Urban Design

The orgacity of hope

by

One of the questions I encounter most frequently is how the vision for a sustainable society we are developing in the market town of Stroud might be applied to the cities where most of the world’s population now live. This is a troublesome question for me, because I have never enjoyed the city, with its concrete and anonymity, but from an ecological perspective no question is more important.

Energy: What really matters

by

Current discussions of renewable energy resources often fixate on finding replacements for the highly concentrated fossil fuels and abundant electricity that plays so large a role in contemporary lifestyles in the industrial world. The forms of energy that are actually required to maintain a comfortable human life, by contrast, are food and relatively diffuse heat for cooking, water heating and space heating, and these latter are much easier for individuals to provide for themselves using renewable resources. Moving away from dependence on concentrated energy, however, requires certain adjustments — one of which involves facility with a caulk gun.

The Power of the Permablitz

by

The permablitz is a short but intense transfer of beneficial energy where members of the community come together to implement a project or landscape installation designed to provide more resources or energy than it consumes, commonly a permaculture design. Operating on a give-help-and-then-be-helped basis, these fun-filled and informative events overcome many of the pronounced barriers facing individuals for implementing regenerative designs and structures.

Review: Localisation and Resilience by Rob Hopkins

by

The dissertation is a case study of the first official Transition Town, the English market town of Totnes, long a popular tourist destination known for its alternative culture. Using interviews, focus groups, questionnaire surveys and other social science research methods, the study examines the degree to which the Transition ideals of localization and resilience have become a reality in Totnes. (Transitioners endorse a number of upbeat definitions of a resilient community, a popular one being “[a] culture based on its ability to function indefinitely and to live within its own limits, and able to thrive for having done so.”*)

Let’s talk about bees

by

Our bee problem is quite the topic of conversation these days–at social gatherings, in meetings, over coffee. I could say and have—for example at Christmas dinner when apologizing for my not-quite-stellar pumpkin bread—that last summer the CSA grower from whom I get my produce planted five hundred pumpkin plants and only got three pumpkins (so I had to buy canned, rather than processing my own). No pollination, he thought. And just the other day an acquaintance mentioned that friends who live in a tony suburb north of Chicago had, also last summer, had their own pollination troubles in their vegetable garden. Why? she wondered.

Doing something about it – Jan 16

by

– Storytelling as Organizing
– Words Matter: How Media Can Build Civility or Destroy It
– Healthy Village Model Improves Community Health and Builds Local Green Economy
– It’s Time to Return to a Robust Urbanism
– Why does health care in Cuba cost 96% less than in the US?

Show me the evidence: Growth and prosperity

by

Most cities in the U.S. have operated on the assumption that growth is inherently beneficial and that more and faster growth will benefit local residents economically. Local growth is often cited as the cure for urban ailments, especially the need for local jobs. But where is the empirical evidence that growth is providing these benefits?

Celtic land values

by

In spite of the recent consultation over access to the countryside in England, there is little serious linkage between land ownerhship, sustainability, and food security in the English shires. By constrast, what is happening in the newly devolved territories of Scotland and Wales may be the beginnings of a revolution.

On destroying my landscape’s ecosystem: a minor elegy in a melancholy key

by

Lament over the destruction of important fertility systems of my edible landscape about 22 blocks from downtown Oklahoma City, at the behest of code enforcement. … I will increase my already not-so-insubstantial efforts to create alternative structures in the midst of the collapsing ruins of the old. When Oklahoma City hits the ash heap of history, an event that is likely to be sooner rather than later, we will all need such alternative structures.