Urban Permaculture Guild

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Check below for UPG and
related Events

What is Permaculture?

Transtion Movement




Hear Michael Pilarski and Marish Auerbach tell us what they think.

Holmgren's Permaculture Principles!

LIVING TOGETHER
A Modern Answer to the Commune-
New York Times


UC Berkeley Extension in San Francisco
Urban Permaculture Design Classes

UC Berkeley Go Green


Permaculture for Renters- Farm Your Aparment Building’s Front Lawn

Permaculture San Francisco
Watch VIdeo here


in the Permaculture Groups on Wiser Earth


Vertical Garden from Patrick Blanc

West Coast Women's Permaculture Gathering 2011

Join Nina Simons, Starhawk, Kat Steele, Jude Hobbs, Deborah Eden Tull, Carla Maria Perez, Rachel Kaplan, Pandora Thomas, Rebecca Newburn, Kari Stettler, Jenny Pell, Rebecca Strong and more...

May 20-22, 2011

Listen to Sustainable World Radio Pod Casts with Kat Steele,
Ianto Evans, Paul Stamets, Isabela Coelho


See preview of Geoff Lawton's Intro to Permaculture DVD

FOOD SECURITY PROJECTS
Compiled by the Marin Permaculture Guild


Within five years, half the world's population will be urban...
The World Comes To Town

Kevin Bayuk shares his Urban Permie Story.

Learn about Green Collar Jobs from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights

Take a Daily-Acts Sustainabilty Tour.

+ Permaculture Teacher Training: Innovation in Experiential Education

Esalen Instittute
Big Sur, CA
May 13-20, 2011

Dec 2-9, 2011


Seattle, Washington
Oct 29-Nov 4, 2011


Training for Transition
Esalen Institute,
Big Sur, CA
April 17-22, 2011

Integral Farm Systems:
Urban Permaculture
Esalen Institute,
Big Sur, CA
June 5-10, 2011

Sept 18-23, 2012

 

 




 

San Francisco's New
FOOD POLICY


Slow is Beautiful, New Visions of Community, Leisure and Joie de Vivre-Radio Interview with Cecile Andrews

 

 

The Urban Homestead in LA

Urban Permaculture Institute of the Southeast

Merritt Community College Classes, Permaculture, Regenerative Design, Natural Building, Mushrooms, Water, etc.. Oakland, CA

+ Permaculture First Responder, Earth Activist Training, Advanced Course

+ Making a Difference, Esalen Institute, Big Sur, CA

Village Building Convergence
Watch Video!

Watch Starhawk speak on Urban Permaculture!

Watch Oakland Urban Permie Kevin Feinstein grow food on his balcony!

NEW!
Al Gore at 2009 TED

Watch Al Gore speak on his latest thinking on the Climate Crisis and our responsibilities as planetary citizens at 2008TED conference

Watch Al Gore speak on the Climate Crisis at 2007TED conference!

Support the South Central Farmers Now, Help Save the Largest Urban Farm in USA

Support People's Grocery and Healthy Food for Everyone

Support Bay Area Relocalize
Think and Act gLocal


Greening Burning Man
How would you do it?

Salmon Nation

Global Public Media

Connect with the
Urban Alliance for Sustainability-Attend Green Movie Nights in San Francisco at Roxie Theatre

Watch Edible Estates
Video !

Watch David Holmgren Videos !

Watch Grow Here Now Video!

Watch Toby Hemenway's Permaculture Slide Show!

Watch Guerilla Gardening Video !

Watch the Story of Stuff


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Urban Permaculture: What do I do if I live in a city? Participate

Business Alliance for Local Living Economies BALLE

See In the Garden video of what the Pasadena, CA based Dervaes family is doing and how they have created a Path to Freedom !

See SustainLane video of what the city of San Francisco is doing and take a look at how they rank the top 25 US cities for sustainability

Zones and Sectors in the City by Bart Anderson

Retrofitting the Suburbs for Sustainability by David Holmgren

EcoHood n: permaculture retrofit of a mid- to low-income neighborhood with a high potential for ecological sustainability by Susan DeFreitas
Visit the EcoHood

Hear Mathis Wackernagel
, co-creator of the Ecological Footprint speack at Google's tech talk, One Planet Budgeting: making sustainability real with the ecological footprint

Martha Dominguez shares her indigenous wisdom with the recent Ecovillage Design Education World View Course at the University of New Mexico.

 

See how Permaculture Designer Geoff Lawton worked with Jordanians to salvage heavily salted deserts and transform into green oasis!!
Greening the Desert

Listen to Kat Steele and David Blume
Radio Interview On KPFA Tierra Verde




Resources: eco recycle - save energy & mitigate global hunger

The Problem is the solution. Follow the bread crumbs backward. When asked to visualize a sustainable living environment, many of us envision a rural farm-like setting with lots of land and plenty of natural resources around that can support our needs. The reality, though, is that most North American's live in cities.

So we are faced with the difficult question. "How can permaculture address life in a city?"When applying Permaculture to an urban environment, it is especially important to understand the principle, "the problem is the solution." We all know that it is very easy to identify problems in most cities, but this can work to our advantage if we are intent on creating solutions rather than merely drawing attention to the problems. First, we might think of a city's characteristics in terms of an ecosystem such as a forest. A mature forest has a forest canopy, which in a city is the top of tall buildings. Mid-sized buildings can be anagolous to the forest understory. Small buildings and other human and natural structures are parallel to a forest's shrubs and ground cover. Finally, the city equivelant to a forest's soil could be streets, sidewalks and yards. Once we look at the city's elements as opportunities to create beauty through design, we begin to fiind solutions, including:

  • Building greenhouses and planting gardens in vacant lots. Turning our grass lawns into gardens that produce food and are aesthetically beautiful. Creating community by combining backyards with our neighbors, tearing down fences to create bigger parcels of usable land. Using the presence of buildings to cultivate plants that need partial shade or vertical climbing space. Designing a water catchment system on the roofs of our houses that can provide all the water needs for the garden.
  • Building bridges between biological, cultural, social and economic sustainability.

Remember, it is a conscious choice for us to see "impediments" to rebuilding sustainabale cities and "resources" and "opportunites." Urban areas have lots of energetic people who, when putting their minds and hearts together, can create beautiful, healthy, liivng environments in the midst of supposed chaos.

excerpted from an EarthLight magazine article by Jeff Brown

Quotables

"We're only truly secure when we can look out our kitchen window and see our food growing and our friends working nearby."

-Bill Mollison, co-founder of Permaculture






Contact | Photo Credits | 2003-2008 Urban Permaculture Guild
a project of ADPSR (Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility)