Sutures in the City
Community Projects, Eco-Villages, Economics, Food Forests, Food Plants - Annual, People Systems, Plant Systems, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Adrian Buckley March 22, 2011
This article’s about where, I think, the best place to invest our energy toward creating positive change lies in repairing community and the planet. We all have the power to be just as positive an influence on this planet as we are the negative element many environmentalists make us out to be. The thing is, the power of being positive is truly empowering; feeling negative is totally disempowering. Read on and learn about the case for making positive impact, and a strategy for doing so. This article starts off pretty stark, but I promise, you’ll reach the end of this post hopefully as charged as I am writing it!
Climate Change Training Exercise
Biodiversity, Courses/Workshops, Deforestation, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Land, Social Gatherings, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Village Development, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Elaine Codling March 21, 2011
This is a training exercise that can be done with groups of around 20-25 people of all ages. Feel free to use, expand, or elaborate on it in anyway. Follow the activity with a discussion about climate as it relates to permaculture design.
The roles:
- Poor Farmer
- Sun
- Summer Wind
- Winter Wind
- Rain
- River
- Cyclone
- Shade Tree
- Bamboo [X 3 or more]
- Willows [X 3 or more]
- Food Forest [X 4 or more]
Permaculture in Public Spaces
Alternatives to Political Systems, Aquaculture, Biological Cleaning, Community Projects, Conservation, Courses/Workshops, Land, People Systems, Village Development — by Lindsay Dailey March 19, 2011
Lake County, California, is a rural area on the edge of the San Francisco Bay Area. Though it’s surrounded by extremely wealthy areas, Lake County is unique; it is one of the least densely populated counties in the state of California, with one of the highest rates of poverty and unemployment. The agricultural industries that once thrived in the area are mostly gone, and most people struggle to earn a livelihood.
Leave it to the permaculturalists to find opportunity in this seemingly barren edge! And there is indeed permaculture activity on the rise, in the most unlikely of places… the county government.
Comments (1)Permaculture in One of the Most Densely Populated Cities in the World
Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Anton Lo March 16, 2011
Why Hong Kong Could Prove Pivotal for the Future of Sustainability
Hong Kong skyline
Photo by Felipe Diez
Seeing permaculture practiced in Hong Kong is extremely exciting because of what Hong Kong’s location, culture, and history mean for getting permaculture out to the world. The city had, until recently, the busiest port in the world (since superseded by Shanghai). It is a great travel hub in Asia for not only businessmen but also thousands of other travelers passing through each day. Those who stay can get a taste of the tremendous crowds in Hong Kong’s metropolitan areas, where some of the highest population densities in the world make for an experience that is both exhilarating and exhausting. Taking a short ferry ride to outlying islands or heading into the new territories, on the other hand, yields lush greenery that feels a world apart from the densely built environs of the city, for not only is Hong Kong a meeting point for the East and the West, it is also the concrete world where man interfaces with the natural world. We’ve all heard the cliché about the juxtaposition of east and west, old and new. However, Hong Kong does it in a way that’s convincing, where one does not have to win out over the other, and where both seem comfortable coexisting.
Comments (6)O-Farm Community Gardens, Hong Kong
Community Projects, Food Shortages, People Systems, Social Gatherings, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Geoff Lawton March 10, 2011
O-Farm Hong Kong is championed by PDC graduate Yip Tsz Shing. It is a wonderful community garden where very small spaces, just a few metres (8 square metres on average), are rented by Hong Kong residents.
Some may travel up to an hour and a half each way to come and garden fresh organic food and have social interaction with other community gardeners.
Comments (2)The Ancient Taberna in a Future World
Biodiversity, Building, Community Projects, Consumerism, Eco-Villages, Economics, Markets & Outlets, People Systems, Social Gatherings, Society, Village Development — by Oyvind Holmstad March 4, 2011
Ladakh, India
All photographs © Craig Mackintosh
A taberna (plural tabernae) was a single room shop covered by a barrel vault within great indoor markets of ancient Rome. Each taberna had a window above it to let light into a wooden attic for storage and had a wide doorway. A famous example is the Markets of Trajan in Rome, Italy built in the early 1st century by Apollodorus of Damascus.
