Urban permaculture

I've been doing more reading on urban permaculture, and getting wholly inspired by what is possible in cities and urban areas.  Urban permaculture design and initiatives are the next step beyond what is already taking place in the vastly expanding urban agriculture movement - permaculture addresses not just food production, but also sustainability, community, interconnection, activism, communication, education, natural building, equality, diversity, peace-building, and much more.  It ties is well with the Transition Town movement and all it's goals.  A wonderful quote by Bill Mollison, co-founder of the permaculture sums this up by saying "we are only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby".

Here are some great urban permaculture links to find out more:
Urban Permaculture Guild
http://www.urbanpermaculture.com.au/
Urban Permaculture Trio (video) - forest gardening, edible landscaping, urban permaculture
2011 Urban Permaculture Design Course - Vancouver
How to make permaculture seed balls
Make permaculture seed balls - Masanobu Fukouka

Building resilient communities

During our recent holiday I had a chance to stop in at a favourite cafe, the Mondragon, which happens to be a worker co-op.  They have a bookshop, green grocery, and coffee house (and downstairs in the same building is an awesome bicycle shop, Natural Cycle, also run as a worker co-op, and where my sister happens to work).  I always like to browse the book selections, and picked up the most recent issue of Yes! Magazine.  I have always liked the concept of Yes! Magazine, whose byline is "powerful ideas, positive solutions" and I believe it used to be called "the journal of positive futures".  It's a magazine with a critical voice, yet always offering hopeful stories and solutions.  This issue is about building resilient communities - exactly the kinds of things we are hoping to do as urban homesteaders, as transition town groups, as barter networks, as food co-ops, as bicycle co-ops, and so on.  I highly recommend getting a copy of this magazine!

Natural Life Magazine & Transition Towns

The latest issue of Natural Life Magazine just arrive in our mailbox! This Canadian magazine describes itself at "The original natural family living magazine, founded in 1976. Reader-supported and trusted by thinking people around the world who want positive alternatives to high cost, high consumption lifestyles for themselves and their families.". It focuses on green living, slow food, homeschooling/unschooling, and natural parenting. The Jan/Feb 2010 issue features articles on natural immunity, forest preschools, kitchens as wellness centers, biologic architecture, transition towns, re-imagining schools, healthy art materials, green personal care products, and more. The articles are practical and very accessible, while still providing enough detail for readers to begin to get a solid grasp on these issues. Each article also provides follow up websites and book titles for those who wish to learn more. It is one of the few Canadian published magazines of this genre that we know about. More on Natural Life Magazine at www.naturallifemagazine.com

The article on Transition Towns seemed especially timely in this issue. This international movement is moving local communities from oil dependence to local reliance - and this is also exactly the kind of thing that small-scale urban homesteads are looking at - in effect, we need to build a network of small "urban homesteads" that allow city folk to rely on each other, share their strengths and knowledge, and build solid resiliant communities. Here in our city there is a growing Transition Town movement taking place, with exciting discussions, events and working groups forming to work at this topic on a local level.

The article on Transition Towns by Monika Carless, can be found at: http://www.naturallifemagazine.com/1002/transition_town.htm

Here is a small excerpt:

"The Transition Town initiative is one way to address the controversial issue of peak oil and climate change, from a pro-active, not reactive stance. It teaches that small scale is big change in an industrialized world and that individual effort can create a collective harmony between the needs of a community and the will of local government. It is not about survivalism in the usual sense, but about creating change before we are faced with the absolute end of cheap oil.

Learn more:

www.transitiontowns.org

www.findhorn.org

www.naturallifemagazine.com

The Power of Community - Film at Princess Cinema

The "transition town" movement is growing - Guelph and Peterborough are two designated transition towns in Ontario, and a new group has recently formed in K-W to work toward this goal as well. Transition towns look at aspects of life that a community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change). The transition town communities also recognise two crucial points:

• that we used immense amounts of creativity, ingenuity and adaptability on the way up the energy upslope, and that there's no reason for us not to do the same on the downslope
• if we collectively plan and act early enough there's every likelihood that we can create a way of living that's significantly more connected, more vibrant and more in touch with our environment than the oil-addicted treadmill that we find ourselves on today.

This coming week, Transition KW is presenting a film screening at the Princess Cinema. We believe this is going to be a very exciting and inspiring evening, so please pass this on to anyone you think would be interested.

Plan C: The Power of Community

Lecture, Film, Q&A - with author, film makers and directors Pat Murphy and Faith Morgan

Thursday November 12th

Princess Twin Cinema, 46 King Street North, Waterloo www.princesscinemas.com

Doors Open at 6:45 Talk at 7:15, Film at 7:45 followed by Q&A session.

Admission $2 (Barterworks and OUR Community Dollar will be accepted)

Pat Murphy is executive director of the Institute for Community Solutions in Yellow Springs, Ohio, a nonprofit organization devoted to small community living. Author of Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change, he lectures widely across North America on energy, Peak Oil, geopolitics and lifestyle solutions. Focusing on community resilience and long-term sustainability, his main interest is on the techniques and strategies for a steady reduction in the per capita use of fossil fuels.

Faith Morgan is the director and co-writer of "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil".

They will be in Hamilton to address city council and to present the 2009 Spirit of Red Hill Creek Lecture, and they have graciously agreed to speak in several other local communities as part of their Southern Ontario visit.

Co-sponsored by:

For more information call Stephen at 519.888.6917 or email: info@transitionkw.ca

Transition Towns - guest lecture this week

There is an international movement called "Transition Towns", which aims at bringing communities together to seriously look at Peak Oil and Climate Change and answer the question
"for all those aspects of life that this community needs in order to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?"

Here locally, on Friday May 29 at the University of Waterloo, we have a guest speaker coming to address this topic. Here are the details:

Guest lecture: Jane Buchan from Hardwick Area Transition Towns
Friday, May 29th, 3:00-4:30pm
Environment 2, room 2002, University of Waterloo

You may have heard the buzz around local food, but what do some of the broader lifestyle changes we could be making look like?

There is a global movement of relocalization and sustainability transitions known as the ‘transition town’ movement. First envisioned in Ireland in 2004 and fully realized through citizen efforts in Totnes, England, in 2006, ‘transition towns’ provides an accessible and easily adaptable model for rural and urban relocalization. It involves building resilience into local communities by ‘powering down’ and ’skilling up’.

Transition-town culture fosters the assessment of local and regional vulnerabilities and suggests initiatives that will lessen the impact of climate extremes, fossil-fuel energy adversity, and global economic instability.

Sound intriguing? On May 29, the University of Waterloo will host a talk by Jane Buchan on her involvement with the Hardwick Area Transition Towns (HATTs)...

Read more of this entry at: http://envblogs.uwaterloo.ca/blogs/

Resources: www.transitionstowns.org