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Introduction to Permaculture: Urban

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April 3, 2010 by Douglas Barnes — Leave a Comment

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The following is a write-up of a seminar in Toronto on April, 1st, 2010.

Jump to:

Definition of permaculture
Designing action around energy
Heating
Food
Water
Organizations

I am going to give you an outline of what permaculture is, how

permaculture design is done and how it can be applied to urban
environments. In order to explain the design process, I am going to be
mentioning a number of things that might appear to have no relevance to
the urban situation. I do this to explain the principles of permaculture
design and hopefully give you a core understanding of how and why I
make the suggestions I do.
Before I start jumping into things, I think it’s important to give some
definitions. First and most importantly is defining permaculture. The name
permaculture was coined by combining permanent and agriculture and
permanent and culture. Sustainability was not a buzz word back in the
70s when permaculture was developed. Simply put, permaculture is
system for designing sustainable human environments. That means
meeting people’s needs for food, water, shelter, energy, waste control and
less tangible needs such as community structure and services. It’s also
environmentally specific, so the systems I have designed on my land are
different from the ones I have designed in semi-arid India, temperate
Japan or temperate and sub-tropical Australia or the proposals for a
project in tropical Uganda later this year.

This definition of permaculture requires another definition and that is the

meaning of sustainable. The word has very seldom been given a clear
definition and, as a result, has increasingly been co-opted as a marketing
term. Looking to see how the word is misused, I discovered a few years
back that a large and infamous agro-chemical company was selling its
glyphosate herbicide as a way of “creating sustainable pastures.”

Here’s the thing about their product:

It’s toxic to amphibians.

It kills Rhizobium bacteria, which are the bacteria living symbiotically with
legumes that are responsible for fixing atmospheric nitrogen. So, if you
plant GM soy in the hopes of boosting soil nitrogen and cutting weeds
with the glyphosate, you are unknowingly reducing the nitrogen-fixing
capacity of the soy.

It kills mycorrhizal fungi, which are important for soil health. Mycorrhizal
fungi help plants attain vital minerals like calcium, phosphorus and
magnesium. They help supply water to plants in drought periods. They
allow different plants of different species connect together to exchange
nutrients and help fight disease and pest attack. Killing them off is very
detrimental to soil fertility.

It is claimed by advocates of the chemical that it cannot leach into water

systems because it bonds with soil particles. It does, however get into
water systems and, when it does, it is toxic to fish.

While not directly toxic to birds, the ecosystem as a whole is affected,

reducing local bird populations. This isn’t speculation, this has been
observed.

In humans, it has been found to cause non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Clearly, it is not “sustainable” if the word “sustainable” is to have any real

meaning. And without a clear definition, the only time we will ever truly
know the answer to whether something is sustainable or not is when it
isn’t sustainable.

Here’s the definition: A system is sustainable if over its lifetime it

produces or stores more energy than it consumers in its creation,
operation and maintenance. Think of a bank account as an analogy.
How long can you continue your lifestyle if you are continually spending
more money than you earn? Sooner or later, that lifestyle will come to an
end.

If you run your civilisation this way – spending energy than you store – it
will most definitely collapse eventually. The example in this slide is Rapa
Nui, but there have been numerous other examples throughout history.
Were Easter Island in its original state, it would be covered by subtropical
forests.
I would like to point out a little snag with this definition, however. Consider
the embodied energy in an artist’s canvas. Finding figures for embodied
energy is difficult, but let us say for the of argument that the embodied
energy in the canvas – the energy involved in growing the hemp,
processing it, weaving it, and its transportation costs, energy costs in the
wood, in the metal staples holding the splined canvas together, the
energy in the paint, and the energy costs of the artist painting a picture
comes out to the equivalent of 10 litres of gasoline. Is the Mona Lisa
worth just 10 litres of gasoline? How about 100 litres? Could you imagine
any situation where you might trade the Mona Lisa for 100 litres of petrol?
For 10 litres? Perhaps.

As you might imagine, accounting for the energy costs of something like a
home or a dam could become very complex. What if it is a great design
that requires virgin forest to be cleared to create it? What if it will wipe out
the habitat of an endangered species? I think there is a way out of this
problem.

Consider as an analogy the example of the Greek Korous purchased by

the Getty Museum when the directors there wanted to establish it as a
world-class museum. All the scientific tests said the remarkably intact
korous was genuine. Yet immediately upon seeing the piece, experts
proclaimed it a fake and advised the Getty not to purchase it. Stating
exactly why it was a fake was difficult. It seems little things like incorrect
hand size were registering on the unconscious mind of the experts, but
they spotted the fake nonetheless.