According to the Cambridge Ancient History, a taberna was a “retail unit" within the Roman Empire and furthermore was where many economic activities and many service industries were provided, including the sale of cooked food, wine and bread. – Wikipedia
Some people claim that the Markets of Trajan was the world’s first shopping mall. But there is a difference to today’s malls. Trajan’s Market was beautiful and it offered ingenious personal services and variety, something which is rare today. I’ve yet to see a beautiful shopping mall built in the era of consumerism. Those few nice examples are all reused train stations and so on, from a lost time. No, the Trajan Market was not at all like today’s ’supermarkets’ — it was a superb market!
Comments (1)Help Us Give You What You Want
Aid Projects, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Education Centres, Ethical Investment, Networking Sites, People Systems, Social Gatherings, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor March 3, 2011
Do you really understand what the Worldwide Permaculture Network is all about?
The WPN represents many months of work. Now is your chance to pitch in a little, and directly benefit with improved functionality and more capabilities. |
In a world seemingly gone mad, permaculture is reinvigorating countless individuals worldwide – giving them hope by giving them tools (knowledge) to equip them to live free, secure, healthy and happy. The Worldwide Permaculture Network (WPN) is an outgrowth of this trend. Indeed, the WPN itself becomes a giant toolbox, where all the members’ knowledge can be shared amongst each other!!
Scenario(s): Imagine if you’re living in, say, a residential urban home, and are looking at ways to increase your resiliency and sustainability. Then, imagine if you could search a database of thousands of like-minded souls, filtering the results to constrain them to just people in similar circumstances as your own – i.e. ‘urban’, ‘residential’.
Then, why not drop in a climate zone filter to get even more relevant results?
Comments (1)Community Gardens Visited and Observed: Veggie Village in Peregian Beach
Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Food Shortages, Land, People Systems, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Geoff Lawton February 18, 2011
Community gardens are a very valuable demonstration of how a community can grow its own food, provide its own power, harvest its own water from roofs and build appropriate buildings and infrastructure. They are a wonderful element in the community and permaculture people all over the world should support community gardens in all their forms.
An interesting observation is that often a community has already used all of the most valuable land by the time the population has grown to a stage where it requires or requests that a community garden be installed. Therefore often a community garden is given land that is not valuable for the local real estate market but can be surrounded by local real estate development. It has become a regularly repeated phenomenon that land given for the installation and development of community gardens is flood prone and generally a poor landscape. There is therefore quite an emphasis on raised garden beds, this is something we have observed as we visited different community gardens around the world and in Australia.
Comments (8)Cognitive Dissonance and Non-adaptive Architecture: Seven Tactics for Denying the Truth
Consumerism, People Systems, Society, Village Development — by Nikos A. Salingaros February 9, 2011
by Nikos A. Salingaros, The University of Texas at San Antonio
Abstract: Human physiology can lead people who have acquired false beliefs to stubbornly persist in holding them. Intelligent persons conform to irrational groupthink, employing a stock of tools to fight against any idea that conflicts with those already held. There is in fact a built-in resistance to new ideas that do not conform to accepted practices, even when such practices are demonstrated to be failures. We can understand this resistance to change within the framework of social learning and evolutionary adaptation. “Cognitive dissonance” is a state of physical anxiety to which we instinctively react in a defensive manner. We are programmed to counteract its occurrence. Studies in political science and psychology reveal strong innate mechanisms for preserving misinformation so as to avoid cognitive dissonance. Methods of handling contradictory information within settings requiring urgent action — while obviously appropriate at the evolutionary level of early humans — wreak havoc with our present-day rationality.
Introduction
Is today’s consumerist society headed for collapse because of its exponentially growing, hence unsustainable needs? For some years now we have been aware of the damaging affect that the material pursuits of both industrial and developing countries have on the earth and its biosphere. Yet, despite numerous well-made rational arguments that urge us to change the catastrophic global waste of natural resources and energy, expanding agricultural regions at the risk of losing the diversity of the biosphere, etc., it is frustrating to find that human inertia overrides sound logic and reason (Max-Neef, 2010; Wilson, 2006).
Comments (10)Sacred is Our Inherent Right to Live Free and Gloriously – Interview with Craig Mackintosh
Aid Projects, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Education Centres, Networking Sites, People Systems, Social Gatherings, Society, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Willi Paul February 8, 2011
Interview with Craig Mackintosh by Willi Paul about the new Worldwide Permaculture Network
Willi Paul: Is there a global permaculture revolution rising now?
