Page 12 RAEsl Aug.-Sept. 1982 Eco-Decentralist Design, 3 volume set, including Figures ofRegulation: GuidesforRe-Balancing Society with the Biosphere, by Peter Beig; Toward a Bioregional Modei: Clearing Groundfor Watershed Planning, by George Tukel; and Reinhabiting Cities and Towns: Designing for Sustainability, by John Todd with George Tukel. Entire set $10.00 ppd.; free with a $15.00 annual Planet Drum Foundation membership which also includes a subscription to the tri-annual publication Raise the Stakes, from: Planet Drum Foundation P.O.Box 31251 San Francisco, CA 94131 Planet Drum publications have appeared in a variety offorms over the years: a special issue of the Berkeley Barb on reinhabitation; a planning document for the California Solar Business Office called Renewable Energy and Bioregions: A New Context for Public Policy; a couple of issues of Co-Evolution Quarterly; and their excellent periodical, Raise The Stakes. One of the Drum's favorite mediums of publication has been the bundle, packages ofmaterials from networks of bioregional correspondents, including the writings ofpoet Gary Snyder. So here is a new bundle of material from Planet Drum, artful and wise as always, an introduction to the ideas ofbioregional planning. Reinhabiting Qties and Tovms is mostly John Todd’s writing, with ideas that may be familiar to followers of New Alchemy experiments, such as bioshelters, set in the context of bio-regional planning and community-wide/region-wide strategies. Part I deals with the ecological and biological basis fen design of hurrmn services and Part II describes, with New York City as a primary example, the biogeography and history ofa region as a perspective for appropriate habitation of the land. The third section deals with specific strategies for development of local life support systems: water, housing, food production, transportation and energy. Toward a Bioregional Model, by George Tukel, provides the groundwork for development of bioregional planning models. It is a good introduction, defining such terms as "energetics" and "carrying capacity.” It also makes evident that we need more detailed real watershed and bioregional plans that comefrom inhabitants in different areas of the country with real data, real problems. Peter Berg takes on the single most difficult, and perhaps the most powerful idm in the series in Figures of Regulation: Guides for Re-Balancing Society with the Biosphere. Figures ofregulation is a term derived from anthropology to describe the common sense rules, rituals and traditions used fy native cultures to regulate their re- lationshps with their immediate natural environment. In Figures of Regulation and throughout the bundle it is clear that Planet Drum is not just attempting to define a type of environmental management; bioregional planning may start from a firm sense of the environment but it also takes into account the present state of, and possible futures for, cities and towns. And there is probably no more critical issuefacing us today than bridging the gaps between city, town, suburb, country and wilderness. If we continue to conceptually isolate our forms of inhabitation all the singular wise goals ofenvironmental management, sustainable agriculture and community economic development may be for naught. The Planet Drum package presents us with some beginning working tools to repair the broken fabric. — Steve Johnson mii 0 DESIGNING FOR Figures of regulation is a workable phrase for the new equivalents to customs that we need to learn. Late Industrial society with its misplaced faith in technological solutions (to problems caused by unlimited applications of technology in the first place) is out of control. Our social organism is like an embryo that is suffering damage but there are no internal checks on our activities to re-establish a balance with the capacities of natural systems. The point of figures of regulation is that they would incorporate the concept that individual requirements and those of society are tied to the life processes of a bioregion. A bioregional model can identify balance points in our interactions with natural systems, and figures of regulation can operate to direct or limit activities to achieve balance. , The idea of a figure as a series of movements in a dance is useful for understanding the mulh-layered nature of figures of regulation. The performance of a dance follows a distinct sense of rightness that would otherwise exist only as an idea, and it suggests connectedness with many other activities and ideas. It is a process that makes the invisible visible. As a dance unfolds it implies further action that is self-referenced by what has gone before. i Figures of regulation are assemblages of values and ideas ^ that can siniilarly become ingrained in patterns of ac-
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