The Old Man in the Bag: and other true stories of good intentions Paperback - 2012

Ted Wells is an Urban Designer and Planning Specialist. He was born, raised and educated as an Architect in the United States. After completing his degree in the sixties, he and his wife chose the Peace Corps rather than the Vietnam War. For three years he planned new towns in remote parts of the Ethiopian Rift Valley while his wife treated sick people and cattle there. They then spent a year traveling the back roads of Europe in a VW van exploring their new towns to see what he should have done in Africa. Eventually they returned to the States where Ted worked for five years as a planner for a small city in Colorado. In the mid 1970s, he and his wife became disillusioned with American politics so they moved their young family to New Zealand in search of an alternative approach to society, humanity and government, They found a comfortable place by the Tasman Sea and decided to saty. Apart from the three years he spent back in the States researching his book on consensus decision-making and undertaking planning work in Philadelphia, Ted spent the next 35 years working for various governments in New Zealand and around the Pacific helping local people plan their own futures. This book and its more conceptual companion work; "Power, Chaos & Consensus" finally came together following two years in Samoa helping local residents prepare coastal management plans using their traditional methods of consensus decision-making.