"The great problem of our time is to restore modern mans balance and wholeness: to give him the capacity to command the machines he has created instead of becoming their helpless accomplice and passive victim… In short, the problem of our time is how to prevent ourselves from committing suicide, precisely at the height and climax of our one-sided mechanical triumphs""...the size of our eutopia may be big or little; it may begin in a single village; it may embrace a whole region. A little leaven will leaven the whole loaf; and if a genuine pattern for the eutopian life plants itself in any particular locality it may ramify over a whole continent as easily as Coketown duplicated itself throughout the Western world."– Lewis Mumford
Skyloom Development Services provides community and regional planning services founded in the conviction that community is not merely a nostalgic relic of a simpler time, but rather an inherent, essential, and ultimately strategic underpinning of every facet of human life.
We approach community development as a set of very pragmatic solutions to the recurring challenges that people and communities face in the essential areas of our life, be it economics, housing, health, governance, etc. Mounting evidence from many disciplines suggest that this approach results not only in more effective social/technical solutions but also, and not incidentally, solutions that feel more satisfying and responsive, or in a word, alive.
For over 25 years, we have been exploring and applying the practical expressions of community in a broad range of areas including housing, economic development, organizational development, and web site development. Some of the specific services we can provide include: