Permaculture for Renters :: regenerative design for the landless many || SEO.....

(This is post 2 of 7 in a series, to see the post about the series, click here.)

(While not unique to renters, and probably not groundbreaking news to many of you, changing our behavior is essential to building a sustainable culture.)

Basic shifts in how we get around (less by car, more by bike, foot, or public transit), eat (more local), use energy (turn down the thermostat!), and consume other resources have enormous effects on our ecological footprint.  The design tools offered by permaculture provide a framework through which we can redesign our relationship to all of these things. Here are a few examples that utilize the design method known as Zone and Sector Analysis:

Getting Around

When it comes to changing our behavior as urban-folk, I really like the thinking put forth in Bart Anderson’s article “Zones and Sectors in the City” as a way of planning where we go and how we get there.  Anderson suggests that in urban settings, instead of labeling zones by their frequency of visitation, we can describe them in terms of the fossil fuel energy expended to reach them:

• Zone 1 - Walking
• Zone 2 - Biking
• Zone 3 - Public Transit
• Zone 4 - Car
• Zone 5 - Airplane

He points out that the best way to minimize our fossil fuel use is to intentfully design our lives such that the places we need to visit the most often (work, grocery store, etc.) fall within our zones 1 and 2.

Anyone who currently finds themselves driving more than a couple times per week should check out his article (link above) and create a urban zone and sector diagram of their own.  I’ve found it enormously helpful in assessing where I go and how I get there.

Patterns of Consumption

Many of us already think along similar lines about the things we consume, mentally dividing the goods and services we purchase into zones based on how far they had to travel to reach us.  We know that it’s better to buy local.  But how local?  Which goods need to be sourced within 50 miles? What about 5 miles?

To minimize fossil fuel use, and increase the self-reliance and resilience of our neighborhoods and communities, our greatest leverage points are those goods which we need to consume frequently, and in large volumes:  food and water, anyone?

We should be working to bring the production of these, and other goods that are essential to our daily health and well-being, into our zones 1 and 2 (walking and biking zones).  (It’s true, water can be gravity fed over long distances, but this will cannot meet the needs of all people in all places.  Ultra-localized sources such as roof run-off stored in tanks and cisterns will be the key components of low energy water systems.)

Learning and Evolving

Sustainability is the ‘permanent’ in permaculture; and as we work toward understanding how a permanent culture behaves, the continuous evolution and cross-pollination of ideas will play a central role in every insight gained.

As urban-renter-permaculturists, we need to be sharing with one another our ‘best practices,‘ as well as our what-not-to-do’s, and cross-pollinate one another’s concepts of what urban sustainability can look like.  Permaculture for Renters is a forum for just that!  So be in touch, share your stories, and stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 7th, 2009 at 7:29 am and is filed under Strategies, p4r Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.