How to build a new urban structure called a “Community Return” - List of Posts

Discussion in 'Members' Systems' started by Lumbuck Thornton, Apr 3, 2014.

  1. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    I have an idea for a book/play/film about a new urban structure “Community Return”. It is visited every day by most people in an urban neighbourhood to return nutrients, recyclables, ideas, skills, votes, finances and produce to their immediate local community. They take away community garden produce, ideas, political awareness, savings, health and a better community.

    The idea is not to double up specific post conversations but list all relevant posts for future linked reference. I will insert the address of this master post into my signature so people can find their way back for general discussion and links to other related posts.

    Here Goes .....
     
  2. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    It worked. Now I will go out to related posts, and make a contribution leaving my signature and copying the address back to list on this master thread with a bit of a summary about how it would maybe fit in. You can do the same if you want to and feel free to include your comments and general discussion here also.
     
  3. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Where is this community and what are the assumptions that you are making about community that you will bring to it? I suggest this as a reminder that the WEIRD culture (Western, Educated, Industrialised, Rich, Democracy) is the minority on this planet.
     
  4. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Hi Eco4560,

    Where ever there are unsustainable or non-permaculture communities, the ones that are threatening the planet, there is going to be a need for retrofit and potentially in a hurry. Many are not prepared to alter their own urban property but may be prepared to do their bit on some common community property that demonstrates and sets up some advanced permaculture practices. Then take some of the ideas and practices home.

    I will have a chapter list and related post addresses out soon on this post that might help make more sense of this.
     
  5. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Chapter 1. Technology possessors can become technology possessed.
    Our world inside our minds and inside our technology (whether it is in our shelters, homes or offices, in our computers or in our vehicles of travel, is increasing becoming out of touch with nature.

    Cities are getting so out of touch that they could soon become abandoned if smarter alternatives are developed along better foundations. This story is about how a neighbourhood retrofits a shared space and then reinvents its self to provide a future where appropriate technology is utilised. How are humans going to more safely and healthily live and develop more closely to nature?

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...ssing-technology-and-the-technology-possessed

    Chapter 2. Setting up systems with plants that water themselves in a community garden from a water tank.

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...sumps-in-pots-beds-amp-soak-pots-around-trees

    Chapter 3. Stairway to Chicken Heaven

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...the-top-of-a-Conventional-Plastic-Compost-Bin

    Chapter 4. A Normal Day.

    There is something not right about waking up, mixing your fresh faecal material with 6 litres of drinking water in a toilet and then pumping, aerating and dumping it into the environment producing lots of greenhouse gases along the way. Then you make your way to a shower and expend half the energy of your day heating up water for you to shower. All that heat, water and nutrients go away with the contents of the toilet to generate more greenhouse gases and waste the heat.

    There had to be a better way to start the day? Smugglers.

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...op-song-video-with-some-extreme-permaculture-!

    Composting works ok to a point then they move onto making biogas.

    Chapter 5. What is an Agloo?

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org/showthread.php?17686-What-is-an-%93Agloo%94

    Out of the cold, the heat and the rain – a new moving shelter design that moves people to learn about micro climate change.
     
  6. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    So I'm hearing first world cities winding down in transition then. Is there space in the story for an appendix on a third world country bypassing industrialisation and jumping straight into sustainability via permaculture?
     
  7. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Absolutely. At the moment cities are being dismantled by economic rationalists and corporations trying to extract dwindling savings and causing the wrong type of wind down that obstructs moves towards sustainability “due to a shortage of funds” and dodgy contracts and legal arrangements. Transition should be helped along in cities but fundamentally there are some big design and contamination problems that don’t make them ideal, but they have more money and need for sustainability than rural areas so hopefully they will make some breakthroughs and surprise us. If some rival green cities are created from first principles it would be interesting to see what might happen. I am keen to discuss in my book what might happen at the household and neighbourhood level.
     
  8. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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  9. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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  10. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Revised Contents

    Chapter 1. Technology possessors can become technology possessed.

    Our world inside our minds and inside our technology (whether it is in our shelters, homes or offices, in our computers or in our vehicles of travel, is increasing becoming out of touch with nature.

    Cities are getting so out of touch that they could soon become abandoned if smarter alternatives are not developed along better foundations. This story is about how a neighbourhood retrofits a shared space and then reinvents its self to provide a future where appropriate technology is utilised. How are humans going to more safely and healthily live and develop more closely to nature?

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...ssing-technology-and-the-technology-possessed

    Chapter 2. Making More Out of Water

    Setting up systems with fruit and vegetable plants that water themselves in a community garden from a water tank.

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...sumps-in-pots-beds-amp-soak-pots-around-trees

    Chapter 3. Using the Internet to Control Pests

    When a community garden community mobilises to keep pest species of animals out of their neighbourhood by education and training the wider communities further out to use the internet to plot sightings and record control actions.

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org/s...st-communities

    Chapter 4. Stairway to Chicken Heaven

    Bulk composting by chickens at a community garden.

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...the-top-of-a-Conventional-Plastic-Compost-Bin

    Chapter 5. A Normal Day in the Future

    There is something not right about currently waking up, mixing your fresh faecal material with 6 litres of drinking water in a toilet and then pumping, aerating and dumping it into the environment producing lots of greenhouse gases along the way. Then you make your way to a shower and expend half the energy of your day heating up water for you to shower. All that heat, water and nutrients go away with the contents of the toilet to generate more greenhouse gases and waste the heat.

    There had to be a better way to start the day? Smugglers.

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...op-song-video-with-some-extreme-permaculture-!

    Composting works ok to a point then they move onto making biogas.

    Chapter 6. What is an Agloo?

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org/showthread.php?17686-What-is-an-%93Agloo%94

    Out of the cold, the heat and the rain – a new moving shelter design that moves people to learn about micro climate change. An igloo shaped vegetation structure stacked up to 5 storeys high.
     
  11. clangs92

    clangs92 Junior Member

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    I really like this idea. So would this be like a fiction story about a little community who was living in this type of permaculture lifestyle? Or is this more of a "How-to" for communities to read on how to become this type of community?
     
  12. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Hi clangs92,

    Glad you like the idea. Yes I would classify it as believable science fiction. Or world is going to have to change considerably to become sustainable but I believe using Permaculture principles it is possible to work out the formulas and mechanisms for this and make quite a story, movie or theatre out of it. I am busy at the moment making one of the new structures but it seems to be working. Enough material for an article at the moment. I will get back to updating all my posts and eventual chapters one day.
     
  13. clangs92

    clangs92 Junior Member

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    Yeah Margaret Atwood is a popular American sci fi author but she calls her genre "speculative" fiction because she thinks it is all stuff that could very well happen. I love that. That sounds like a sort of genre you could put this in. Glad to hear your structure is going well! Is this the one with a green shade part? I am looking forward to hearing more about this.
     
  14. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Working mainly in the "Chicken Rocket” prototypes at the moment. The chickens are doing everything right so far! I reckon I would call mine “Practical Green Science Fiction” so it is a little less speculative and it is only fiction until you put it together! I just love assembling new bits of permaculture that could one day be part of something much bigger and that feed off one another.
     
  15. clangs92

    clangs92 Junior Member

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    Yeah, everyone wants to be a part of something to come I think. Maybe not though. Anyway, so what are the chickens doing exactly? That is "right"?
     
  16. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    We are working on a prototype composting system where the chickens assist with the process at the top and the bottom of the plastic compost bin. They eat food scraps, perch, poo and turn the top layers of compost and scatter the bottom layers of compost looking for earthworms and other bugs that have also matured. Look at the chapter I have already started on a specific thread on vertical chicken coop that is earlier in this thread.

    https://forums.permaculturenews.org...the-top-of-a-Conventional-Plastic-Compost-Bin
     
  17. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Living in the moment and not being distressed by the concept of world wide water shortages would be my guess!
     
  18. Lumbuck Thornton

    Lumbuck Thornton Junior Member

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    Eco - Is that the chickens you are talking about? It could become quite stressful being a chicken in a food crisis!!
     
  19. eco4560

    eco4560 New Member

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    Yup. Chickens would make wonderful Buddhists. (Perhaps they are, or will be in a future incarnation.) They live in the here and now, are grateful when food falls out of the sky but not upset when it doesn't, and are able to focus intently on the job at hand without being distracted by random thoughts about something that never happened and may never happen. I'm tossing up whether I want to be a chook or a cat in my next life….
     
  20. helenlee

    helenlee Junior Member

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    :D :rofl: :D
     

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