I believe that with a little practice, we can all do with sustainability what
the art experts did with the korous, if we keep a conservation mindset and
apply rigorous honesty.
Now, I’d like to spend just a few minutes on what’s happening in the world
and where we are going. I am sure everyone is well aware of where our
climate is headed and the accompanying acidification and pollution that
go along with it. The climate is an incredibly complex thing and exact
prediction is very difficult. One thing to realise is that scientists are, on the
whole, very careful about what they say and certainly about what they
predict. As such, IPCC predictions sound somewhat manageable. These
predictions, however, do not take into account knock-on effects like
methane releases from arctic thawing, methane being 22 times as potent
a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. This would lead to a feedback of
increased warming causing more melting of ice, meaning less albedo, in
turn meaning more warming, meaning plant die-off, meaning more carbon
dioxide being released, meaning more warming, meaning ocean die off,
meaning more CO₂ released, meaning more warming, and along the way,
more erratic weather meaning more crop failures.

In the unlikely event that climate change should turn out to be no big deal,
we nevertheless face an extremely serious problem due to soil erosion
and degradation. Soil erosion is off most people’s radar because it is not
a very sexy threat. Roland Emmerich has not and will not make a movie
about the world going to pot because of top soil washing away. Yet, not
single civilisation that has collapsed has not had loss of soil as a major
contributing factor in their collapse. The difference between soil loss
today and historical losses that have led to collapse is that we are now
doing in the space of a few years what used to take many centuries to
achieve. Pivot irrigation in arid and semi-arid regions can make land
unusable in just 3 years time, after which they just more on to a new
patch of land. This is one of the costs of the technological advancement
of the mechanization of agriculture.

Hand-in-hand with soil loss is deforestation. One of the things that forests
do is build and maintain fertile soils. For reasons that I don’t have time to
go into, they might also be thought of as rain makers.

Pollution, which is really an issue of either unused excess resources or

using the kind of resources that degrade other resources, is also a major
issue. Climate change is one example of this, but there are other issues
such as long term damage of soil and aquatic systems from persistent
pollutants such as dioxins. Damage from environmental estrogens is
another issue; and even more serious is the death toll in the millions
worldwide from air pollution – particulate matter (deaths mainly from
cardiovascular disease and lung diseases).

Now this sounds really horrible, and while it is, there is reason to take
heart. Nature is very resilient. It takes tremendous effort and a fair bit of
time on the whole to damage it. But it you pattern your actions in harmony
with nature, the response is immediate and positive.

I could mention the decline of fossil fuels. While this does present a
challenge considering that we have designed our food systems to be
totally reliant on fossil fuels, it is ultimately more of a solution than a
problem. Yes, right now we rely on natural gas to synthesize nitrogenous
fertilisers; and we rely on diesel and gasoline to produce and transport
that food, and to some extent we rely on the energy from coal to process
that food. But there is nothing I can think of that would be more disastrous
to human civilisation than the discovery of some inexpensive, plentiful
replacement for fossil fuels, be it renewable or not. The issue is the
overabundance of energy, not its non-renewability, which will become
apparent in a few minutes when we look at design. Look at the damage
we have already caused due to easy access to energy. Having a fresh
supply in a new form is not going to end this destruction.

For a mega city like Toronto, this leaves a significant challenge. In terms
of primary production, cities consume and contribute next to nothing. In
some cases, like Tokyo where I lived for over a decade, there is simply no
future. The nation of Japan did have a sustainable population at 30
million people but they now have that many in an area a little larger than
the size of Algonquin Park. Quite simply, that is a temporary
arrangement. They can have a go at growing on every rooftop and
balcony in the city, but in the end, the population density is too high to
support sustainably. Already the majority of the calories the Japanese
consume come from imports and the percentage of calories from food
actually produced from within Tokyo itself is negligible.

Toronto has enough unused land within the city to meet a large proportion
of its needs. Not all this land is immediately usable, mind you. Lead
contamination, for example, is a serious problem in many areas of the city
and all soil needs to be tested before being used. Rehabilitation is
possible, however.

Meeting energy requirements for heating is another challenge; and, due

to Toronto’s odd layout, this will be difficult. More on this later.

There are three approaches that we open to take:

The first is to do nothing. Continue to operate with the energy-intensive

regime to meet our material and immaterial needs. But with 10 calories
on average being spent to produce one calorie of food, this regime will
come to an end sooner or later.

