Ben Falk comments....

This thread inspires me… how do you relate to it… I will post it on the blog and hope that we can continue the reflections there.

www.aspiringcommunity.blogspot.com



Do you have any younger friends with strong backs, ideals and vision that might be interested in this AC initiative? My opinion; it would be great to have young(er) adults and children in our fold!



Best to all,

Lynette




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From: Ben Falk [mailto:ben@wholesystemsdesign.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2009 9:46 AM
To: Will Raap
Cc: larrys@gmavt.net; Lynette Raap; Jill Wolcott; JoAnne Dennee; Nell Coogan
Subject: Re: !



This is a timely conversation to continue - and with the varied and significant experiences in your group I am sure a variety of ways to address this human-land-economic challenge can emerge.
Interestingly this seems to be the limiting factors of many land developments and lofty visions: the ability of the project to go from idea phase to reality on the ground - and populating the project has, in our experience, been the missing piece. We've been involved with a couple of projects that were designed, one even developed (to the extent you can develop without people!) but no major real change continues to result from them in the ways truly possible because the projects have not yet managed to get people there on the land living day to day engaged throughout the lifecycle of the project. We've continued to work with others to address this challenge in nascent projects and feel that questions related to who and how people will have access to working land, how they will have tenure to it and incentive to stay on it, and how they would be connected to others involved in the land need to be addressed as much as possible early on in the project.
Will - your work with the Intervale undoubtedly offers you some deep insight into experiments along these lines. My work with several newer clients in the project development phase mentioned above references the Intervale and seems to point in a direction where the young-farmer/gardener-enabled-access leveraged by the project is something that can be sustained over time and where, although some people may be 'incubated', others would stay and be able to live on/in the land they work for the rest of their lives, ideally. Various ownership and incentive models have been on the table in our discussions, but all of these are outside the realm of what WSD really does - people like you and those in your group are especially needed to help make these kinds of projects a reality. Most of the projects I am speaking of are revolving around redeveloping the old town commons/village centers of the three primary Mad River Valley towns, but it seems clear that we need developing post oil 'neighborhood' models with mixed regenerative land use, housing and micoenterprise in every valley, every village...

I look forward to collaborating in whatever way I can to help make such places a reality.
Best,
Ben


Ben Falk, M.A.L.D.
Whole Systems Design
66 Dean's Mountain
Moretown, VT 05660
802.496.3128 studio
802.343.9490 cell