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Hello,

Blogs are a familiar feature on the internet - where users post content in an accumulating manner, with comments, and search options, etc. They facilitate expression and exploration, and via attached comments, also debate and synthesis.


Reading and
Navigating Blogs

Our blogs are quite powerful. Each writer can post, as is typically the case. Sustainers who have the option can also post, however. All Blogs appear in the blog system, and sometimes also in content boxes the top page of ZNet - and always via the left menu of the top page - and can be found via searches, etc.

Commenting on blogs follows the blogs, attached at the bottom, and blog comments, like all others, are also visible in many places that show comments including in the forum system. In addition, the entire blog system gathers content for everyone - but one can look at the accumulating content in many ways.

  • For example one can look at one writer's efforts - so one is seeing what is effectively a blog system for that one writer, or Sustainer.
  • One can also look at the content by topic, seeing blogs that are tagged as being about a certain topic - or place, as well. Thus, when doing that, it is a blog system about a topic, or a place, with many contributors.
  • One can look at only writer blogs, or only sustainer blogs, as well.
  • One can look at blogs for particular Groups, too.

All this is easily done using the left menu. Searches allow even more variables and refinements.


Creating Blog Posts

If you are a Sustainer with permission, and are logged in, you will see a link in the left menu for you to post a blog - and you can use that to post one, and then tag it various ways (such as with a topic or place, or a group tag), and once you do, it is in the system with you as the author.

You can also use the console button to the left to post a blog - anytime and from anywhere in the site, as long as you are logged in.

Meanwhile, enjoy the blogs - and, by the way, if you are a Free Member or a Sustainer with a ZSpace page, of course you can put one or more content boxes on it, pulling blog links of any sort you may want to filter for, for example, by you or by your friends or by others - and by topic, about places, for groups, etc.

Blogs

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Mike Morin's Blog

Web Address: http://www.zcommunications.org/zspace/mikemorin
Bio: I am a Friend. BS - Environmental Studies Graduate Study in Planning and Economics MBA have worked construction, real estate appraisal, health care cost and util. report systems developer, Director... (More)

All Morin Blogs

Planning and Implementation as It Relates to a Post-Peak Fossil Fuel Economy

By Mike Morin at Feb 01, 2010


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It is a myth that Regional Planning has not occurred in all these areas of interest. Regional Planning of water systems, highway, roads, and other infrastructure has occurred on a very large scale with Federal, State and Local Collusion between the public sector and the Corporate and Development Interests. It was all done within the Capitalist Paradigm of maximizing profits for the private sector and has manifested itself in a most irrational, inequitable, inhumane, and unsustainable suburban sprawl.
 
Benton MacKaye, in his book written in 1928, "The New Exploration" wrote about the need to direct this existing, impending, and inevitable "metropolitan invasion" of the agrarian/forested lands with a livability in mind that would provide for the inclusion of village centers in all new residential development (i.e. what is commonly known these days as mixed use). Benton may not have explicitly been able to see the now well known existence of the post-peak oil phenomenon, but being greatly schooled in geology/geography, he certainly must have had a sense of the finitude of this resource, and as an ecologist and a humanist he could foresee the terrible and alienating squandering that was about to become the mark of the 20th century.
 
We need to go back and fundamentally reassess the practice of Regional Planning consistent with the ideals of MacKaye and fundamentally taking head on the coming resource scarcity, particularly as it relates to fossil fuels. We need to rebuild, renovate, and in many cases build into all our neighborhoods the village centers that they so desirably lack. Such would make it possible for almost all to get their needs in life within walking distance of their homes. The result could be to reduce automobile usage (a terribly wasteful opportunity cost for precious fossil fuels) by 80% in the next twenty to forty years. It would create so many jobs in the building and building education trades that we would probably want to ENCOURAGE immigration. It would also greatly improve the quality of our lives.
 
The change in Regional Planning would be the adoption and acceptance to planned allocation of resources. Such was already occurring for the benefit of the special economic interests. It would require that public sectors work together in a very rational manner with a private sector that would need to redefine its mission as that of quasi-public. It would be the adoption of a resource allocation paradigm based on human needs and sustainability, not on profits.
 
We need to take a wholistic approach to the professions and applications of Resource Planning and Allocation and all its subsidiary economic functions.
 
We need to recognize the impending crises that we are only beginning to realize and we need to put our economic system into historical perspective. We need to grab the bull by the horns and consciously and actively evolve from Homo Economicus to Homa Ecologica Cooperativo.
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