The second approach is a return to labour-intensive traditional

approaches. Some approaches were more laborious than others. Rice
growing, for instance, is nearly nonstop work when done the traditional
way. Other approaches to meeting needs were not always that bad, but
still pretty hard work for what usually amounted to a nutritionally meagre
diet.
The third approach is the design-intensive approach. Whereas the first
relies on letting machinery carry out the brute work, energy in other
words; and the second involved using human and animal labour to meet
human needs, the design-intensive approach is knowledge and creativity
intensive.

Permaculture is a design intensive approach. And different from other

systems of design, it is guided by an ethical code, namely

Care of the Earth

Care of its people
And return of the surplus to meet the needs of the Earth and the
people.

We may be trying to become sustainable, but even following the ethics, I

feel there is a serious piece of the puzzle missing.

What are we trying to do here? This is a serious question. In fact, it is the

most serious question one can ask. I believe that we face all the
problems I mentioned earlier because we are stumbling along, half-
conscious without a real understanding of what it is we are doing. Just
what is the goal of our society, or of the global society as a whole?

Is the goal long term survivability, otherwise known as sustainability? Not

by any stretch of the imagination. We are living well beyond our means
with the dream that some wondrous technology will come and solve this
problem for us. There is no better recipe for collapse of civilization than
that. Looking empirically, if survivability is our goal, we as a species are
either grossly incompetent or incredibly stupid.

Is the aim of our society personal or community happiness? Again, no.

We have data consistently showing that while personal wealth has, on the
whole, increased, happiness has decreased. As Lord Turner, former head
of the Confederation of British Industry recently pointed out, “All the
evidence shows that beyond the sort of standard of living which Britain
has now achieved, extra growth does not automatically translate into
human welfare and happiness.” Communities, too, are becoming less
integrated and interdependent than they once were. This is not a good
outcome for a tribal species.

Is the aim to maximize human potential? No. The concern of our society
is not to get as many people as possible to experience the maximum
personal growth possible. National funding on mental health and
education are enough to indicate that this is not a serious aim.

Is the aim simply to meet material needs for clean, healthy food, clean
water, clean air, shelter and energy for warmth and cooking? The food we
eat holds less nutritional value now that we’ve industrialized food
production. Furthermore, biocide use contaminates not only the food, but
more importantly and more severely the farmers and environment that
produced it. There is no clean air unpolluted by man-made chemicals
anywhere on Earth. There is no clean, uncontaminated water left, save
for what is available in glaciers. Shelter is available, to some at least.
Looking at homeless populations, it appears that shelter is available,
provided you are both mentally fit and gainfully employed or with
sufficient financial reserves to provide you with a roof over your head.
And energy to stay warm and cook food? The same conditions seem to
apply as for shelter. So, no, this is not the aim of the current system. If it
were a serious concern, it would meet these needs better, assuming
again that we are not all outlandishly incompetent.

Looking at the outcomes, it appears as though the aim of the current

system is to accrue and secure financial power to those clever enough,
educated enough, lucky enough and/or devious enough to get it and hold
on to it. Again, I base this on observation, not ideology. I am not making
an argument for or against markets here, I am only looking at outcomes. I
know of situations where markets work brilliantly and others where they
fail miserably. I am only interested in reality, not ideology, because reality
always gets the last punch.

So now that we consciously know what it is we are actually doing on the

whole – not trying to be happy, not trying to improve ourselves, not trying
to be healthy, not trying to survive as a species, but rather trying to have
power over others – we can ask if we want to do this or do something
different.

I can’t stress enough how important this is. I can list a whole bunch of
tricks and techniques to capture energy or produce food; but without
having a coherent goal, it’s not going to change much of anything.

I mentioned at the start that permaculture is about meeting human needs,

both tangible and intangible. Looking at this slide which I have based
heavily on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, we can go through point by point
and ask how well the status quo system is doing at meeting those needs.
Some are met, others are not. Almost none are met sustainably, which is
where permaculture comes in.

Let’s now look at the design process.

The kernel of sustainable design is designing action around energy,
not energy around action. Most action today is planned and executed
with the energy it requires being just an afterthought. A person builds a
new house, for instance, and then figures on heating it after they have
settled on a design. The usual option is a gas furnace thrown in to keep
things warm in the winter and an air conditioning system to keep the
home cool in the summer. Energy is an afterthought here. The source of
that energy is almost never considered.

Contrast that with my home. It has a passive solar design – windows

facing the sun to let the 957 Watt hours per m² available to us from
sunlight into our home where it is stored in the concrete floor to slowly
radiate into the home throughout the day. A masonry stove is the backup
heat source. This very efficient stove channels the hot flue gases though
a large brick mass that stores the heat and lets it out slowly. The windows
are designed to allow heat to escape in summer. There is no air
conditioning; and after over ten years in stifling Tokyo and working in
45°C+ heat on a permaculture project in India last year, I really can’t
imagine me needing air conditioning. This is Canada after all.

Another strategy permaculture uses to apply this approach of designing

action around available energy is in the creation of zones of activity. It is
basically placing elements of the system that are frequently used closer
to the home (or centre of activity) and ones less frequently used farther
away. As straightforward as this sounds, it is not often applied. Nearly
every single garden I have seen in Canada is placed not only far from the
kitchen where the food it produces will be used, but in the farthest end of
the yard as though a garden is some undesirable thing that you want as
far away from you as possible.
On a given site, there are a number of resources and energies that flow
through the site that are available to us until they ultimately are lost off
site. They arrive to us from a source and are lost to us in a sink.

We want to slow down the path of these resources from the source to the
sink, making them available to us for as long as possible.
As one example, here is a system in Australia I helped consult on with a
company there called Permaculture Solutions:

In this case, not only is the flow of water slowed as it moves from the top
of the system to the bottom, nutrient flow is slowed as well. The fertility
from the animals flows from the top, helps to fertilize trees, and helps
grow reeds at the bottom of the site which are then cut and physically
transported to the top of the site.
We can look at this as assigning each element in the system multiple
duties. This builds redundancy into the system, making it more resilient.
For nonliving systems, it conserves resources to assign multiple duties to
each element. For example, the more duties we give water, the more
effectively we can use water. (Don’t include grease filters in your
greywater systems.)

Elements in the system do not act in isolation, they are linked together.
The goal is to make the total system as self-regulating as possible. This
will save human or mechanical labour.

In the chicken-heated greenhouse, chickens are given shelter and heat

from the greenhouse and nutrients from the plants. The plants
supplement the chickens’ diet and are fed by the chicken manure. The
greenhouse provides both of them with water with its water catchment
system. Putting complimentary systems together saves energy.
Now, you will notice in these examples that what might otherwise be
considered a waste product is cycled into another process. What would
happen, though, if the product from one process went unused? Well, then
it would be a form of pollution. A cattle farm on a holistic management
system can produce high quality meat, improve pastures and be carbon
neutral or even sequester carbon. But what of the case of shed-raised
animals? Industrially produced feed, usually in the form of grains, which is
not part of the natural diet of cattle, makes them farty, meaning more
methane produced. The dung then collects, releasing both carbon and
nitrogen into the air, contributing to a global climate problem and a local
stench problem. It can also contaminate water systems, putting lives at
risk. The problem here is an excellent resource, cattle manure, is in
excess supply. This gives us a definition: pollution, then, is the situation
in which an unused resource is in excess supply.

We have this problem now with energy, as I alluded to earlier. Supply a

system with too little energy and it will struggle and possibly die. Supply it
with too much and chaos will ensue. Industrial production systems have
too much energy and are thus leading to demented results. I also assert
that the same holds true for monetary wealth. It may be a little bit of a
philosophical journey, but consider what happens to the individual who
suffers from wealth pollution.

Heating
Now that we have an understanding of what permaculture is and how the
design process works, let’s look at addressing some specific problems,
starting with heating. In a cold climate, up to 20% of the economy can be
devoted to keeping warm. Conservation is the first issue to address.

For home owners, a home energy audit is a good place to start. The
Ontario Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure will help pay for an energy
audit. If you get one and follow the recommendations and can
demonstrate that you lowered your energy consumption, the Ontario
government will reimburse you up to $150 towards the cost of the audit.
The Ministry’s website explains the program and how you can receive up
to $10,000 in rebates for improvements to energy efficiency (perhaps
unavailable now after the recent announcement from the fed). The
improvements boil down to bringing insulation up to par, fixing drafts and
putting in a more efficient heat source, that kind of thing. But there are
other approaches to take that are effective as well.

