Building Community

The Buffalo Commons: Redefining how we think about place, politics, and policy

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One of my working hypotheses has been that commons discourse has great power because it is able to function as an open platform. It is both general and specific. I frequently compare the commons to DNA because both are under-specified design structures that evolve and adapt in relationship to local circumstances. A certain ambiguity and incompleteness in the language of the commons is precisely what enables people to infuse it with their own specific values, needs and aspirations. And this is what makes the commons both universally appealing and particular in its manifestations.

Land grabs: a global epidemic

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I have spent the past two years investigating the global epidemic of land grabs for a book. Saudi sheikhs, private equity whizz-kids, Indian entrepreneurs and Chinese billionaires all believe, with financier George Soros, that “farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time.”

It is a rerun of the enclosure of common lands in Europe centuries ago – but taking place at breakneck speed and with the fences being erected mostly by foreign investors.

Peak Oil and Climate Change: a Midsummer Night’s Meditation

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It is becoming increasingly clear that on the individual level at least, there is precisely no reasonable response to peak oil and climate change. This is an improv, a dance with emerging possibilities, and an invitation to get in touch with something that is deeper than reason and capable of reforming it, difficult as that may be to describe in reasonable terms.

Today’s distress is blocking the economy of tomorrow

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If you still know anybody who thinks the economy is in “recovery,” just lay this one single statistic on them: one in two recent U.S. college graduates today is unemployed or underemployed, unable to find work in his or her chosen field.

So what happens, in this time of economic starvation, when one of those remaining corporate businesses wants to buck the trend, and instead of leaving town, actually wants to come in?

Hau to be erotic: going deeper into the gift economy

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Gifts have the function of bonding communities together. … If your entire life is nothing but money transactions, … then you don’t have community because you don’t need anybody. — Charles Eisenstein

My dad just gave me a brand-new sawzall reciprocating saw. Yesterday its maiden voyage helped to repair the rainwater harvesting tanks at the community garden. In the spirit of gifting (in Maori they call it hau), with this “second giving” the sawzall entered into the gift economy.

What if . . . . the people had a change of heart?

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That’s when you see the past and the future in your own hands. How everything hinges ultimately on our own efforts: Who will dig the land, who will shape the land, what is it worth, and in what spirit will this work be done? Up until the 1950s half the population in Suffolk worked on the land; now it’s 0.5 percent. The country has become something we understand at arm’s length, a Suffolk of industrial agriculture, fringed with nature tourism and leisure. And yet in our hearts, somewhere, we know there is a deeper relationship we have with our homeland, and if we were wise, we would be seeking it out.

Why chefs matter to farmers

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It’s Tuesday at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market and sales have been slow, but Poli Yerena of Yerena Farms is content with his business for the day. He stands amid waist-high stacks of organic berries that are all sold and accounted for, purchased by local chefs. “At least every week I have a new chef coming to buy strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries, so I am happy,” he says. “Over the last eight years, we’ve been supplying to chefs. We know each other and there’s a good relationship.”

A day at Bristol Big Green Week (with presentations by Tim Smit, Kevin McCloud and Rob Hopkins)

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I spent a very enjoyable day at Bristol Green Week yesterday. Green Week is a celebration of green ideas and thinking in Bristol, which has featured a wildly eclectic mix of talks, workshops, music, comedy, films, walks and much more. Had I been able to stay around for the whole week I would have been able to see the electric bike races up Park Street, seen Vivienne Westwood talking about climate change, gone on ‘Bristol’s Biggest Bike Ride’, done a course on keeping chickens, gone to a gourmet cider-tasting and gone to a permaculture day. Oh well, there’s always next year.

Little Boxes on the Hillside

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No developments evince joy in people. No one celebrates when green fields are torn up, trees are felled, creatures are driven out of their homes, and the little boxes chew up the green hills and shut out the view. No one likes it when Lego land encroaches on the familiar neighbourhoods, brings traffic and supermarkets and alienation in its wake. Although people do go and live in these places, nevertheless.

Survival of the fittest?

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The disabled and the elderly have been thrown onto the scrap heap by the current contraction, and the lack of empathy from the rest of Britain has been staggering – hate crime is up 75%, and for the first time since I’ve been in the UK I feel uncomfortable stepping out of my house with my cane. Invariably in debates online, when disabled people have tried to advocate for a return of dignity and independence, someone will quote “survival of the fittest” as a reason to discard disabled people, children, and pensioners who are unable to care for themselves. But is discarding the “useless eater” (as Germany put it in propaganda posters during the 30’s) a true sign of survival, or is it a further symptom of socio-collapse?