Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
If we’re going to understand the problems that the modern megapolis will face in the coming decades, we need to look past the usual distinctions, to the design flaws that now lie behind not just suburbia but cities and even “rural” communities (a depressing number of which have been Walmartized).
Post Carbon Cities (peak oil for the American Planning Association)
Goldman Sachs predicts fall in oil prices to $45 a barrel
As China economy brakes, oil demand goes in reverse
Energy giants trim spending plans for 2009
The passive house could play a major role in cutting energy consumption and offers the best way to radically alter our building practices.
Following on last week’s discussion of the lessons of evolution, the Archdruid explores the need for organic processes in preparing for the end of the industrial age, and the value of dissensus — the deliberate avoidance of consensus as a way to broaden options and foster creativity.
The Age recently had an article on the emerging practice of “guerilla gardening”, taking a look at the “Gardening guerillas in our midst”. This concept seems to have steadily increased in popularity in recent years (admittedly from a very low base) as the permaculture movement’s ideas have been propagated through the community.
Unlike the usual approach taken when trying to grow food in the suburbs – converting spare land on your own property (as discussed by aeldric previously and, more recently, in Jeff Vail’s series on A Resilient Suburbia) – guerilla gardening involves cultivating any spare patch of urban land that isn’t being used for another purpose, which could provide a substantial addition to the food growing potential of suburbia.
Planning the Future
Copenhagen, Melbourne & The Reconquest of the City
Cultivating a new food culture
Mushrooms save the day (with Paul Stamets)
Nearly a billion people worldwide are starving, UN agency warns
Supermarkets? No, thanks
Do you know your neighbors? If you don’t, get to know them soon because none of us knows when we might need them or when they might need us.
Several weeks ago I attended a meeting in Montpelier, capital of Vermont, in which that city’s Mayor, Mary Hooper, and Vermont State Representative, Patricia McDonald (R-Berlin) outlined detailed preparations being made by concerned citizens in Montpelier and Berlin to assist the most vulnerable folks in their towns with surviving the cold winter. While this kind of effort may be popular at the neighborhood, city, or town level across America, it is rare that a state representative signs on to it as passionately as McDonald has…
Energy, Climate Change, and Complexity in Healthcare
A Resilient Suburbia 4: Accounting for the Value of Decentralization
The Final Garnaut Report; A Radical Critique of its Energy Assumptions
I sometimes feel like a radar operator who looks out on a warm, sunny Sunday morning and sees blips that augur rapid, unwelcome changes, while most other people continue preparing for an easy day.
Sainsbury’s Britishness test
Revealed: the cruelty of UK’s pork suppliers
No. Just no.
Although I admire the Voluntary Simplicity movement, when I was asked to write about simplicity and the economy, I was at first stumped. I can certainly see the grace and benefits of living a simpler life. We already grow much of our food, buy most of our consumer goods used, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without,” try and keep our energy use down to below 1/5 of the average American’s, and depend heavily on community, barter and sharing. At first glance, although we’re Jewish, not ”Plain” our life evokes a simpler past with the wood cookstove that heats our house, the jars of home canned food, the milk goats and our carefully managed budget.
