We need to see our communities as the ecosystems they are and
consider how the components of these places can be better integrated.
Permaculture is a holistic, integrated system analysis and design tool
that very few planners are using. Planners need to know about
permaculture and use it as a framework to guide our communities.
Planners as Change Agents and Ecosystem Designers
Planners serve as change agents in their communities, regions, and
ultimately on a global scale. As a profession we play a pivotal role in
facilitating dialogue about pressing issues that will impact our
collective futures.
This includes educating the public on a range of
topics from public health to climate change and energy concerns,
economics, and many others.
Although many in the profession would not recognize this role, we
are ecosystem designers as well. Our comprehensive plans and regulations
guide development and redevelopment efforts.
These projects result in
places that serve as ecosystems for humans and other species, but all
too often they do not serve the community and the users as well as they
could.
With our economy and energy futures in flux, now is an opportunity
to transition to more ecological and robust models of development that
will serve our communities and all species more effectively in the
future.
What does this look like? It will look different in each of our
communities due to our unique geography and history, the needs of our
population, and ultimately the goals we set. However, we can all use the
same framework and some of the same tools to get to our chosen futures.
Planners must look more expansively at developing local
initiatives. We have access to many of the solutions we need locally.
Permaculture offers a pathway to a positive transition beyond
sustainability to resilient communities. Permaculture is an approach to
designing human settlements and agricultural systems that are modeled on
the relationships found in natural ecologies.
A Permaculture Primer
Planners are the facilitators of both long-range planning efforts,
and short-term review and permitting activities in our communities. The
adoption of the permaculture framework is overdue.
Permaculture is
considered one of the most holistic, integrated system analysis and
design tools in the world, and yet very few planners are using it.
In the 1970s, while working in Australia, Bill Mollison and David
Holmgren coined the term permaculture by combining the words "permanent"
and "agriculture."
The notion of permaculture was based on the work of
farmers and scholars documenting the potential for "permanent
agriculture" in the early 1900s, the knowledge and wisdom of indigenous
peoples worldwide, and an interest in systems thinking.
The term
permaculture was then expanded to also stand for "permanent culture" to
incorporate the social aspects that are needed in a sustainable system.
Permaculture is fast becoming one of the most effective design
methodologies for attaining sustainability worldwide.
Although rooted in
horticulture and agriculture, permaculture draws from many disciplines
including ecology, appropriate technology, architecture, and
international development.
Examples of applying concepts of permaculture
abound in the United States, and permaculture design courses are taught
on a routine basis.
There is apparently no entity keeping track of the
number of permaculture course graduates, but we conservatively estimate
that at least 100,000 people in the United States have graduated from
certificate courses in permaculture.
At this point, you may be wondering what is the difference between
sustainable community planning and permaculture.
Permaculture differs
from sustainable community planning efforts in that it seeks to
integrate the proposed sustainable elements (e.g., water catchment,
renewable energy, district heating, food growing, waste recycling,
transportation, etc.) into a whole system that operates efficiently so
that the number of inputs are minimized but outputs attained are
maximized.
The goal is to create an ecosystem that provides as many
useful products and functions out of the system as the designer's
abilities allow while healing the planet.
A maxim of design is that the
yield of a system is theoretically unlimited (or only limited by the
imagination and information of the designer) (Mollison 1998).
Permaculture is much more than organic agriculture. It integrates
buildings and their landscapes, and permaculture projects incorporate
all of their elements into a comprehensive and mutually beneficial
design.
Each element is analyzed to ensure that it serves multiple
functions, and is placed with a strong relationship to the other
elements in the system to maximize productivity.
Permaculture designs
are inspired by natural patterns and range from small urban park
retrofits to mixed land-use subdivisions and large rural farms.
During
the last two decades we have seen the formation of intentional
communities including co-housing developments, many of which are designed
in accordance with permaculture principles. One example of this is
Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm, discussed below.
Resilience and Transition
As we consider using permaculture in our planning efforts,
resilience should be the goal. Resilience refers to the ability of a
system to hold together and maintain its ability to function in the face
of change and shocks from the outside.
Resilient communities possess
the ability to withstand external shocks and can bounce back quickly
from sudden environmental or economic changes. Planners need to place
resilience building at the heart of any plans we make for the future
(Hopkins 2008).
This is the approach being used in "transition town" efforts around
the globe, a movement that itself was born from a permaculture design
effort.
The transition town movement is a response to the twin
challenges of peak oil and climate change. Transition initiatives are
based on assumptions (among others) that life with dramatically lower
energy consumption is inevitable, and that our settlements and
communities currently lack the resilience to enable them to weather the
severe energy shocks that will accompany peak oil.
Transition town
efforts focus on rebuilding local agriculture and food production,
localizing energy production, rediscovering local building materials,
and rethinking how we manage waste, all of which build resilience.
Currently, in the United States alone, there are at least 115 official
Transition Town Initiatives (Transition United States; Transition
Network).
Applicable at Any Scale
How can permaculture be utilized by planners to create communities
that are more resilient to outside shocks from the global economy,
climate change, and energy issues?
There are many points of
intervention. Permaculture tools and strategies can, in fact, be applied
at many different scales: home gardens, city blocks, farms, villages,
cities, and entire nations. Four brief examples illustrate the range of
applying permaculture tools and strategies.
Rainwater Harvesting
Rainwater harvesting is one example of applying permaculture
principles. Urban strategies for harvesting rainwater through the
capture of street runoff grew out of the work of permaculturist Brad
Lancaster in Tucson, Arizona.
Lancaster and his brother bought a rundown
house in Tucson and under the cover of night they cut through the curbs
along the adjoining right-of-way to harvest the stormwater runoff
rather than let it be lost to the storm sewer.
The runoff was captured
along both sides of the street and directed to tree wells. The
before-and-after photographs of vegetation shown in Figures 1 and 2,
taken from the same vantage point, are a powerful statement of the
potential of permaculture strategies.
City officials in Tucson saw Lancaster's resourceful innovation. He
then began working with city engineers to convince them of the
viability of the practice. City staff then improved upon the design of
the curb cuts and, as a result, the capture of stormwater runoff was
legalized on residential streets.
Figure 1: Public right-of-way, pre-water harvesting (1994). Source: Brad Lancaster.
Figure 2: Public right-of-way, post-water harvesting and planting (2006). Source: Brad Lancaster.
Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm
An example application of permaculture is Nubanusit Neighborhood
and Farm located in Peterborough, New Hampshire.
Nubanusit is a 70-acre
property (see Figure 3) designed using permaculture design and cohousing
practices to create a dense village of residential units, shared
community space, and agricultural land while preserving the balance of
the property in its natural state.
The community is composed of
LEED-certified structures and includes a range of appropriate
technologies including district heating and photovoltaics (see solar
panels in Figure 4).
The project was possible because of a new community
comprehensive plan and regulatory changes that encouraged open space
developments and mixed land uses.
Figure 3: Nubanusit Neighborhood and Farm. Source: Nubanusit Neighborhood & Farm.
Figure 4: Residents of Nubanusit have now started installing
photovoltaic panels on some of the units to increase the energy being
produced onsite.
Comprehensive Planning in Bloomington, Indiana
When creating comprehensive plans we should broadly consider
permaculture and resilience. In some of the more cutting-edge
comprehensive planning efforts in the United States, these issues are
only addressed (at best) in separate peak oil or climate adaptation
plans.
In communities that do address these larger picture issues in
their long-range planning documents, there is often a lack of
implementation via land-use regulations.
A good example of
implementation is Bloomington, Indiana. In Bloomington, a plan titled
"Redefining Prosperity: Energy Descent and Community Resilience" was
adopted in December 2009 with an emphasis on creating food security.
That effort is based on both permaculture and transition efforts and
includes a range of recommendations, from creating a centralized
composting system to removing and reducing the legal, institutional, and
cultural barriers to farming within and around the city.
Systems Approach for Cuba
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 crushed the Cuban economy.
Having been entirely dependent on fossil fuels from the Soviet Union,
Cuba then had to deal with severe shortages of petroleum.
The loss of
support from the Soviet Union had a crippling effect on the
transportation, industrial, and agricultural systems in Cuba. Along with
fossil fuel loss, Cuba suffered an 80 percent loss of food imports,
resulting in widespread food shortages.
Cubans were forced to explore
every avenue possible to increase their food production without benefit
of fuel for farm equipment or inputs of chemical fertilizer (Cuba
History.org).
In 1993, a group of Australian permaculturists arrived in Cuba in
response to the economic collapse and taught their techniques, which
were soon implemented in urban food growing schemes across the nation.
Much of the success of Cuba's urban agriculture and food security has
been attributed to the introduction of permaculture. The city of Havana
now produces more than 60 percent of its fruit and vegetables within the
city, owing to the techniques taught by those first permaculturists
(Morgan, Murphy, and Quinn 2006).
Demonstration and Education
Across the country, there are examples of established and emerging
permaculture demonstration projects. We need more of these.
We need to
guide the implementation of permaculture demonstration projects on
municipal properties and elsewhere. To do so, however, planners need to
get trained to engage people and assist localities in thinking about
permaculture.
Planners can even complete a permaculture design
certification program. The permaculture design certificate course is a
minimum of 72 hours with a core curriculum that is used internationally.
Courses are offered regularly in most states and around the world, or
you can take the course in a place that you always wanted to visit and
combine the course with a vacation.
The format for these offerings range
from two-week residential offerings to weekend formats spread out over a
season or two. The permaculture design certificate is an
internationally recognized credential for professionals.
Conclusion
Permaculture is a systems approach to planning for the future that
goes well beyond smart growth, low-impact development, habitat
protection, complete streets, and other initiatives that are often
viewed as separate entities.
Permaculture incorporates these and other
concepts more holistically in a way that creates an integrated system.
Enabling and incentivizing projects that help our communities become
more resilient is important and will support our local economies and
ecosystems while building local capacity.
Permaculture designs are guided by a set of ethics and principles
that can be used at any scale. Ideally, this holistic ecosystem approach
will become commonplace in regulatory and non-regulatory initiatives.
We need permaculture as a framework to better serve all populations,
build community, retrofit infrastructure, and support the local economy.
We need to see our communities as the ecosystems they are and consider
how the components of these places can be better integrated.
For
instance, certain landscapes can be designed to require little
maintenance, provide clean, infiltrated stormwater, create valuable
habitat, and provide edible foods for people.
That outcome would be a
better asset to the community than what is currently required in most
places. So, planners, be a change agent in your communities!
References
Cuba History.org. "History of Cuban Nation, from Colonial Days to the Present."
www.cubahistory.org/ Accessed April 21, 2012.
Hopkins, Rob. 2008. The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to
Local Resilience. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing.
Lancaster, Brad. "Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond."
Mollison, Bill. 1988. Permaculture: A Designer's Manual. Tyalgum, Australia: Tagari Publications.
Morgan, Faith, Murphy, Eugene "Pat," and Quinn, Megan. 2006. "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil." Documentary.
