Our goal is to facilitate a holistic or whole systems approach to community development and Sustainable Habitat Construction that goes beyond simply looking at the built environment. In this process it is important to see nature and culture as key elemental components to the construction of Integrated Built Environments. Of course, it might seem that, an integrated approach to sustainable development an oxymoron. This would seem like common sense, but in the design of modern built environments, we see that in many cases this was not the case. Possibly this was because the macrolevel approach put forward in the modern experimentation encouraged people to specialize and focus on the most immediate reality of how to gain more growth and efficiency by innovating without seeing the larger picture of how the systems they created interacted with other systems over the long term.

Yet there seems to be a real movement to reexamine the patterns of social behavior that lead to thoughtless and short sighted development models and towards the creation of a more integrated systems approach in relation to ecological design. As an alternative to this many in the ecological design movement are promoting a whole systems approach to ecological design that is seamless, dynamic and integrated. Leading innovators in the ecological design field now have developed the idea of designing human systems to function like natural ones - Biomimicry.

Key Concepts for Designing Integrated Built Environments

Whatever you create, it must be about people not technologies, financial models or approaches. The problem with current society is that the systems are designed so that we do not drive and mold technology, but technology drives and molds us. The most important aspect of sustainable community development is a process of human development.

Four main ingredients to this integrated approach:

1. Develop the mental tools to more fully realize our potential and in this process become more aware of how to help others realize their potential as well.
2. Incorporate information and communications technologies (ICT) that link up the grassroots into a global web so that we can empower each other, creating a cooperative and collective movement towards a society that reflects our needs.
3. Development of innovative financial strategies such as Financial Permaculture? that channel Socially Conscious Investment? capital into the development of sustainable communities all over the world with a focus on investing in communities and small businesses.
4. Put forward sustainable designs, approaches and technologies that will enable us to develop a global economy that that does not take from the earth more than it can give us.

The idea is to incorporate these four main components into a sustainable development methodology that starts with looking at the assets of each community and then looks at how we can build on the existing value that each community has.

Examples of Integrated Built Environments

There have been several notable attempts at designing Integrated Built Environments including:

• Mont Cenis Academy in Germany
• Songhai Farm in Benin (Father Godfrey Nzamujo)
• Proposal for a South China Arcology (Francis Frick?)
• Longju Farm Proposal for South China (Pliny Fisk and others)
• Hyper Building (Paolo Soleri)