Why should we try to design the planet?

People often judge the health or wholeness of ecosystems by how they look. Traditional design has emphasized visual results above all else. Ecological design, however, achieves the same results by paying attention to the structure and function of the forest first. Design has been concerned for centuries with making domesticated landscapes out of wild ones. Now, design must address the opposite problem: how to preserve or provide the conditions for wild ecosystems.

Design must address the common good, that is, the good of the entire ambihuman community; it can do so by: promoting the well­being of all individuals in larger community, deciding what is preferable, attempting to regulate and anticipate all effects, encouraging convivial activity, recognizing links and dependencies, mediating the relation between technology and community, and alleviating some of the problems of modern industrial society.

Designs provide a framework for natural and artificial process to work in. The patterns in design are echoes of patterns in nature. Good designs learn to embrace error and failure, so necessary in open systems.

Most ecosystem designs will not be restorations, because of the uncertainty about the kinds and associations of native vegetation. Furthermore, humans are now a large part, although not yet an integral part, of the system; therefore it could not be restored to a premodern or prehuman state (and even if it could, deciding which state would be problematical). This design is not the biotechnological design of a new ecosystem, either; we cannot accurately control and predict ecological events in most ecosystems. However, we can steer some of the events in a known direction—known because we have historical records of the system, although they may not be complete. We can also reduce those human activities that we know alter the conditions of an ecosystem, such as overuse and pesticide use.

Although ecological design attempts to restore some kind of balance, the balance does not exclude human activity. Rather, it integrates it into the larger community. A moderate number of human impacts can be absorbed by the system— too many destroy the systems capacity for self-maintenance. The design should be open to evolution and to human technological and social development. The design should be based on a model of ecosystem functions, considering diversity, complexity, and the maintenance of natural process—natural here meaning a self-sustaining system composed of elements now lost through human disturbance.

An ecological design involves designers and people in reshaping and recreating a self-sustaining community. Individual resources are limited. The relationships to strive for here are community relationships. Furthermore, there are limits for the human manipulation of other communities. Total control has limits, also. We should not aim to try to control the ecosystem. We have to trust that natural processes are self-correcting and organizing.

An ecological design is the creation of a clear vision of an ecosystem that is aesthetic, useful, and self-sustaining. Some of the relationships can be captured by maps and drawings, but not the dynamic four-dimensional qualities of the forest itself, which can only be understood by dwelling there for years. Nevertheless, a simulation of the view from foot or airplane is more compelling than a recital of the statistics or species lists.

The goal of ecological design is not to restore an ecosystem to some prehuman state, but to revitalize and reinhabit an ecosystem. We do not want to live in the dead bones of a mechanistic failure. We want to live in a healthy environment with aesthetic appeal— aesthetic appeal is a requirement for human health. Every ecosystem has physical, biological, economic, and political characteristics. The design, planning, and management for an ecosystem describes the system in a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach, using dynamic concepts such as feedback and stability, recognizing limits to change and sustainability with different levels and scales of structure and function in an anticipatory, flexible planning approach, recognizing human and nonhuman goals, and incorporating personal and institutional interests.

Ecological design is the design of whole communities. We design places as organic wholes to promote the well-being of individuals and the common good. The immediate goals of design are to reverse degradation and reclaim places for communities, but also to work to increase public awareness of the interdependence of communities, to create environmental quality, and to transform public values by generating new metaphors for living.