permaculture

["John Schinnerer" <john@eco-living.net>]

Aloha,

There is a segment on exactly this (pre-existing typical apartment) in one
of Mollison's videos (don't recall which) - mostly about food - he sets up
some aquarium aquaculture, trellises up and overhead for vines and
climbers and so on out on the balcony, grown in containers, maybe a worm
bin composter, can't recall all the details.

Living roof on the building (can retrofit some), with stacked benefits
therefrom (food growing, insulation, reduction of urban heat generation,
filtering of rainfall through biosystems, urban greening, urban pollution
reduction, community-building, etc. etc.)

The land not covered by individual house-lot sprawl (which usually
includes more pavement too for access, parking, etc.) when clustered
housing is built is an implicit benefit, even if no other measures are
taken.

Especially if no other measures are taken, actually, because although
there is lots of potential in the unbuilt portion of house lots it is
seldom used for anything but lawn and ornamentals in a "typical" case in
the USA.


John Schinnerer, MA
-------------------------
- Eco-Living -
Cultural & Ecological Designing
People - Place - Learning - Integration
john@eco-living.net
http://eco-living.net