permaculture

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

From: PacificEdge <pacedge@magna.com.au>
Date: Thu Sep 05, 2002  03:16:32  PM Australia/Sydney
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Agrarian Suburb?

The first instance I came across the idea of an 'agrarian suburb' with houses surrounded by agricultural land - one acre (2.5ha) in this case - was in an early book by the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. I recall that it was written in the 1930s and was part of an idea Wright had for a new form of city. Wright's idea was that every resident in the US would have access to such land and that it would integrate urban and rural landscapes and landuses.

Looking at the illustration, though, the impression I got was - sprawl. It was based on everyone having private vehicular transport and necessitated a comprehensive road system. That, of course, was progressive to modernist minds in that decade and was well before the car – that sign of progress of the times – had reproduced to plague proportions and before highways had become major features of the cityscape. At the time I read his book in the early 1970s I thought Wright’s ideas to be good and his city model appealing in the way it integrated the urban and rural, bringing us the benefits of both. I didn’t realise how pedestrian-unfriendly his concept was.

The scenario described in the email below on 1 -2 acres of land sounds idyllic, but I wonder who has the time to tend this amount of land today? I agree with Robyn that it is too much land and suggest that less than a hectare would be more than enough for most people. Some, of course, would welcome that extra space and given the fact that gardening is one of Australia's most popular hobbies, you would think that a large block would have widespread appeal. Consider, though, that most of those avid gardeners are tenders of ornamental plants managed by non-organic means, rather than food producers and orchard planters.

Yes, as Robyn says it has been done at Crystal Waters and Jalanbah, but I still think the idea of the team I was involved in of a compact, medium density development surrounded by agricultural land (the Italian hill village model) allows more choice in living arrangements. Not everyone who moves to the country wants to farm or wants heaps of land. And, given that we're an urban civilisation in Australia, the portability of such models to the cities is important. The nearest I have seen of our model being replicated in the city was the Urban Ecology proposal for Halifax urban village on the edge of the Adelaide CBD. That, unfortunately, never came off but it pointed to the type of mixed usage, sustainable development our cities need.

As Robyn says, Village Homes in California has a lot to teach us. But we have to be careful of applying any single model universally. I understand that Village Homes is based on the Radburn model of urban design that allows for large expanses of public open space and in which homes address that open space rather than the street. Clearly, the model works. In some cases at least.

The model was employed in estates built near Campbelltown, two hours drive south-west of Sydney. There, it was a disaster with the open space becoming a stripping and burning ground for stolen cars and the scene of police car pursuits of car thieves. The open space fell under under the control of gangs consisting of the youth of residential families. A couple of the estates have started a process of deRadburnisation, with houses being altered to address the street, where life takes place, and residents of one estate taking action to oust the gang from the open space and turn it into a huge community food garden. Maybe the model works with middle class people but is potentially less successful with poorer residents.

Over the past couple decades, a number of books have indicated that the traditional Australian city suburb could well be turned into an agrarian suburb. This notion is based on the average size of the conventional, detached house in a garden. And although the trend is now towards apartment living, town houses and detached houses with land only marginally larger than the house, there remains a lot of the larger, conventional suburban lots in the cities. The books I mention are Jeff Hodges ‘The Urban Farmer’ (I think that was its title) and ‘The Wilderness Garden and ‘Backyard Self-Sufficiency’ by Jackie French.

All too rare examples where neighbours have knocked down their fences and designed their then-adjoined lots as combined gardens indicate what would be possible were suburban residents to somehow want to do this on a large scale. But it is a fact that people often buy to resell, that they are protective of their blocks and that they are not interested in food production or in turning their gardens into urban mini-farms that suggests agrarian suburb will never be created from existing suburbs, that the best we are likely to see will be isolated urban mini-farms or large vegetable gardens with small orchards and a few chooks. And I’ve see a few really good examples of those.

Can I direct anyone interested in envisioning the agrarian suburb to the visionary writings of Dr Ted Trainer (UNSW): http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/

...Russ Grayson


On Thursday, September 5, 2002, at 05:27  PM, <permed@nor.com.au> wrote:

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.
This description fits the vision of most intentional communities from the
early 70's and sounds a bit like Crystal Waters and Jarlanbah - it's been
done and around in a rural context for 3 decades and there's many lessons
to be learnt. Note that for most families 1-2 acres is far too much land
to try and manage, on Jarlanbah we reduced this to a half acre (the
minimum allowed for rural residential) and folks share 33 acres of
community land.
The term Agrarian Suburb to me conjours a more urban picture rather than
the rural residential estate described above. Village Homes is a great
example of a truly productive 'agrarian suburb'.
Robyn


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Russ Grayson
PacificEdge Media +TerraCircle development aid team
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