All my life I have been cursed with energy efficient homes. During my
wife’s first winter in Canada, we rented an insulated cottage in Muskoka.
With temperatures dropping down to -27°C, the insulation didn’t really
suffice. One problem was, and I am not making this up, the homemade
double pane windows it had, not to mention the glass-on-glass sliding
windows. I knew it would be well worth it to create window plugs the help
hold the heat in during the day. These were simply 1-inch sheets of
Styrofoam cut to fit the window sill and surrounded with foam weather
stripping tape to make a good seal. Good windows, such as the ones
pictured only have an R-value of around R-4. Putting the plugs in moves
you to about R-8 or 9, and if you use the denser R-10 foam, you would
get closer to around R-12. I would put them at sunset each day and I
knew they worked because when I took them out in the morning, the
inside pane of glass would always be covered in frost – something that
would not happen without the plugs. This was a temporary set up, but I
will be using a decorated version of the same thing in the home I am
currently building.
If these plugs are not suitable, you can make windows a little more
efficient with floor-length drapes. A fablic “sausage can be placed on
either side of the drapes and a piece of cardboard over the top of the rail
to fill in the space between the drapes and the wall. Better still is a piece
of foam rubber. It works best if the curtains are sealed to the wall at the
sides – either tacked or velcroed.

A crash course in passive solar retrofitting

There are 3 types of heat available to us for heating: Convective Heat;
Conductive Heat, and Radiant Heat.
Conductive heat is the sort of heat that comes from a hair drier or a
forced-air furnace. It feels nice but is the least efficient way to heat.
Conductive heat is the kind of heat that one gets from direct contact with
a hot object, such as a fry pan or sitting right against a masonry stove.
This is the most efficient form of heating but it is not always too practical.
Radiant heat is the sort of heat that you feel coming from a fire or warm
object at a distance. It is radiant heat that we utilise in passive solar
design.

As I mentioned earlier, on a clear day, there are 957 Watt hours per m²
available from the sun at 45º latitiude Since this amount of heat is so
significant and is free, we should take full advantage of it. Passive solar
works by allowing light into a building where it heats up objects inside.
To make passive solar effective, one needs a large, dense mass to store
the heat and slowly radiate that heat out. Otherwise the heating effect
only lasts while the sun is directly shining into the home. This is usually
done by either having the home built on an insulated concrete pad or
having a brick wall inside the home. If you don’t have either of those,
such as is usually the case for people living in apartments or condos, you
can build a variation of the trombe wall.
A trombe wall is simple a dense wall (usually concrete or brick) with a
window over it. I realise that it is not very likely that people are going to go
home and build a brick wall over their windows. Consider this retrofit
instead:

If you build a frame to hold stacked bottles, the bottles can be filled with
water, which will act as a thermal mass to hold the heat. As dark colours
heat up better, purple wine bottles work well, plus you get to drink a lot of
wine to make the wall.

Another approach is a thermal siphon. There are companies that make

these ready to install, though I recall that they are a little pricey. I know
someone who has one and they work very well while the sun is striking
them.
If you are comfortable building yourself, you could make a thermal siphon
rather cheaply. If you built it like a box, it would be installed on a roof and
have a fan to force air through it. There is a product in Australia that is a
version of this called the Sun Lizard.
Now here I should mention a real problem facing Toronto. This image
shows with greatest challenge for passive solar retrofitting: dense
housing on streets laid out north to south. For the life of me, I cannot
understand why the city founders chose to design their city to minimise
solar gain as one would in a desert community, but they did. Needless to
say, this makes design very difficult.

The use of reflectors can maximise the amount to solar gain by

harvesting sunlight that would otherwise be lost. Using stainless steel,
mirror or Mylar, sunlight can be directed into either an east or west
window and, if the architecture allows, a north window. The gain is
significant enough that it is well worth it to take advantage of if possible.

Here is an example of a system I designed for a west-end home. It was

the north-end of a duplex and the only scrap of sunlight I had to work with
was off of the northeast corner facing the backyard. There was a grape
trellis already, so the reflector could easily be mounted on it.
Energy
If you are a home owner and your site is suitable, you can take
advantage of Ontario’s Green Energy Act. With it, the Ontario
government will give you a 20-year contract to buy power you generate,
with the best price paid being 80.2 cents per kWh, which is for solar
power. Switch is a third party non-profit that will consult with those
interested in taking advantage of this program. Their site is
www.switchontario.ca.

