Hopedance

Concrete, high-rises, parking lots, sprawl, waste, pollution, social erosionall of these are problems associated with life in modern cities. Some environmentalists even contend that these problems are intimately related to urban culture, and there is no way to avoid them. Others disagree, preferring to view cities as socially wild places, harboring treasures of cultural diversity.

The following is a description of a house in Oakland, California intended to provide ideas and "tools" to Permaculturalists living in urban areas, with the hopes that our movement can turn its attention more towards the urban.

Zone Zero: The Household

We live in a medium-size house in Oakland. Seven people are crammed into the house, with an average of three guests dotting our couches. In order to accommodate such a sizeable community, we were forced to be creative with our resources. Extra rooms were created out of neglected attic spaces, hallways, and the garage. Despite the cramming, the crowding has created a house full of people interested in social and environmental activism.

Consequently, we do our best to put our ideals into practice. In the social realm, we do this through chore sharing, open communication, communal food and the use of consensual based decision-making. In the environmental realm, we practice a strict conservation ethic. As activists we understand that every action, no matter how mundane, is politically (and environmentally) "loaded." Rather than buying into a system perpetuated by conflict, competition, hierarchy and wastefulness, we've chosen to cultivate a culture that is based on resource conservation, communal living, and voluntary simplicity. This means salvaging and/or producing what resources we can, consuming locally, and buying as little as possible.

Central to the Permaculture philosophy is the notion that pollution is really just wasted resources. In nature, there is no waste things that appear to have outlived their usefulness, such as autumn leaves resting "dead" on the ground, are really part of the cyclic mulching process being devoured by microscopic bacteria and transformed into soil. Similarly, the city creates (literally) tons of "waste products" daily. From recoverable construction scraps to spent vegetable oil (for Bio- Diesel), the city is rich with salvageable resources. Though it may not be a flattering comparison, urban Permaculturalists are like the bacteria, worms, and sow bugs, transforming leaves into soil. We dig in dumpsters and scrap yards in order to recover the materials needed for water catchment systems, beehives, worm boxes, and furniture. Whatever food we can't grow, we get from Oakland's fine array of bakery and grocery dumpsters. The recovered food is converted into multi-course communal meals. Believe it or not, we even built our gray water system with materials we dug out of dumpsters. Here's how it works: the shower drains outside into a constructed wetland. It consists of two basins; the first is full of varying sized rocks and sand which filters the water. Cattails (a marshland plant) help to clean the water in the first basin. (The basins are made by digging a ditch and lining it with a "sandwich" of carpet-plastic-and-carpet; all can be obtained from the urban waste stream. Able to hold rocks, plants and water, this replicates a small pond). Not only do the cattails beautify the landscape and filter water, but they're also entirely edible. Finally, the pollen from the Ccttail plant can be harvested and made into a supplemental honeybee food for the winter months.

In order to elongate the flow in the pond, we placed a series of baffles zig zagging through the basin (they're simply sheets of Plexiglas that create a meandering pattern). From here, the water is gravity-fed to the second basin. Lacking rocks, the second basin (an old deep dish-washing sink, fished out of a dumpster and plugged) is full of water hyacinth, which suck oxygen out of the air, pumping it into the water, and cleansing it. The tangled hairlike roots are also good habitat for a host of beneficial micro-organisms.

The final part of the system is the holding tank, a 44-gallon Rubbermaid container (again, from the trash) sunk into the earth. The drum stores the water that is later bucketed into the garden. Expanding the gray water paradigm, our bathrooms have been cheaply retrofitted for optimum water usage. The plumbing below the sinks has been removed, allowing water to drain directly into a five-gallon bucket. When full, the water is used to nourish the plants or to flush the toilet.

The gray water from the kitchen sink drains into another five-gallon bucket. It's used to water the compost pile. The pile is also where I go when I need to pee (an ever-rich source of Nitrogen). For that reason the pile has been located no more than 15 feet from the doorstep.

The garage roof houses a solar cooker. Built of salvaged wood, cardboard and a windowpane, the cooker can soar to temperatures of 450 degrees. The roof also houses our top bar beehives (as opposed to the traditional Langstrough bee hive model, top bar hives were developed by a Peace Corps worker in Africa, and are considerably easier to harvest).

We're also working on installing a solar water heater, which was bought second hand from a scrap yard for $25. Finally, most of our light fixtures have been outfitted with 12-20 Watt Compact Fluorescent Bulbs (saving significantly on bills).

On the other side of my wall (I live in a divided garage, which is separate from the house) I can hear neighborhood kids clunking about in the Bike Library, where they're building bikes. A volunteer-run community resource, the five-year-old Bike Library serves to teach kids bike maintenance, providing tools and parts free of charge. They're also supplied with old bike parts that were donated, allowing them to create a custom cruiser form scratch.

