Michael McGurk

Toby, thanks for answering questions. I've been enjoying your new book.

I live in an urban area, and I've been thinking a lot recently about sustainable / regenerative urban development while avoiding gentrification, and displacement. I'm thinking of an example in my city where a beautiful set of condos was developed that is LEED platinum, collects and uses it for irrigation of green spaces, maintenence cleaning, and a koi pond. There are several communal areas, such as a small rooftop dog park, and an outdoor kitchen / grill / hangout area. The buildings are also super efficient with energy. However, all these awesome things are only available to the residents of the condos. This is in an area that is historically low-income, but recently has been gentrifying. Hip restaurants, younger people moving in, rent costs rising, etc. So, as you might guess, lower-income residents of the neighborhood who don't own their homes, are forced to move away because of the rising rent prices. Also, they cannot eat at the fancy restaurants, and generally feel resentment towards the folks moving in.

With all that said, being an activist in the city fighting for justice and sustainability, I see many people who feel passionately against gentrification. On one hand I'm excited to see "green" development and on the other hand, I understand the feelings of those who are negatively affected. So, I've been reading and thinking about ways to prevent this, and I'd like to hear your thoughts.

One suggestion is to liberalize zoning laws to allow developers to develop in already expensive neighborhoods where demand is stable and predictable, but wealthy residents have more success fighting new development (http://marketurbanism.com/2015/01/28/2-ways-to-fight-gentrification/). Another suggestion is to put in place protections against eviction due to rising rents (http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/04/25/there-are-plenty-of-ways-to-combat-gentrification).

When I think of the Permaculture Ethics, the third ethic seems to be about giving back to the community that supports your development. Today, developers in a competitive market are looking to maximize profits, and don't have incentive to ensure that low-income residents benefit from development aimied at a wealthier market. Maybe regulations could ensure that developers creating housing that is greater than double the value of surrounding homes must pay back the community some how (creating public spaces, being taxed to support the community, etc).

From what I know, your viewpoint is not favorable of regulations, and I've tried to look at ways of incentivizing developers to give back to the community. Maybe the city could incentivize developers with temporarily lowered property tax rates if they agree to public community development work. In my eyes, the developers aren't going to give back unless they're incentivized, or forced to. However, I support the green development, and exciting projects, but I don't want to see the negative effects of gentrification harm the community.

In your writings, you stress early involvement of the community in the planning process, which I agree is essential. In my experience, I've all too often seen developers completely ignore, or be extremely secretive with their plans, rather than involving the community, despite community outrage.

I know this is a complicated topic, but what are your thoughts about this issue?

Hi Elle,

The event is going to be in a multi-level nightclub in Philadelphia, where the group hosts their monthly parties. The second floor will be dedicated to be a, "disco science fair," to demonstrate sutainability concepts. So, unfortunately showing off some impressive earthworks might be out of the question. Has anyone learned any lessons while trying to share permaculture ideas to the general population? We need to keep it fun to keep people from just walking away. There's going to be music and dancing on the first floor, so we need to be more interesting than that, which might be tough.

I recently applied for a job designing container gardens and patio gardens for city-dwellers in Philadelphia. Before considering this job, I hadn't given much thought to permaculture design on the scale of a container garden. However, for city residents without much green space, small containers can be the only option. I can definitely see how microclimates, zones, sectors, and other permaculture techniques can be used for the design of a space. But, this really got me thinking about how some clients might not think about the functional aspects, and only care about the aesthetics of the garden. It would be fun to introduce these city folk to the idea of actually using the things that grow in a garden. So, I started thinking about decorative herbs, and flowers that are edible and medicinal. The more decorative, the better, but I'm also trying to incorporate that functional aspect.

Just as I was thinking about this, I got an email from a seed company with the subject, "Eye-catching Edible Flowers," which is exactly what I'm thinking about. They suggested calendula, nasturtium, and dianthus.

Does anyone have any other ideas for making decorative container gardens into a functional addition to a city home? Has anyone seen container gardens with multiple funcitons? Juliet, is this a topic that you cover in the book, or does it focus more on the functional aspect of permaculture in pots?

Right now I'm working with the a local artist collective to plan their monthly theme party for April, with the theme being Sustainability. This artist group does a lot with repurposed materials, and does some great work for the community. This party is geared toward the adult Burning Man crowd, progressive and thoughtful, but also easily distracted party animals. We're trying to plan demonstrations and displays that will showcase Permaculture, sustainability, and any aspect of a path to a future that emphasizes Earth Care, People Care, and Fair Share. We're trying to create visual and interactive experiences for the attendees, and avoid things like pamphlets and handouts. Our goal is to make permaculture principles engaging and accessible to more people.

This is a larger issue that I've thought about a lot. How can we make permaculture more fun and exciting? I find permaculture amazing and interesting, but most of my friends aren't as captivated with the ideas as I am. They support and agree with a lot of what I tell them about permaculture, but it's not an easy concept to communicate and get people excited about. I want to figure out some quick ways to engage people and get them interested in these ideas. If we can do this for the average joe, than we can do it for everyone in the world.

Does anyone have any ideas or input to share?

Hi Joe,

Regarding the use of fungi to remediate damaged soil, I've spoken with a friend of mine (who's starting an urban gourmet mushroom production company) about this bioremediation potential that mushrooms have. He suggested covering the soil, or tilling into the soil, a ton of wood chips (adding organic matter to the soil), and then also innoculating fungi like Stropharia, aka the Wine Cap Mushroom or Garden Giant Mushroom. These mushrooms are edible, and can get huge. This is also the fungi strain that I hear Paul Stamets talking about for it's bioremediation effects. It can be used to clean up petroleum contaminated soil, radiation contamitated soil, or even soil polluted with heavy metals. For the petroleum, the fungi theoretically digests the hydrocarbons and the mushrooms would be edible. For radiated soil, or soil with heavy metals like lead, you would need to remove the mushrooms and dispose of them elsewhere. After a year or two of this (I'm not actually sure about the timeline), you should have soil that is much less polluted.

One of the cool methods for spawning huge amounts of Stropharia that I've heard Paul Stamets talk about is something he calls Mycototes. He fills large food-grade totes with straw, wood chips, and water, and lets the mixture soak for 2 weeks. This grows anaerobic bacteria, the totes get pretty stinky. Then he drains the water, and innoculates with stropharia. They grow huge, and really quickly. The anaerobic bacteria all die off in the presence of the oxygen, and the fungi explodes with life. This could be used to create large amounts of mycelium substrate very quickly.

I have some notes that I took at Paul Stamets' recent lecture in Philadelphia posted here: http://aquaponicsalive.blogspot.com/2014/05/notes-from-paul-stamets-talk-in.html

-Dirk