Taking Root in Detroit

Be part of the solution. Join us in Detroit:



ReNew, ReVision, Redesign Detroit - A Permaculture Design Course
April 27 - March 8th, 2011Larry Santoyo and Keith D. Johnson, Instructors

An Invitation to Mutually Assured Succession

The concept for the ReNew, ReVision, ReDesign Detroit - Permaculture Design Course is inspired by Detroit's efforts to re-imagine itself after decades of slow, steady decline. In Detroit, real green shoots arise in once-empty lots as individuals and organizations create community and market gardens as ways to beautify, create green spaces, provide fresh, nutritious food to city residents, create or recreate community, and pursue self-reliance as entrepreneurs in the food system. While some pursue food justice via gardens, others pursue racial and economic justice. Some do all three, many of them via a garden, or urban farm.

On some streets a rooster may crow, a goat bleat or a duck quack. Pheasants, raccoons, opossums and deer can be seen in various places. But this is not chaos and ruin, it is edge meeting edge, which is where magic happens. This is nature saying, "Join me. I haven't forgotten you." This is opportunity to design a regenerative, sustainable city. But the city is more than fallow fields and squawking chickens.

Old meets new as the Motor City becomes a city with a growing reputation for attracting entrepreneurs, artists and wanderers looking for niches, and filling them. Some are wary of the new, some embrace them. Tension like the surface tension of a bubble stretches until boundaries burst and edges blend creating magic and conflict. Techno whizzes bring the whiz-bang of new frontiers while social media rides a wave of enthusiasm for ethereal connectedness. Grace Lee Boggs sings a song of resistance to powers tangible and hidden while schools descend into chaos and overcrowding, and a new style of education seeks to rise from the ruins of industrialization.

Into the political crisis following the fall of Kwame Kilpatrick rises Mayor Dave Bing, bringing a new game, far from the basketball court, one where the stakes are very much higher. Assembling a cadre of corporations, experts and advisors, the Mayor and his select group set about the designing a future for Detroit. A Detroit from a corporate, growth-oriented view in which the citizens are engaged in meetings without dialogue and are asked to respond to pre-selected questions out of context and without any data, information or expression of what assumptions they are expected to consider. The claim is transparency, but little is known and less stated openly. The city is told people will be incentivized to move to renewed, walkable neighborhoods, but there is no money to make it happen - and they will be left behind with reduced or absent city services, but may do as they please in these left-behind "green" spaces.

An equal and opposite reaction is the response to every action. Not from the top, but from the bottom. Not behind closed, corporate and governmental doors, but in city squares, school auditoriums and neighborhood meeting places. Not in the name of growth, power and profit, but people, sustainability and community. Perhaps the people populating DetroitWorks can create a Perfect Possible Future, but sound principles of ecological engineering suggest this is ulikely. How can sustainability arise from a profit motive? How does a community grow when torn from its roots and transplanted without them? How can a city be the sum of only some of its parts?

An equal and opposite reaction, this is a call and an invitation to all to engage in a discussion and a deseign process where all are equally empowered and the process is open and interactive. We hope this process can lead to an alternative to the current DetroitWorks process, or help create a realignment and redesign of the DetroitWorks process, that has as its primary concerns community and sustainability.

The ReNew, ReVision, ReDesign Detroit PDC will fulfill all content requirements of a PDC, however, it is, possibly, unique in its goal to apply permaculture principles to produce a workable design for a major city as the course Design Project. Detroit's difficult past, it's vibrant entrepreneurial spirit, under-utilized workforce, abundant water, vacant land, and it's industrial past all combine to make Detroit the perfect candidate to be the first large, post-industrial, post-carbon urban area.

Roots

Permaculture was founded, at least partly, as a result of David Holmgren and Bill Mollison coming to the conclusion that politics was more a part of the problem than a solution to real challenges. They postulated that humans could solve most of their problems within a much smaller radius by applying tools, techniques, and biological components to, essentially and very much like an ecosystem, become independent producers and traders in a local milieu. Instead of depending on large dominating systems of trade and government we can learn to depend more on each other for our basic needs to be met.

Permaculture politics is almost an oxymoron as far as national and international politics are concerned. Most national politicians are owned by their pimps, the multinational corporations whose "solutions" are the ones that benefit the few while exploiting the many. I suspect that the majority of Americans, left and right, would prefer a smaller government that messes less with their lives AND HABITATS ('scuse my shouting, but where would we be without a place that feeds, shelters and supports us?). The more we care for a place the more it cares for us. The PLACE we are, lest we forget, is here...


Notice that it doesn't have lines drawn upon it and that it is all connected to itself by great cycles of movement and flow. Some would have us believe that our real LIFE begins AFTER we leave this place. I personally don't think we would be welcome anywhere if we persist in wrecking this place.

Permaculturists learn, usually during the Design Course (if not sooner), that we, people everywhere, have been putting too much faith and trust in monolithic institutions (e.g. economic, political & religious) that do not have our best and immediate interests / needs at heart. We've simultaneously been putting way too little faith in the fecund power of the polycultural biodiverse reality in which we actually arise and upon which we actually depend. What would (will?) our lives look like when we can say, like this fictional fellow below...
Think about those to whom your independence and intelligence is a threat. Think about those who are threatened by the revelation of their secret-behind-doors actions. You will identify, by doing this, most of the sources for the problems we now suffer. Are we really willing to divest ourselves from the systems that make us more and more dependent or will we really, actually and literally work locally to help each other get what we need? We could, y'know?

The main reason that my 2/3 Acre in southern Indiana has 40 fruit trees and hundreds of species of plants, most of them edible is that I think well-fed neighbors are an excellent defense against those threatened by my freedom. The reason I teach others to do the same is that I think a locally-well-fed community is even better defended.

Caring is supposed to be a common spiritual practice promoted by every religion but our monolithic systems sell us the lie that we will be loved more for what we own and acquire than by what we share and produce. That is not caring. It's abuse.

Caring for our places takes intelligence, long-term observation, study, and disciplined practice to realize. It's also a LOT more fun than the divisive polarizing propaganda of the corporate-owned media since now we make our own news...and it could be good. Those who benefit by our fear pay enormous sums to keep us stressed out and fearful. We're easier to manipulate when we're frightened.

We're in an age and time when fear (and anger) seems like a fairly reasonable response to the multifaceted challenges we face. Fear serves our awakening to the need for actions that yield results. But if we feel fearful AND powerless we have not yet identified the help and allies we need to make real change. The good news is that there is help...and there are allies who are looking to the awakened for help.

Permaculture gives us the tools to be helpful, supportive, productive, healthy, and satisfied on many deep levels...and it's communicable. I hope to communicate some of that help in these pages.

Stay tuned....