Posted by Dave on September 29, 2009
America’s farmland has long been under siege by suburban development. This is nothing new. What is new is that a cease-fire has been called in most parts of the nation. And a conversation is developing about how to move into this new window of opportunity in a manner that not only restores the balance between urban demand and farm supply, but also helps to reenergize our failing economy heavily dependent on the construction industry.
This summer, Reburbia, a suburban design competition, was held by Inhabitat and Dwell Magazine. The competition set out to gather creative and imaginative ideas on how to go about re-visioning the American suburban sprawl that will almost certainly become our suburban wasteland without intervention. Several of the ideas were great, but one in particular caught my eye. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Dave on June 4, 2009
I by chance stumbled upon the last half of ABC’s show Earth 2100 a couple nights ago. Now understand, I just returned from a trip to Texas, the land of my birth. And Texas, with the exception of Austin, is not the land of environmental sensitivity. And so my frame of mind was stemming from what some other bloggers on the topic of Earth 2100 have been referring to as “the lowest common denominator.” Imagine my reverse culture shock when I found myself watching an acid trip induced, enviro-documentary/graphic novel about the end of humanity on prime time television.
Break out the shisha and tea. I need to relax. Now for the last couple of days most of the reviews on the show have been critical, but personally I think everyone needs to take a few puffs from the hookah. After you feel a little light headed you should keep reading. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Dave on May 1, 2009
Again I feel like I am floating on a puffy, white blanket of blissful isolation here in Salt Lake City after reading a recent New York Times piece about shrinking Flint, Michigan.
Despite the devastation that I know this process has been and will continue to wreak on the people of Flint and other cities like it, I can’t help but to hope for the future.
Maybe these desperate times will engage us Americans with the dynamic process of creating cities that are sustainable through thin times as well as thick. I take a short look around at the carnage that was our economic system and it is evident to all the effects of planning only for success. ”My home will only continue to rise in value.” ”The markets will certainly trend ever upward.” ”Food and oil will always be cheep.” ”We must certainly continue to get stupider!” Out of all of these, only the last one has been true. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Dave on April 27, 2009
Now this is the stuff of my childhood dreams. When my imagination was still unbounded and unfettered by the burdens of reality and the skepticism of age I dreamed of molding and forming society like play-dough. The Venus Project, the brain child of Jacque Fresco, is doing just that. This is the luxury of genius at its best. Even at first glance I can recognize the science fiction novels I have read that have been influenced by this stuff.
But is all of this just modernist, Jean-Luc Picard type thinking that is already being supplanted by the post modern sense of relativist spirituality? WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Dave on March 31, 2009
What do you do when your house is worth less than nothing? Zoned improperly for farm stock and wild animals won’t bed there? Last week I made a review of a study done in the UK titled, “New Tricks with Old Bricks.” I mused then that the most interesting question that the study brought up was how we can make good use of empty homes. The census numbers on empty homes are a little misleading and not the most helpful for determining which ones have simply been abandoned. But, the percentage for the first quarter of 2009, 2.9%, is the highest quarterly percentage since 1956. For me that sufficiently says that there is a real problem out there with homes deemed worse than worthless by the market. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Dave on March 21, 2009
Feeling pretty isolated from the current recession out here in Salt Lake City, I’ve decided to track some of the goings on in Detroit. I have a mild connection with the area after dating a girl during high school and college from Grosse Pointe. I will never forget my first day driving around the metro area. As a country kid from Texas I couldn’t even comprehend most of what I was seeing. I remember pulling up to a red light in my 1984 Volvo 244 DL with all the windows rolled down and my shirt off. (No air conditioning you know.) Of course I was wearing a red bandana wrapped around my head to keep my long hair out of my face while the wind whipped through my windows. This was the summer of 1993.
WAIT! There is more to read… read on »
Posted by Dave on March 9, 2009
Here is an idea. What if local churches and other such entities which represented a significant amount of cumulative wealth banded together to bail out local home owners in danger of foreclosure. I know of one example I heard of several years ago of an urban church financing members’ homes at a below market percentage. The low interest yielded on the loan over thirty years goes toward increasing the total pool of money available to finance more homes.
Churches are a community asset that tend to move-in and stay around for long periods of time. Even if members come and go, the church remains. They could be perfect entities to provide local care for those in need.
A local church has a better chance of knowing which families are good bets and which are not. They know which have contributed to the community and which are traveling through or unstable.
Churches may not represent millions of liquid assets, but if they can raise $500,000 for a building program to invest in their own building, why not do so for neighbors instead? Why should we homeowners only pay interest to the banks for the privilege of using their money? This idea made perfect sense back when a home loan was $20,000 and the bank was a truly local entity. Then the banker was just as likely as anyone to know who was a good bet and who was not. Now maybe local churches and other community organizations could step in and fill the gap.
