of the resort industry, is focused on culturally and ecologically unique (i.e. beautiful) places, provides a unique opportunity to bring strategic capital and sustainable land use practice to critical and often very large landscapes, maximizing the protection of natural systems while sustaining and enhancing local culture and world culture through appropriate exchange
|
|
