Subject: URBAN Pc - Time to put it together

From: John W Irwin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 22:11:35 -0500

Kirry wrote the Directory:

Hello, my name is Kirry. I attended the pc course at Occidental Arts &
Ecology in Sept. 98, and just got back home to Kansas City a month ago. I
am seeking those who are active in URBAN Permaculture. I am eager to change
things here, but feel all alone!
       A great challenge! And networking is vital, so I'm so thankful for this
resource [American Permaculture Directory]. I'd also love to find out about 
anyone active in this area. Thank you!
-Kirry Nelson

   I decided to put together everything I had on URBAN Pc.  Using the Directory & 
it database, I came up with one book,  2 special issues of the Pc Activist & some 
articles, and approximately 40 names & 15 organizations in the
US & Canada:  
      Please contact me if
1) you want to be sure you are on this list
2) you have more information
           OR
3) you are interested in Urban Pc & would like the list 

   Perhaps its time for someone to organize Urban Pc Resources
       (beyond the list being gathered)....

TIA (thanks in advance)  ...  John 

John Irwin, Editor
American Permaculture Directory
[email-masked]
http://www.permaculture.net

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 1999 23:33:51 EST

In a message dated 1/21/99 3:09:52 AM, [email-masked] wrote:

<<Kirry wrote the Directory:

   I decided to put together everything I had on URBAN Pc.  Using the
Directory & 
it database, I came up with one book,  2 special issues of the Pc Activist &
some 
articles, and approximately 40 names & 15 organizations in the
US & Canada:  
      Please contact me if
1) you want to be sure you are on this list
2) you have more information
           OR
3) you are interested in Urban Pc & would like the list 

John:  We have a published number of articles in back issues of our TIPSY
journal (since renamed) and we have an excellent section on urban permaculture
in our design course, both the online and the live versions.  Also there is
some Urban PC stuff in one of Permaculture Design Course Pamphlet series that
we have published and placed in public domain for unfettered replication.
(Obviously, it is not practical for us to do that with all our materials.)
Yankee Permaculture Paper #35, reprinted on the web-page cited below, has an
urban section.  Also, our directory (TRIP) of about 2,000 organizations
related in some way to permaculture has a category called Urban
Sustainability.  (Yes, I know, an oxymoron.)  We append the current US
selection from TRIP to each update of the urban pamphlet in the designer's
manual.  Also, there was an excellent treatment of a urban permaculture design
done on Roxbury, Massachusetts, around 1983 +/- a few years, to which I was an
advisor.  I have a copy of that report here somewhere.  I can't remember the
name of the guy who put the project to gether--I think he eventually took a
design course, so he should be on your list of graduates from Massachusetts.
It's also on the book they turned out.
	An interesting resource for permaculturists interested in urban settings
could be Mark Winne's Hartford Food System.  Mark was my boss for a while at
the Natick Community Farm, a youth farm in an urban/suburban setting that he
founded.  I was head of the farm for a few years.  It was something like the
British City Farms, except that it was a stand alone--no supporting movement
behind it.  I think it is still going.  Anyway, though I do not know if Mark
even knows the word permaculture, he reportedly has done great things in
Heartford--got some sort of spiffy award for same a while back.  
	In my experience, having had projects at one prison (using the grounds with
non-inmate participants) and been a permaculture/horticulture teacher of
inmates at another prison, the prison setting is sort of the urban setting
distilled to its essence.  (Im not going to discus this with respondees who
have not had intimate experience with prisons.)
	Urban permaculture is permaculture.  Any person who has received proper
training in permaculture should be able to do urban permaculture at the same
level s/he can do any other.  People do try to bend the principles because
they are hard to follow.  It is difficult to use the zone system of placement
when the community garden, that you would like to manage as a zone 1 garden,
is 8 blocks away.  Nonetheless, it IS  a zone 3 or 4 for you and you will be
more successful if you use middle or outer zone strategies (or move into the
garden, which I have seen done!)  Everything we discuss in permaculture can
workin cities.  
	The problems in cities are not problems of opportunity and possibility, they
are problems of people, generally disempowered people.  You can't control your
water system and stop ripping off the water from communities upstate (thinking
of NYC) if you don't own City Hall.  So permaculture, inherently an arnachist
philosophy, has to bite hard on something (for the pain) and work with
community organizers and politicians.  (Anyone who runs for office is a
politician.)  If you walk around a city with a permaculture class, you here a
hundred or maybe many more reasons why something can't be done (something that
obviously CAN be done) than  you hear people proposing ways to do it.  That's
disempowerment.
	Well, I've lived in cities, though before permaculture was so named, and I've
been involved in various movements in cities, and the one rule that I've never
seen an exception to is that the impetus has to come from the people stuck
there.
I remember that my hippy-dippy friends started a "free store" on the Lower
East Side (this was the 60s) and so the local kids broke into it at night and
stole everything.  If the message of THAT gesture is not clear, avoid urban
permaculture.  So a bright and bushy-tailed graduate of a permaculture design
course, aflame with THE WORD, can get hosed down to ambient temperature and
below pretty quickly in the neighborhoods.  The strategy that works is to move
into a neighborhood, keep your mouth shut and pitch in when community projects
come along.  Get to know the organizers, sound them out on permaculture, and
if they aren't interested, you may have wasted a lot of time.  (Interestingly,
the same strategy is what works best in "third world" situations.) Well, the
woman you quote, John, is doing her homework, so we can be comforted that she
appears NOT to be one of the misdirected zealots.
	That's all I've come up with.  I teach in cities on invitation, but I don't
go looking for work in such places, especially as I get older and have even
less patience with the defeatism and cinicism.  It seems likely that Mark has
found a way around those problems, and again I would spend some time with him
and his programs if I were interested in making permaculture in urban settings
a major part of my work.
	I just have to say it again--permaculture is permaculture, and doesn't
suddenly change because there are too many people around.  There is the human
temptation to change permaculture because the people don't want to change, but
if one does, I devoutely hope they then call it something else.

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 1982),
Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and annual correspondence
courses via email.  Copyright, 1998, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway, P.O. Box 52,
Sparr FL 32192 USA  Internships. [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.

A list by topic of all Yankee Permaculture titles may be found at
http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalog.html
Elfin Permaculture programs are listed at the Eastern Permaculture Teachers
assn home page: http://home.ptd.net/~artrod/epta/eptahmp.html