Glad to be a part of the net Christoph...

I am looking at setting up a very ambitious Non-profit that entails (in part) pulling together a network of professionals and non-professional/concerned parties to analyze & prioritize economic environmental & cultural pattens (within the scope of the local community and/or bio-region) so as to formulate a proactive rather than reactive response to unsustainable lifestyles.

with this I hope to be able to (in no particular order):

-analyze and test the resiliency of a wide range of sustainable living models for each bio-region.

-Gauge levels of sustainable life models based on environmental impact on decentralized independence (without, of course, sacrificing the natural social fabrics of trade and exchange).

-Demonstrate the improvements in social structures through smaller, more personal, intentional groupings.

-Guild up-and-coming communities toward sustainable goals by strengthening internal cooperation and exchange while reducing external dependencies.

as a tool for leveraging these goals I want to employ a system to get more with L.E.S.S.

Local Economic Support Systems:

-work within local communities to revive small businesses, coops & local lending services.

for this I am looking at how to develop models, display sets & indicators to show how spending more locally builds a more robust economy & can eventually reciprocate into overall economic vitality which means higher wages and a stronger capacity to provide benefits to the individual. I would also like to use these models to demonstrate how local currencies can help to supplement and provide greater security to existing economic models.

anyway that is the short version of what I have scratched together so far... I'll try to keep you all posted on how it goes.

How are cob buildings any different than adobe houses? Agreed that adobe bricks get stacked together when dry, but that doesn't mean you cannot mix your own adobe clay and create your own designs. Does a cob contain any gravel or dirt in the mixture of earth, water and straw?

ps: i think i've started spending way too much time on the computer ... oh dear ... anyone wanna go for a walk?