Urban Agriculture, Permaculture and Zoning Issues by Tracy Mullins, MS, AICP
Photo by Pamela Shinn
Environmentalism, urban agriculture and entrepreneurism have encouraged the grass roots permaculture movement and the creation of permaculture guilds. Permaculture (permanent agriculture), is an approach to designing human settlements and agricultural systems that are modeled on the relationships found in natural ecosystems. Bill Mollison, who developed the concept, lays out both the theoretical and practical aspects of Permaculture in his 1988 book Permaculture: a Designers’ Manual. Permaculture draws from several disciplines including organic farming, agro forestry, integrated farming, sustainable development, and applied ecology. Permaculture followers strive to provide their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way. Permaculture design solutions have been successfully used around the world to maximize food production, cool homes without air conditioning, reorganize communities, reduce pollution, and much more. In the United States, the basic permaculture course (72 hours) is taught on a regular basis and over 100,000 people have graduated from certificate courses in permaculture (Ferguson, 2012).
Many Community Gardeners have formed “communities of interest” such as Permaculture Guilds and Transition Town initiatives around issues of sustainability and community greening. Community greening is the leadership and active participation of community residents who take it upon themselves to build healthier sustainable communities through planning and caring for “socio-ecological spaces” and the associated flora, fauna, and structures. (Tidball & Kransny 2007)
Permaculture employs alternative forms for sustainable economic development referred to as financial permaculture. Financial permaculture strives towards total economic return - where the entire system and its parts are optimized, creating exchange systems that align with principals of a zero waste economy. Financial permaculture encourages environmental stewardship, building communities of purpose and the distribution of surplus material, currency and knowledge in a fair and equitable manner. At the center of Permaculture are three ethics: people care, earth care and fair share. (Dauksha, 2012)
Most notable of the sustainability planning organizations are the Permaculture movement which originated in Australia and the Transitions Towns movement which started in Ireland. Planners and Economic Developers can look to permaculture in any efforts to develop value chain relationships for sustainability planning and sustainable economic development.
Permaculture
What permaculturalists are doing is the most important activity that any group is doing on the planet. We don't know what the details of a truly sustainable future are going to be like, but we need options, we need people experimenting in all kinds of ways and permaculturalists are one of the critical groups doing that. David Suzuki, quoted in HopeDance 2009
Financial permaculture strengthens community development and local economic resilience at the same time as protecting the natural resources that sustain the system. The three systems of financial distribution used by Permaculture groups are reciprocity, redistribution and market economics. To accommodate permaculture
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