The course covers sustainable systems design for all landscapes & climates but with a strong urban permaculture focus. Detroit is perfectly poised to transform itself into green, resilient, relocalized, post-carbon, post-indusrial city. Empty lots, idle hands, a low median income & a vibrant urban gardening community makes Detroit an ideal incubator for creation of a large, truly sustainable city. D

The Permaculture Design Course will take on the daunting & unusual project of developing a sustainable blueprint for the entire city. It is our hope this course will encourage a conversation about Detroit that will impact the current efforts to redesign the city and move planning towards regenerative, community-focused solutions with a multi-generational view of the future and the great challenges we face.

Larry Santoyo, Director, EarthFlow Design Works, is an ecological designer, land use planner & business consultant. Santoyo is among the most experienced Permaculture Designers & Educators in the US & has taught environmental design at colleges & universities nationwide including UC Berkeley & California State PolyTechnic University. First mentored by Bill Mollison in the mid 80's, Larry went on to teach design courses with Mollison till the mid 90's in the US & in Australia.

Santoyo is an ex-lawman (& an ex-outlaw!), he retired from public service to homestead in the Great Northwest. Since 1989, Santoyo has helped to initiate Permaculture Guilds from Bellingham, Washington south to San Diego, California. For over twenty years, Larry Santoyo has assisted private individuals in the design & construction of "Home Ecosystems" & has assisted companies in developing industrial ecologies & sustainable business practices.

Among a variety of projects in various stages of development, L. Santoyo is writing his long-awaited book "Permaculture for Humanity," that details his innovative applications of Permaculture Design Principles to community economic development strategies.

Larry Santoyo is Vice President of the Permaculture Institute (USA), Co-director of The Terra Foundation, and is the founder of the MicroVillage Network.

Keith was raised in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (where he learned at an early age he was related to Johnny Appleseed), & has been a commercial landscaper, stonemason, & organic gardener since 1976, in places as varied as the subtropical Bay Area of California, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Michigan, & the mountains of W. North Carolina. After devouring Permaculture One in 1978 he continued to learn all he could on the subject. He's been teaching Permaculture since '95, has instructed more than 700 students, many of those through Indiana University's annual Design Course which began in 2003. He's taught and / or trained with Bill Mollison, Larry Santoyo, Tom Ward, Penny Livingston, Peter Bane, Chuck Marsh, Starhawk, Patricia Alison, and Jerome Osentowski.

Now resident in Bloomington, IN, Keith participates in a number of local activism projects including the editorial guild of the Permaculture Activist magazine, the founding of Transition Bloomington (Indiana's first Transition Town Initiative), boardmember of the Local Growers Guild, contributor to Bloomington's Peak Oil Task Force, member of the Bloomington Permaculture Guild & member of the Bloomington Food Policy Council. Renaissance Polyculture is the suburban forest garden he co-manages on the 2/3 acre site where he homesteads with Peter Bane & a regular flow of interns.