Posted by Dave on March 8, 2009
Recently Michael Katz was a guest on The NPR show, Morning Edition, where he discussed his controversial ideas on rural America and Broadband access. Rightly so the question of what to do with Rural America is becoming a legitimate hot button issue again.
Over twenty years ago Frank and Deborah Popper began to call for their visionary “Buffalo Commons” in which the Great Plains would be returned to the prairie of the past and in part given back to Native Americans. Their dream seems to be gaining traction during this most recent economic crisis. Some are saying that we have been fighting against the plains long enough and instead we should be working with them.
Other voices, like Karl Stauber (past president of Northwest Area Foundation) and Joel Kotkin (New America Foundation), continue to speak out for saving the Great Plains and it’s rural ghetto’s through restoring its pioneer economy and spirit. But what exactly is Rural America? And how should we go about saving or restoring the dying Great Plains region as well as other rural ghettos in states as diverse as California, New Mexico, and Montana?
I disagree with the idea of turning rural towns and villages into ghost towns. I think many of these communities have been ignored too long, and we as a country should actively seek to strengthen them. Rural America contributes a strength and work ethic to our nation that we need, not to mention products that our cities can’t do without. But, I also have a passion for justice, and the ruthless betrayal and destruction of Native cultures across this continent is something that we should also seek to repair.
Is there a way to accomplish both? Can we see a sort of “Buffalo Commons” work in conjunction with a recovering Rural
economy? The USDA’s latest farm bill includes a new Grasslands Reserve Program, which offers incentives for ranchers and farmers to protect sensitive grasslands. This could be a humble beginning, but The Land Institute is a group that is working on a much more sustainable solution toward solving, as they like to put it, the problem of agriculture. I think their Natural Systems Agriculture could be the answer we desperately need. While trying to restore the polyculture health and stability of the plains before we tilled them they also seek to produce equivalent crop yields to modern monoculture farming. This discovery could be instrumental in allowing us as a nation to move forward in both bringing justice to Natives and an abused land while also bringing dignity back to our agricultural heartland.
There is a divide occurring in America between the Urban and the Rural. Maybe it has always been there, but recent blue state and red state maps are being used to widen this divide and drive it home in the hearts and minds of Americans. It would be unfortunate if we allowed these differences and growing hostilities to lead us toward unsustainable actions against our own “country” in one extreme or the other.
Posted by Dave on March 3, 2009
The Tulou are clan houses built in the Fujian province of South East China. It is believed that these structures were built as early as the 13th century, and many of them survive today at varying ages. Some are several hundred years old. I first heard of these structures from Earth Architecture’s website and they grabbed hold of my imagination for a few different reasons.
First they are built from earthen materials, the outer walls being essentially rammed earth with wooden structures sometimes internally. I am fascinated with earthen building materials because you just can’t get more sustainable. Literally the whole world’s population could build their homes with dirt and the earth would be no worse for wear.
Secondly, they have stood the test of time. Not only in the sense that the buildings have lasted for hundreds of years, but also people in China have continued to actively live in them and construct them up until the last 100 years. Practically, they must have worked. Not only did they succeed in providing defense from other warring clans, but there must have been more.
Lastly, the tulou were built to house entire clans. Some of the ones still in use today house up to 600 people. Yet in Western culture it is rare to even find a handful of extended family members under the same roof. I myself live in an urban bungalow with my wife and child, but we have often sought ways to shake this formula up. International students have lived under our roof, friends who needed a place to go, and students who I have worked with and shared life with. But these arrangements have been temporary. Should we be so ardent about our values for individualism and personal space? Are these things the earned privilege of a wealthy and affluent culture? Or are they blights on what would otherwise be a more meaningful and sustainable life?
What other residential models like the tulou are out there but withering in the brutal heat of modernity? Can we take some lessons from the dying clan lifestyle of China? Or at least build homes that we expect our children’s children to be able to come home to some day, if only for a visit.
Posted by Dave on March 2, 2009
This entry might reveal a little too much about myself, but I just have to give a shout out to this little community in Missouri. Dancing Rabbit has been around for 10 years now and some might refer to them as a “Transition Community,” but they really are something different.
A Transition Community is, according to Transition Towns Wiki, “a small collection of motivated individuals within a community come together with a shared concern: how can our community respond to the challenges, and opportunities, of Peak Oil and Climate Change?”
I think this idea of transition towns/communities is awesome, and I hope to see it continue to catch on around the U.S. and the world. But from what I can tell about Dancing Rabbit (through their website) they are something pretty different. If a transition town is a group of people within a community, then what do you call a group of people that decide to start their own town? That is what Dancing Rabbit is trying to do. Their town is a small one right now at 30 people, but they claim to desire to reach 500 to 1000. Their covenants include things like not driving a personal vehicle (they share two for the whole community) and not using fossil fuels to heat their homes, etc.
I have been looking for community experiments like this one and am surprised it took me this long to find Dancing Rabbit. I was so excited to find them I thought there might be others like me out there. May the rabbit keep dancing.