Craig Mackintosh: Well, there had better be. The other kinds of revolution aren’t pretty. Revolution, I believe, is going to become an increasingly popular word. But often revolutions merely pull things down, without offering meaningful replacements.
Over the last few years the level of interest in permaculture has skyrocketed. People are increasingly realizing the world is running out of options, but many are also realizing that this is exactly what permaculture gives to the world – options.
WP: What are the pros and cons of a world-wide database?
Comments (49)The Live Launch of the Worldwide Permaculture Network (WPN) is Now Underway!!
Aid Projects, Alternatives to Political Systems, Bio-regional Organisations, Commercial Farm Projects, Community Projects, Demonstration Sites, Developments, Eco-Villages, Education Centres, Networking Sites, News, People Systems, Social Gatherings, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Craig Mackintosh PRI Editor February 3, 2011
Dear People
After months and months of work, we’re now launching a new system — the Worldwide Permaculture Network (WPN) — which will enable permaculturists everywhere to:
- Put themselves on a clickable map, where people (permaculturists and non-permaculturists) can see at a glance the scope of the spread of permaculture worldwide
- Showcase their work as individuals, and the work of any projects they are administrating
- Be searchable according to many variables (climate zone, project type, and more)
- Network with other permaculturists everywhere
- Advertise their consultancy services
- Advertise their courses (for educational projects)
- Share knowledge, experiences, challenges, successes, and inspiration
- Help inspire non-permaculturists with the potential for positive, systemic change that permaculture design systems can bring
- And more…
Forest Chumps
Alternatives to Political Systems, Deforestation, Economics, People Systems, Village Development — by George Monbiot February 2, 2011
The sale of England’s state forests is a chance to do something interesting. It’s being squandered.
by George Monbiot: journalist, author, academic and environmental and political activist, United Kingdom
It took the previous Conservative government 13 years to propose a sell-off as unpopular as this one. The privatisation of the railways was opposed by 85% of British voters(1), and helped to derail John Major’s administration in 1997. Cameron’s plan to flog the public forest estate, presented to the nation after eight months in office, is opposed by 84% of the public(2). So much for his brilliant political instincts. And yet, stupid and destructive as this sell-off promises to be, it’s just a stone’s throw from something really interesting.
One Million People in Sri Lanka Need Your Help
Community Projects, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, People Systems, Regional Water Cycle, Society, Village Development, Water Contaminaton & Loss — by Shisir Khanal January 22, 2011
Dear Friends
"The disaster we are facing is second only to the tsunami," says Dr. Vinya Ariyaratne, General Secretary of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement of Sri Lanka. A torrential monsoon rain has flooded Eastern Sri Lanka.
Comments (0)Village Towns
Building, Community Projects, Eco-Villages, People Systems, Urban Projects, Village Development — by Oyvind Holmstad January 21, 2011
Vandana Shiva, an internationally recognized Indian activist and philosopher, explains that planning for the human being rather than the automobile can liberate space and create community within a city. In her opinion, a sustainable city should operate as a self-reliant and self-sufficient cluster of villages.
Comments (2)Respecting Ourselves, Part III: Needs Met Ineffectively or at Great Cost
Consumerism, Economics, Food Shortages, Global Warming/Climate Change, Health & Disease, People Systems, Population, Society, Soil Erosion & Contamination, Village Development, Water Contaminaton & Loss, peak oil — by Kyle Chamberlain January 18, 2011
Editor’s Note: This is Part III of a three-part series. If you haven’t already, please read Part I and Part II before continuing.
Those of us who live in the ‘developed world’ frequently see their higher needs compromised. But, unlike much of the world’s population, we rarely find ourselves destitute of our most basic requirements, like shelter, water, and food. Our housing may not be particularly secure, our water may not be too clean, and our food may be low on nutrition, but we have, at least, some semblance of the basics.
Our piecemeal life support system works well enough that many of us become fat. The tragedy of this system is not just the substandard services it provides, but also the extreme wastefulness and inefficiency.
Recalling that these basic services were once provided freely by the environment, it’s clear that they’ve become remarkably expensive today. Studies of some hunter/gatherer groups found that their members typically labored just three or four hours daily for their sustenance. Today, the nine hour work day is the norm, with an astonishing proportion of our incomes going to basics, like housing and food.
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