MINDING YOUR OWN BUSINESS

	Introduction
Risk & Investment	Wealth & Power	People & Communities
Sustainability & Relationships	Industrial Estates or Work Parks	Uniformity or Diversity

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4. PEOPLE & COMMUNITIES

It is at this point that we should be seeking our alternative; one that puts people - and the communities that sustain them - centre stage. And that brings us back to where we started. If an industrial estate is the outward manifestation of the way the money economy works, it is useful to explore what a community dedicated to human scale and values might produce and how. The first difference would be that decisions about what developments to make would not be made on the basis of a single dimension - what is profitable.

For a project to move forward the community as a whole would have to be convinced that it was of general benefit, rather than merely enriching an individual or group of individuals. Consensual decision making structures would evolve in which a holistic view of the common good would emerge, looking not just at the material impact of a proposal but at its social, emotional and spiritual repercussions as well. Personal and communal responsibility would be refined to the point where concern for the environment in the widest sense would become ever deeper because it would be our collective environment that was at stake.

The second fundamental shift in perception would be around what the concepts "wealth" and "material base" mean. Instead of trying to amass more and more of the one by exploiting the other in any way we can, "wealth" would, once again, be seen in a more rounded way and, while it would certainly include quality made material possessions (comfortable, well built homes would be a priority, for example), it would also focus on individual and communal well-being; including the quality of relationships enjoyed by people and the effectiveness of the decision making processes.

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