A number of your comments fail logically. This one, for example: “So, if you create a bunch of gardens, you’ve created an artificial housing shortage.” In what way? Multi-family dwellings are not illegal. Not only are multi-family dwellings more efficient than single-family dwellings, but putting six families on one lot and leaving five lots to support them – which should be able to provide all or most of their vegetables, herbs and fruit – hardly creates a housing shortage.

It is impossible to tell what your real point here is.

The problem with the property prices in Detroit is that the homes were paid for in full then abandoned. The city got them free and does nothing but let them rot away and charges tax every year like the home still has its original value. So when a home sits for 10 years or more empty and is junk the taxes have built up to more than anyone would be willing to pay.

Same goes with empty lots. The taxes build up over the years even with the city doing nothing to keep up the property. So if you want to buy empty lots that are sitting doing nothing they are priced the same as a lot with a decent house on them.

Wow. Where do I start with this? Critizing an impoverished city because they want to actually get something for their land? Maybe that’s the one thing, the only thing that the Democrats who’ve run Detroit for decades are doing right. Do you see them doing anything else right? Not me. Detroit is a disaster zone because of their policies for other reasons, like high taxes, failed schools, and non-market oriented policies.

Try opening an economics book because this comment displays profound ignorance of how human systems work. Are you really saying that the city gov should give everything away? What about poor people? Don’t you want to make sure there are lots of money for welfare, free services, and taxpayer-paid infrastructure. You must be anti-poor!

The author does no better: “We’d rather see small, walkable, self-reliant communities built along primary thoroughfares.” Of course you would, who wouldn’t want that? So, if you create a bunch of gardens, you’ve created an artificial housing shortage, and house prices will go up. You wouldn’t want to force all the low-income people to move out of the area, would you? And fewer houses and smaller towns mean smaller economies of scale. Everything gets more expensive again impacting the poor-except perhaps food, bravo! What is with this war on low-income people? That’s to say nothing of the collapse of the tax base from its already paltry levels.

Thanks for poking around, but, yes, I was sure.

Cheers

But, seems it’s not stopping people:

http://www.grit.com/Flocking-to-the-City/The-Chicks-Arrive.aspx

And from another post:

“A recent seminar at the Ferguson Academy on raising chickens in your backyard — which began with a disclaimer that the practice is illegal in Detroit — had more than 100 attendees.” – http://detnews.com/article/20090424/LIFESTYLE14/904240359/Urban-gardeners-nurture-nature-in-Detroit#ixzz0e1ypLat2

It’s high time we legalised sustainability.

http://permaculture.org.au/2010/01/30/chicagos-chicken-ordinance/

Unfortunately, the changes in Detroit are driven much more by economic considerations than anything else. The city has many, many lots available, but will not deed or sell them to gardeners because they want to sell them at higher prices, or to entities that will pay more taxes. It is illegal to have chickens (though it is legal to build a small coop). There is no tax break for even market gardens, so far as I know. One cannot currently build a straw bale building. I cannot simply build myself a green house without going through a permitting process that is rather arduous. There are people in the city government and certainly among the citizenry working to change these things, but process is slow.

D-Town farm mentioned in the article took two or three years to get official approval for gardens from what I understand. The Georgia Street Community Garden is trying to expand legally, but is facing some challenges.

Part of what we hope to accomplish with PRI-De is to help move these processes along, and part of that will be accomplished by bringing more and more people here for training to see how gritty urban gardening, even guerrilla gardening, happens and the challenges urban gardeners can face that go above and beyond growing your garden. Some of them might add their voices to the chorus, or will take the refrain back to their own towns and cities where similar restrictions apply and work to remove them.

Cheers

I’ll try to get a response from those more knowledgeable than myself, but as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language in a former life, let me answer somewhat pedantically.

We tend to use the terms method, technique, system and approach interchangeably in everyday speech, but they do have different semantic inferences. System and approach have to do with the overall manner or philosophy that guides actions while technique, in particular, refers, in this context, to the specific actions one takes as influenced by the system or approach.

For example, a garden might use all the techniques you mention, but not be an example of permaculture while being an excellent example of an efficient or organic garden. But if that garden uses petroleum-based fertilizer and pesticides, it would likely not be considered organic or permaculture-based. Also, if it is organized such that an orchard blocked sunlight to the vegetables, chickens were housed outside the front door, water was captured in barrels but allowed to simply spill over when full, you’d likely not be looking at a garden influenced by permaculture.

Another example would be a chicken coop that is only used for egg and meat production and is fed with store-bought grains, etc. That would perhaps be a fair economic choice, but not necessarily one that would be recognized as reflecting permaculture because it is not integrated into the life cycle of the garden and homestead in a way that creates circles of life, if you will. If the droppings, for example, are simply thrown away and not used as fertilizer, we’re being neither as efficient as we might be nor are we exhibiting a good example of permaculture design.

Simply put, permaculture isn’t a set of techniques, as much as it is a philosophy of how to use the many gardening/farming techniques out there.

I hope this answers your questions and I apologize if my post was confusing.

Cheers