ownership in a combination of Consumer Stock Ownership Plan and Employee Stock Ownership Plan. 4. Use a network of MicroFarm™ Institutes to teach micro vertical farm methods and provide continuous product improvement (growing food and supplying regenerative energy). 5. Finance the Institutes through a franchise network of controlled environment four season greenhouses. 6. Deploy an AEGIS (Amalgamated Entertainment, Games & International Shopping) cruise ship to market the system on a global basis. 7. Build a land based network of AEGIS cruise ship replicas with the lion’s share of profits used to subsidize the construction of microcities that will shield the poor and homeless from the effects of poverty. A system employing all of these elements has never been attempted. Fuller designed larger communities such as Tetrahedron City with a population of 1,000,000; Old Man River’s City with a population of 125,000; and Triton City with a population of 5,000 but was never able to build any of the three. Food production in small four season greenhouses is becoming cost effective in many countries, four season greenhouse research and development is ongoing in many Universities around the world, and Thanet Earth and the large urban vertical farms promoted by Dr. Dickson Despommier of Columbia University have an objective to grow food in a controlled environment on a year round basis to feed a hungry world but only a very few developments, still in the small and expensive experimental stage, attempt to join food production with home ownership. Dr. John Todd experimented with an Ocean Arks International sailing ship but his was an eco-educational program without the shopping and entertainment aspects envisioned for this cruise ship.

Describe the critical need your solution addresses.

A train analogy will be used to discuss the current stage of the initiative.

Two business engines in front are the Independence Center and Institute with two in back the land based replicas and a fleet of AEGIS cruise ships. The spinoff businesses of Image Three are seven cars in the center.

This train is going to leave the station on 1 January 2009, headed for the University of Southern Maine, where MBA students will prepare business plans for the two engines in front and a third business plan prepared by others will address a small franchise network of ten controlled environment vegetable greenhouses, each operated by a different local farmer.

The second stop will be Lulu Publishing where these three business plans will be featured in a book entitled MicroFarm™ Enterprises Shopping Mall for Sophisticated Investors. A “Features of Coming Attractions” section will highlight not only spinoff full service greenhouses with livestock, roof top greenhouses, backyard single family greenhouses, market, restaurant, and motel companies but also businesses operating a cruise ship and its land based replicas.

The third stop will be with a group of selected sophisticated investors (venture capitalists and "Angel" investors) from whom money will be sought in a private placement to capitalize the above three businesses to such an extent that, within one year the vegetable greenhouse franchise business will be operational, within two years the Institute will be capitalized, and within three years a housing development will be designed and under construction.

If the Buckminster Fuller prize is won, the money will be used to develop the eight proposed business plans, subsidy publish a “slick” version of the book, send it to a representative sample of people on the World’s Richest List, and follow-up with those interested so as to simultaneously start all 11 businesses.

Explain your initiative in more depth and its stage of development.

A standard community recycling all wastes with zero release to the environment, growing its own food, powered from regenerative energy sources, providing work for its homeowners, and volume produced such that it is affordable to those at poverty levels responds to the entry criteria by anticipating the needs of a burgeoning population in a manner that is ecologically sound.

Volume production techniques can be applied to prototypes for a microcity, a R&D Institute, and a vegetable greenhouse franchise network for their replication to meet demand on a global basis.

One trim tab principle will use the Prize Money to subsidy publish a book so as to give this microcity the financial nudge it needs to become the new flavor of the century.

A second trim tab principle will place designs in the public domain so a successful process can be copied by others using different standard designs and community networks.

How does your strategy and approach respond creatively and comprehensively to key issues?

I have a degree in Physics, MBA, and GRE score (1470) equal to the average of those entering the graduate engineering programs at MIT, Cal Tech, and Georgia Tech.

I served seven years in the U.S. Navy during which time Admiral Rickover (“I believe it is the duty of every man to act as though the fate of the world depends on them.”) qualified me as Chief Engineer of a nuclear powered submarine, worked seven years in commercial nuclear power, and was employed for 31 years in the shipbuilding industry.

The proposed strategy has received validation and support (in some cases nothing more than "Atta Boy, Leon - GO FOR IT!") from a retired U.S. Navy Captain (James E. Kaune, a Naval Academy graduate with a Master's from MIT), a Maine State Senator (Peter Bowman), a Maine State Representative (Thomas Watson), experts on sustainable farming (George Chan, Dickson Despommier, Martin Schreibman, and CELSS Designer Terry Kok), a newspaper editor (Stephen Fox), sustainable living organizations (Wolfe’s Neck Farm and The Chewonki Foundation), University of Southern Maine School of Business, and a former Change Estimator at Bath Iron Works (Jim Carville).

Thus, I have the intelligence, experience, support, time, and desire to implement the plan.