Just outside my door I hear Helen, a math teacher rinsing out her compost bucket. On her day off she cooks for Food Not Bombs which will do a free serving to the homeless later today in People's Park. Food Not Bombs utilizes our house kitchen every Monday, and it's gratifying to lend your home to such good projects. This brings up an essential principal of Permaculture design the free sharing of resources. Wherever your project or site may be, it is important to share what you can of it. You'll find that it enriches your life and helps to create a sense of community, making the entire project more valuable.

Zone 1: the back yard and garden. The first thing I see when I step out of my bedroom door is a box of mulch. The mixture used here consists of chicken manure, straw soaked in horse urine and manure (Nitrogen rich) salvaged from Berkeley's horse race track, food scraps, and newspaper. No actual "soil" was used in the boxes. Instead, the decomposing mulch is building soil, which provides enough of a niche to grow strawberries. They make a good quick-picking snack food.

Behind them is a stand of giant tomato plants growing in a box, which is also mulched. Rather than spending hundreds of dollars on importing compost, the mulch (costing nothing) has worked superbly.

We also have a giant box full of beans and squash, flowers (bee forage), hops, and comfrey.

The fence that separates the garden from the apartment building next door is over-flowing with wild blackberries, which (when flowering) are good bee forage, and the berries make excellent pies. There's also honeysuckle, whose flowers find their way into my salads. We have various other useful plants including an apple and plum tree, mashaua (an Andean plant tuber with edible leaves), tithonia, artichoke, sorrel, spinach, chard, culinary sage, penny royal, earth chestnuts, marigolds for the bees and butterflies, lavender, tamarillos. All of this in an extremely small space, perhaps 30' by 50', much of making use of vertical space.

Next to the back door of the main house is a bustling grape vine, tangling its way up our window's security bars. We planted lots of herbs near the kitchen door. Nearby is the worm compost bin, which is our second composting system (with 7 plus people and a busy community visiting your house for nearly weekly potlucks you have lots of food wastes to work with!) All the parts used for the beehive, boxes, and ponds (and the potato tires) were scavenged. Hardly a penny was spent on anything.

Zone 2: The Front Yard. The yard is a southwest-facing slope that gets ample afternoon sunlight. We tore out our lawn and proceeded to put in a spiral shaped garden to maximize our planting space and edge effect. Water dependent plants, like brassicas and chives we planted at the bottom of the slope and the decorative succulents at the top, with grape, oregano, yacon, mashaua, tithonia, rhubarb, and countless other edibles planted between.

We wrote up descriptions of the plants scientific names, treatment, uses, and regional and geographic history and placed them on posts all over the yard. On weekends people walking their children and dogs often stop by to check out the yard and ask questions.

Zone 3: City Parks. There are median strips between many of the roads in our neighborhood. The lawns planted between their curbs are sustained by spray irrigation. Wanting to see more useful urban plants, we began a series of nighttime tree planting missions. At first people looked at us funny five kids digging up city parks and median strips at 10 PM. But after the police saw us digging and mulching city property and didn't arrest us, we got the semi-official green light and started planting fruit trees all over the neighborhood. Cherry, lemon, lime, plum, pear, and apple trees of all varieties now dot the neighborhood. Strategically placed near the city water sprinklers, the're ensured a good harvest.

Zones 4-5: The Urban Wilds. Is there a zone 4-5 in a city? I don't know; perhaps the closest thing to these zones in Alameda County are the bay wetlands (a wild-life preserve). Maybe in time, people will realize the importance of allowing the hills and bay shore to grow wild again. Even in the heart of the city, thousands of plants and animals make their homes. As the sun creeps down, owls, foxes, raccoons, possums, and countless other animals creep out to scavenge for food. As the sun climbs back into the sky, ground squirrels, birds, the endangered Alameda County whip snake, and countless other creatures venture out to greet the dawn. Though most of America's cities have been irresponsibly encased in concrete, it is important for us, as Permaculturalists, to oppose unnecessary growth and sprawl. Do we really need more roads, sub-divisions, or high-rises? Wouldn't it be possible to cultivate, instead, intensive, small scale households that are relatively self-sufficient? It is important to actively protest such cancerous growth and instead promote small-scale urban development. Perhaps then we will be able to let our urban lands begin to grow truly wild.

For more information on any of the projects we're involved with such as, but not limited to The Bat Cave Bicycle Library, BREAD (Berkeley Region Exchange and Developmenta local currency system), or our Bike Tours for Urban Sustainability, contact Tim Krupnik, 5912 Genoa St. Oakland, CA 94608; This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Tim Krupnik will be in Ethiopia during the latter half of this year working on a developing "Bio-Farm," project. He will be assisting farmers, beekeepers and vermicomposters in methods of permaculture design. He can be reached (hopefully) at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .