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permaculture - Re: [permaculture] Agrarian Suburb?

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  • From: Mark <mpludwig@facstaff.wisc.edu>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Agrarian Suburb?
  • Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 11:15:40 -0500

At 07:28 PM 9/1/02 -0700, you wrote:
Hey.
Just read Natural Capitalism. Isn't it ironic that we have all these labor
saving devices, and now everyone is obese, and may people go to the gym to
excerise while they tread on a machine with no other purpose then to idly
sit there. Is that effecient?

Could it be possible to design essentially an agrarian suburb? The cities
need food (although rooftops can help, they probably need more). Give each
home 1 or 2 acres of land, have some communal waterfront ponds with fish,
let the kids go fishing out their back door, grow fruit trees along the
paths, garden it...and allow folks to make a bit of a living on the food
they harvest/produce. Wouldn't even dad's and sons and "nuclear" families
love the idea of going and fishing, and living in "nature" (as we've seen
to0 many folks are trying to live in fire prone food areas). Thats the kind
of development I wouldn't mind, making a diverse community without the
effects of polution, etc.

I actually gave this a try. I proposed forming a non profit housing development on a parcel with a 100,000 sq foot school building and 120a (60 h). Got a little press and the response was almost nothing. I think Its still a hard sell unfortunately. I'd like to give it a try on a smaller scale.

Give folks bikes to give around the community
(have a store, and most needs local). Don't make it disconnected from the
urban areas, maybe a few folks drive a van to sell produce at markets.
Reduce vehicles per capita to .3 or less, but divide the money to easily pay
the higher (starting) cost of a Hypercar/vehicle.

I think the real key is getting the bilk paths/lanes in place and developing other good quality mass transit. Peoples decisions to do right flows naturally from the opportunity to do so IF it's not to much hassle.

One potental of the wiki's is to add a definition like
"Idea-AgrarianSuburb?" to which the above paragraph could be added. Maybe
other folks have insights into other aspects of the idea, and it could
evolve into a more full bodied concept.

Cheers,
BK

This is certainly a good idea, I'm sure regionally appropriate example designs would be pretty easy to put together. Heck, they probably exist in the computers attached to this list....
M

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Mark P. Ludwig
Poultry Research Lab
University of Wisconsin -Madison
608-262-1730 WK
608-846-7125 HM





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