As I mentioned earlier, the end of fossil fuels is in sight. A permaculture

classmate of mine in Australia, Darren Doherty, thinks we are headed for
a charcoal economy. This may be the case, though we would not be able
to and should not consume energy at the rate we currently do. Biomass
through coppice crop is a possibility, but if it is done in an industrial way, it
is would just be yet another harmful activity. The Swedes have coppice
cants of willow that they use to mop up excess nitrogen in sewage
treatment plants and harvest them with modified combines. While it is a
step in the right direction, it has its problems.

Green roofs and green walls are all the rage. They are very effective at
reducing rooftop temperatures in summer and contribute to insulation,
helping to reduce heating costs in winter. Aesthetically, I find them much
nicer than looking at concrete. The federal government used to have a
very good incentive program to encourage the retrofitting buildings, but I
am not sure if this program is still in effect. As far as green walls go, there
are numerous approaches one can take as you see here. It’s also
possible to build a trellis and send climbing vines across them.

Food

If you are going to be doing any gardening other than growing in

containers with potting soil, you should have the soil tested first as heavy
metal contamination can be a serious problem in some parts of the city.
Here are some labs that can do testing:

A&L Canada Laboratories http://www.alcanada.com/

Agri-Food Laboratories http://www.agtest.com/

Soil and Nutrient Laboratory and the UoG
http://www.uoguelph.ca/labserv/units/soil-nutrient/

Tests will be in the neighbourhood of $10 to $20.

When it comes to gardening, the first step is assessing the site. As I

already mentioned, sunlight is a problem in Toronto and it is the first thing
to consider. If you get 6 or more hours of sun, you can grow plants
requiring “full sun.” If you get a minimum of 3 hours sun, you have “partial
sun.” Remember that reflectors can help to increase access to sunlight
and can be used in a garden.

The next difficulty to consider is wind. This can be a real problem for
people growing on balconies or on rooftops. If may be necessary to
provide a windbreak to protect plants.

Space is at a premium, so gardening needs to make the best use of

space. If you have lawn space, you can densely plant as shown. There is
no reason to grow things in rows. Rows are designed to facilitate
machinery and tools. You don’t need to limit your growing area by making
rows.
Make sure your site has easy access and workable pathways that are at
least 40 cm wide.

You can make use of vertical space and even balcony ceilings.
Whether growing in containers or on reclaimed lawn space, the following
images give an idea of mulching and soil-building:
See Creating the Permaculture Balcony Garden for more information on
growing in small spaces.

If you have about 40 square feet of indoor or greenhouse space to work

with, aquaponics might be an option. Simply put, aquaponics are a mix of
hydroponic plant production and aquaculture to produce fish.
Hydroponics on its own can be somewhat tricky, but adding fish makes
the system function more like an ecosystem. This results in a more self-
regulating system. Systems that are smaller than 1000 litres are prone to
sudden fluctuations in nitrogen levels that can lead to dead fish. Better to
stick with larger systems.
Greywater and Rainwater
It is odd that the approach cities take to rain – a vital resource – is to
shunt it as quickly as possible to a disposal site. Cities are full of hard,
impervious surfaces; and water is carried out in storm drains as quickly
as possible. If one were designing a city from scratch, the smart thing to
do would be to apply the principle of slowing the flow of resources
through a site by catching as much as possible.

You might have access to water off of hard surfaces such as roofs or
pavement that can be captured and used for irrigation.

Greywater is another option for irrigation. In the time we have I can only
scrape the surface, however. Greywater is any source of used household
water, excluding that which comes toilets. Water from wash basins,
kitchen sinks, baths and washing machines are all greywater. They can
assist in growing trees or vegetable crops, but not root crops.

Intangible Structures
Cooperative action can help facilitate sustainable projects. Things like co-
housing require a well-mapped, shared vision among the group – one of
the reasons they so often fail. Establishing communities garden space,
however, is a simpler matter. Then there are actions like Permablitzes.
The permablitz is something started by my friend and colleague Dam
Palmer and his company Permaculture Solutions in Melbourne. A
permablitz is an event whereby a designer gets together with a large
group of people and implements a permaculture garden in one day. Of
course the planning takes more time than that, but the physical work is
done all in one shot.

For a complete permaculture reworking of society, alternative structures

need to be set up. This may seem like a pipe dream in Toronto, but the
Australians are making headway in some places towards making this a
reality. In the third world, taking this sort of approach can make a huge
difference as there is no government structure serving the people to
speak of.

Filed Under: Article

Tagged With: Urban permaculture
About Douglas Barnes
I'm a sustainable designer. I live in the countryside in Tweed, Ontario after calling different
parts of Ontario and Japan home.

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