permaculture

["Russ + Fiona... PacificEdge" <pacedge@magna.com.au>]

From: Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>

Could it be possible to design essentially an agrarian suburb?

... I think it'd be nice to combine agrarian suburbs
with the "mass transit hub" pattern like is being done strictly urban style
around Portland Oregon. If cities were surrounded by swarms of villages
ringed with farms, and all connected by rail...
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This sounds like the idea promoted by lecturer Dr Ted Trainer in his courses
at the University of New South Wales and discussed in his books.

It is just the model I have been thinking of for future urban development in
Western Sydney, a region that produces around 80 percent of the state's
fresh produce and which is being encroached by urban development, a process
abetted by the small farmers themselves who sell their land to developers to
fund their retirement.

While the state government's urban consolidation policy has reduced this
encroachment, as it was set up to do, it is still progressing.

My idea is to assess the agricultural potential of farmland and other lands
in the region, then zone landuse according to that potential. Good quality
agricultural land, that on the Wianamatta shales, would be zoned
agricultural while poor quality land such as ridges and sandstone provinces
would be zoned for medium density urban development. The outcome would be
the type of urban' agrarian patchwork Rick refers to above. There is already
a number of rail lines traversing the Western Sydney region that are
supplied by feeder buses servicing the suburbs. The size of the developed
enclaves would range from town to village.

In the late 1980s I was involved in a proposal to build what we now call an
'ecovillage' within two hours travel of Sydney. The project never came off
but I think the model is still a good one. It was based on the Italian hill
village where a concentrated, medium density urban zone is traditionally
built on a hill (originally for defensive purposes) and is surrounded by
agricultural land supplying the village and supporting its economy.

The development would be medium density so that a population large enough to
support a local economy moves in. The problem with many ecovillages is that
they do not house enough people to generate a realistic degree of economic
activity - Crystal Waters is just starting to develop small local markets
for primary products processed on site - and are located in areas of
declining economies, so the potential for work and small business
development in the area is limited. This in turn limits their attractiveness
to potential residents unless they have a private source of income or a
pension or superannuation.

While it can be argued that a barter of LETS economy could generate economic
activity there remains the need to generate federal currency to produce the
large number of inputs unavailable through the informal economy. No
ecovillage is an economic island.

Nor would appealing to residents to limit their needs produce a viable
result because people need high-cost tools, such as computers and
communication services, to earn a living. While minimising material needs
and the informal economy could provide some goods and services there remains
the need for trade with the wider region and within the nation state and,
for some things, participation in the global economy.

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Russ Grayson
PacificEdge Media +TerraCircle development aid team
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