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david holmgren permaculture co-originator RetroSuburbia sample extractdavid holmgren RetroSuburbia the downshifter ’ s guide to a resilient futureTo Wendell Berry, agrarian, ecologist and author, whose finely-crafted and sage words have inspired me, including these from ‘It All Turns on Affection’ (the 2012 Jefferson Lecture): I will say, from my own belief and experience, that imagination thrives on contact, on tangible connection. For humans to have a responsible relationship to the world, they must imagine their places in it. To have a place, to live and belong in a place, to live from a place without destroying it, we must imagine it. By imagination we see it illuminated by its own unique character and by our love for it. By imagination we recognize with sympathy the fellow members, human and nonhuman, with whom we share our place. By that local experience we see the need to grant a sort of preemptive sympathy to all the fellow members, the neighbors, with whom we share the world. As imagination enables sympathy, sympathy enables affection. And it is in affection that we find the possibility of a neighborly, kind, and conserving economy.Contents Foreword 7 • Preface 9 • Introduction 11 Setting the Scene 17 1. Key challenges and retrosuburban responses 19 • Finance and property bubble 20 • Rising costs and shortages 20 • Climate chaos 21 • My assumptions 22 • Why suburbia? 24 • Why retrofitting? 24 • Permaculture powered retrosuburbia 25 • Recreating the commons 32 • Resilience; the new sustainability buzzword 34 2. Aussie St: the past and future of suburbia 35 • 1950s Golden age of suburban growth and baby boom 36 • 1960s and 70s Rising affluence and additions 38 • 1980s and 90s Ageing and infill 40 • 2000s Permaculture retrofit 42 • 2020s Second Great Depression 47 3. Where and how we live 53 • Work/life balance 54 • Household form and location matrix 59 • Conclusion 63 Case study 1: Abdallah House 64 Built Field: Patterns of human habitats 69 4. How to assess a property 71 • Where is it located? 72 • How much sun does it get? 74 • How is the street arranged? 77 • How vulnerable is it to natural disasters? 80 • What services are available? 84 • What am I allowed to do there? 85 • How much are the rates? 86 • Is the building easy to retrofit? 86 • What’s on the site and how’s it arranged? 91 • What resilience assets does it have? 93 • Introducing the Retrosuburban Real Estate Checklist 97 • Vision 98 5. Warm in winter, cool in summer 99 • Insulation and draught stripping 100 • Passive solar retrofitting 100 • Passive solar, active humans 106 • Vision 108 6. Wood energy: the other solar energy revolution 109 • Backyard pyrotechnics 110 • Safe use of fire 111 • Sustainable wood supply 111 • Minimising pollution 114 • Wood burning options 116 • Wood processing and seasoning 121 • Wood ash, charcoal and creosote 124 • Vision 124 7. Electricity: special energy for specific functions 125 • Managing demand 126 • Autonomous or grid interactive 126 • Solar access awareness 129 • Other power options and substitutions 129 • High tech and low tech CHP 130 • Vision 130 5RetroSuburbia - Contents 8. Water harvesting and storage 131 • Calculating rainfall and runoff 132 • Understanding and modelling water demand 133 • Autonomous or not 135 • Pros and cons of water sources 135 • Rainwater harvesting and storage systems 137 • Summary 142 • Vision 142 9. Greywater and human nutrient recycling 143 • Passion for humanure 144 • Regulatory obstacles 144 • Safe humanure and greywater 145 • Reuse and treatment of greywater 151 • Commercial solutions 151 • Summary 152 • Vision 152 10. Facilities for food 153 • Principles of food storage, processing and preservation 154 • Outside food processing areas 154 • Inside kitchen 156 • Food storage infrastructure 158 • Vision 164 11. Retrofitting for bushfire defence 165 • Suburban bushfire hazard review 167 • Retrofitting buildings for bushfire safety 167 • Retrofitting gardens for fire safety 169 • Managing adjacent public land 171 • Vision 172 12. Storage of stuff 173 • Balancing hording and decluttering 174 • Renting storage space 175 • Borrowing public space 175 • Borrowing private space 176 • Undercover spaces and eave storage 177 • Mezzanines 177 • Racks, stacks, shelving and crates 178 • Sharing stuff 178 • Reducing stuff 179 • Vision 179 13. Retrofitting for shared living 181 • Making best use of what we have 182 • Patterns for sharing indoor space 182 • Sharing backyards 189 • Vision 193 Case Study 2: Ecoburbia 194 Biological Field: Patterns of life and growth 199 14. How to assess a garden 201 • Balance of sunshine, soil and water 202 • How deep is the soil? 203 • How big is the fertility bank? 206 • Is soil contamination a problem? 