by Peter Berg
This piece was originally published in Discovering Your Life-Place, written by Peter Berg, Planet Drum Books, copyright 1990.
Discovering Your Life-Place: A First Bioregional Workbook is based on a workshop that Planet Drum Foundation staffers have led for twenty years. These two-hour sessions featuring map-making by participants have been held in many different locales with groups that varied from community activists and natural scientists to school children. If you would like to arrange a workshop for your area., please contact Planet Drum.
There are many publications that offer additional aspects of bioregional mapping which can supplement those presented in this workbook. Planet Drum Bundles of information about particular places are available at the above address and include:
Reinhabiting a Separate Country: A Bioregional Anthology of Northern California
(Peter Berg, editor)
A book containing many natural science and cultural references to Shasta Bioregion including a map, essays, interviews, and poems—$10
Watershed Guide & Living Here
Map and text evoking natural amenities oi the San Francisco B ay Area watershed—$12
Backbone–The Rockies
Posters, maps, essays, and poems—$12
Reinhabit the Hudson Estuary
Posters, maps, essays, and poems—$12
Authentic representations by local reinhabitants that are located in specific life-places include:
Cascadia
Cascadia Institute
Seattle, WA
Mapping the West Branch Bioregion
West Branch Bioregional Project
Millhelm, PA
Giving the Land a Voice: Mapping Our Home Places
Salt Spring Island Community Services
Salt Spring Island, BC
Canada
A book that details urban activities and policies from a bioregional perspective is:
A Green City Program for the San Francisco Bay Area & Beyond
(Peter Berg, Beryl Magilavy, Seth Zuckerman, authors)
Planet Drum Books
San Francisco, CA
Shasta Bioregion
An excellent urban bioregional map showing San Francisco before colonial settlement in 1750 contrasted with a street map of the city today is available from:
Wild in the City
San Anselmo, C A
A good general introduction to many varieties of mapping that also includes a set of excellent in-depth procedures is:
Boundaries of Home: Mapping for Local Empowerment
(Doug Aberley, editor)
New Society Publishers
Gabriola Island, BC
Canada
An example of the type of detailed official government documentation that is sometimes available to augment local bioregional maps (with an appropriate international perspective) is:
The Great Lakes: An Environmental Atlas and Resource Book
ISBN 0-662-23441-3
Great Lakes Program Office
Chicago, IL
(or)
ISBN 0-662-23441-3
Environment Canada, Ontario Region
Downsview, ONT
Canada
Peter Berg (1937-2011) founded the Planet Drum Foundation (planetdrum.org) in San Francisco in 1973. His creative work and activism spanned decades, ranging from script-writing while a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and writing manifestos for The Diggers in the 1960s to presenting at the UN World Environment Day conference on urban sustainability and the Ecocity World Summit in the 2000s. In recognizing the significance of the connection between society and ecology, Berg was a leading early thinker in the development of the bioregional movement. Further biographical information available at https://planet-drum.net.