There are two basic steps to good permaculture design. The first deals with laws and principles, while the second is more closely associated with practical techniques.
The principles are inherent in any permaculture design, in any climate, and at any scale. They are, briefly:
Relative location: every element is placed in relationship to another so that they assist each other
Each element performs many functions.
Each important function is supported by many elements.
Efficient energy planning for house and settlement.
Emphasis on the use of biological resources over fossil fuel resources.
Energy recycling on site.
Using and accelerating natural plant succession to establish favourable sites and soils.
Polyculture and diversity of beneficial species for a productive, interactive system.
Of all the principles of software engineering which has fallen by the wayside in the modern “move fast and break things” mentality of assholes modern software developers, reliability is perhaps the most neglected, along with its cousin, robustness. Almost all software that users encounter in $CURRENTYEAR is straight-up broken, and often badly.
There is a kind of indeterminacy, quite different in essence from the famous principle of Heisenberg but just as effective in limiting our knowledge of nature, which lies in the fact that we can neither consciously sense nor think of much at any one moment. Understanding can only come from a roving viewpoint and sequential changes of scale of attention.