208 • How much water can I access? 209 • How sheltered is the garden? 211 • What’s already growing? 212 • Vision 220 15. Garden farming (permaculture zones 1 and 2) 221 • Just do it 222 • Biointensive vs Natural Garden Farming 223 • Permaculture Zoning; a pattern language of land use intensity 229 • Optimising use of available land 230 • Obtain a yield 234 • Economics of garden farming 238 • Vision 240 16. Building and maintaining soil fertility 241 • Balance and abundance 242 • Strategies to improve soil 247 • Vision 260 17. Managing soil contamination 261 • Understanding problems and options 262 • Preventative strategies 265 • Dealing with lead contamination 266 • Vision 266 18. What to grow where 269 • Priorities for suburban food sufficiency 270 • Appropriate street trees 274 • Multi-purpose shelter and screening 275 • Vision 278 619. Food growing systems 279 • Intensive rotational vegetable growing 280 • Aquatics in containers and ponds 288 • Mushrooms: growing food without sunshine 288 • Tree, shrub and vine crops 290 • Vision 298 20. Seed saving and backyard nursery 299 • Priorities and practicalities 301 • Backyard nursery 302 • Vision 304 21. Domestic animals in suburbia 305 • Animals as non-negotiable commitments 306 • Just Do It? 307 • Working relationships with chooks 307 • Duck wetlands 312 • Loft pigeons above 314 • Quail on the garden ground floor 314 • Other poultry possibilities 314 • Rabbit lawn mowers 315 • Free range guinea pigs 315 • Backyard goats: bringing the dairy home 316 • Bees: synergistic social productivity 318 • Aquaponic apartments for fish and plants 321 • Carnivores as allies 322 • Vision 322 22. Wildlife in the garden; by and beyond design 323 • Encouraging beneficial wildlife 324 • Ecological control of smaller pests 324 • Harvesting abundance 326 • Non-lethal deterrents or exclusion 329 • Cats and dogs with jobs 332 • Vision 334 23. Beyond the boundaries (permaculture zones 3 and 4) 335 • Urban agriculture and animal husbandry 336 • Beyond horticulture scale 341 • Agroforestry parklands managed by people and grazing animals 341 • Zone 4: design by nature 348 • Watercourse food and fodder forests 351 • Vision 353 Case study 3: The Plummery 354 Behavioural Field: Patterns of decisions and actions 357 24. Ownership and living arrangements 359 • The ‘Household form and location matrix’ 361 • Extended family household 361 • Hosting volunteers 362 • Household landlord 363 • Neighbourhood landlord; create your own community 364 • Sharing house ownership 366 • Co-ordinated buying of adjacent houses 367 • Relocating to a country town 368 • Renting in preferred area 370 • Shared rental household 373 • Studio living 374 • Squatting 375 • Co-housing by retrofit 375 • Tiny houses 376 • Network nomads 376 • Summary 378 • Vision 380 25. Changing habits for self reliance and resilience 381 • Hair shirts and frugal hedonism 382 • Home-based work 382 • Daytime lifestyle and seasonal sleeping patterns 385 • Managing habits & addictions 385 • Establishing roles and responsibilities 386 • Multi-tasking 391 • Increasing productivity 393 • Vision 394 26. Transport and Travel 395 • Working, shopping and socialising at home 396 • Using vehicles and travelling time efficiently 396 • Reducing food (and everything else) miles 398 • Relocalising daily activities 398 • Internet substitutions and quandaries 399 • Transport options 400 • Traveller lifestyles 403 • Vision 404 27. Creating your own livelihood 405 • Disintermediation 406 • Reducing costs rather than earning more money 407 • The Great Reskilling 409 • From employed to self- employed 409 • Future livelihoods 410 • Keeping track of exchanges 418 • Vision 418 7RetroSuburbia - Contents 28. Financial planning and security 419 • Personal perspective 420 • Getting out of debt 421 • Retiring early 423 • Salvaging savings 423 • Avoiding social (in)security 432 • Paying less tax by earning less 432 • Vision 434 29. Sustaining and sustainable diet 435 • Local in-season food 436 • Minimally processed whole foods 438 • Modest consumption of concentrates 439 • Naturally fermented and traditionally transformed food 440 • Different diets for different bioregions and people 442 • Bulk purchasing and reusing packaging 444 • Wild foods, gleaning and skipping 446 • Ecological hunting and fishing 448 • The Retrosuburban Diet and bioregional food system 450 • Vision 452 30. Rearing self-reliant and resilient children 453 • Babies and early childhood 454 • Children outdoors 458 • Evaluating risk 460 • Home education 462 • Limit media technologies 465 • Dealing with rebellion 466 • Initiations and rites of passage 467 • The demise of extended adolescence 468 • Vision 468 31. Health, disability and ageing 469 • Risk and safety 470 • Retrofitting ourselves 471 • Looking after yourself 472 • Household medical capacity 476 • The medical system 477 • Alternative therapies 477 • Drug dependence 479 • Homebirth 482 • Ageing and disability 484 • Vision 488 32. Security in hard times 489 • Actively enjoy living in a safe, peaceful country 490 • Risk, reason and reaction 492 • Having a sense of humour 493 • Hedging our bets 493 • Locks, alarms and arms 494 • Self defence 494 • Mobile minimalism 495 • Network of households 495 • Secure and networked communities 496 • Communications technology 496 • Relationships with law enforcement 497 • Local government and self-governing communities 499 • Vision 500 33. Household disaster planning 501 • Rising threat levels 502 • General principles and strategies 502 • Bushfire planning 504 • Safe houses 505 • Contributing to community capacity 507 • Vision 508 34. Decision making, interpersonal relations and conflict resolution 509 • The weakest link? 510 • Benign dictatorship and natural authority 511 • Household agreements 512 • Decision making tools 514 • Vision 517 Case study 4: Sharehouse 518 Conclusion: retrosuburban neighbourhood vision 523 Appendices • 1. Retrosuburban Real Estate Checklist 527 • 2. Vegetables and tree crop growing systems summary 535 • 3. Animal systems summary 539 • 4. Retrosuburban diet 543 • 5. Integrated design examples 545 • 6. List of common and scientific names 555 Glossary 559 • Bibliography 565 • Acknowledgements 569 • Index 573 • About the author 592 8Foreword By Costa Georgiadis Finding a source of information that can equip an individual to go out into the world and deal with the ever-changing realities around them is difficult. I know firsthand that completing a degree in landscape architecture did not make me a landscape architect. I studied a range of courses concurrently including my first Permaculture Design Course, Catchment Management, Aquaculture, and even life drawing and graphic art. It takes years of experience and the synthesis of countless scenarios to turn a book into a living, breathing, valuable asset for sharing knowledge. And that is what RetroSuburbia is: a massive undertaking that happily holds the hand of those seeking a method, a manual or – could I say – a handbook for living that articulately clarifies and validates the how and why of a community-conscious approach to life. We are creatures of habit. Stand in the path of a friend, colleague, family member or total stranger in need of their morning coffee and you will know exactly what I mean. We humans, as a general rule, don’t like change. We may talk up the exact opposite but it’s just that, talk. Habit is a formula from familiarity, which over time develops into what we call ‘culture’. Culture is what we know, who we are and how we live, so if you mess with it or try to change it, you are disturbing something that runs deep. It’s like tampering with an iceberg. David Holmgren is no stranger to messing with the status quo. As co-originator of the permaculture concept, David has pushed the parcel, rattled the cage, and tinkered with the comfort zone of us humans and our settlements from the top down and the bottom up. How do we live, work, and sustain an ever-growing population on a finite planet? You don’t ask any bigger questions than this. For over four decades David has been exploring better ways to feed and house the human population peacefully, sustainably, and regeneratively. Even with these successes, and the positive inroads to changing the habits that create so much damage and destruction to our planet, these habits continue in certain sectors of society. It is out of this stalemate of experience that comes RetroSuburbia . In RetroSuburbia , David’s capacity to dissect and understand the big picture is taken to the most familiar daily habit we all share: going home. This is the very heart of everyone’s day-to-day: their house, their place, their people, their family, their community. What better place to propagate a new manifesto of change than the very collective home of the 9Next >