How to Design a PERMACULTURE NEIGHBORHOOD

[Music] so it's really less of an issue than money to make a good neighborhood then it is an issue of intelligence and information [Music] the solutions that i'm going to show you right now are for neighborhood design and are embarrassingly simple and when you realize how obvious the patterns are for arranging houses roads water runoff and trees you're going to be shocked by how contemporary housing developments are so foolishly designed let's start by talking about solar orientation my drawing here is in the northern hemisphere far enough away from the crater where you have a distinct winter and summer seasons if you're in the southern hemisphere then you just flip the compass now i've drawn every house so it's elongated to the east and west and facing the south this is passive solar design 101 so when the sun is lower on the horizon during the winter the house is oriented to receive the maximum amount of winter sunlight for solar heating and natural lighting then in the summertime when the sun is more directly overhead windows are shaded by this roof overhang and the smallest side of the building faces the rising sun to the east and the hot setting sun to the west so the buildings remain cooler inside and then the south facing side of the roof is also a great place to put solar panels and then the south side of the house is also a really great place for a veggie garden where you can gaze out of your sun-facing windows and see your food growing abundantly from the compost you produce from your house and the water for those gardens can be provided by collecting rainwater right off of the roof now tanks can provide privacy between neighbors and they'll also store the heat of the sun when it's hot and then they'll radiate it back out to the gardens when it's cool but a water tank will not store all of the rainfall from roofs in most climates so there's going to be excess overflow from these tanks and there's also going to be excess water running off of all the roadways and any other impermeable hard surfaces during rainfall so if the water from the roads is flowing this direction then on the north or the shady side of the houses we can dig out a big sunken basin for all of this excess rain water to collect into so with all of that storm water runoff directed into these big basins it's a great place to plant your permaculture food forest trees can grow big and provide nuts fruits berries leaf mulch wood and habitat while being located where they'll not block the sun for the next row of houses now you'll notice that i didn't make a driveway or a garage in my drawing because in my little dream street here cars can park on the road and we don't need to build our cars their own houses i mean garages now most of these design elements don't cost any more money than in a conventional housing development like solar orientation for instance it's completely free to have all those houses on the street facing south not only that but a properly oriented south facing passive solar house uses 50 percent less energy than a house oriented facing east or west so just by facing these houses towards the sun we cut energy consumption for heating and cooling by half as far as the water harvesting goes all developments need to account for grading and drainage anyway so collecting the water to grow a food forest really doesn't cost more than underground storm drains and conventional landscape installation and for all those resources you're putting in you put into installing fertilizing mowing and watering a lawn you might as well grow your own vegetables instead so it's really less of an issue than money to make a good neighborhood than it is an issue of intelligence and information so let's blow this up for a minute and look at the bigger pattern of the street that i've drawn [Music] so here we have the same neighborhood i drew but four blocks of it house garden road food forest swale house garden road food forest swale house garden road food forest swale house garden road but this is actually not very efficient because there's double the amount of roads that there really needs to be so here we have house garden food forest swale house garden road house garden food forest swale house garden road see we reduce the number of roads by half similar to a conventional housing development but instead of a back fence or an alley where the two properties meet we put a common water harvesting swale with a community pathway and we also made the food forest and gardens bigger than we did in this other drawing so you can see i drew in this little community pathway now in this design all the excess runoff from roads roofs pathways and patios it drains into these common swales that can be planted with fruits nuts uh and different kind of awesome plants of all kinds that's actually exactly the design that you see on the most excellent housing development called village homes in davis california although many homes did place trees due south of the houses which will reduce the sunlight they receive in wintertime but winters are pretty warm where this place is located in california but why even stick to the grid at all we can create neighborhoods where all the houses are oriented for passive solar and center around the common community farm area all right so here the runoff collects in a central pond in the center of a south-facing arc of homes and the food forest swale goes around the back side of the houses to the north with the roads completely on the margins and then agriculture in the center but what if our neighborhood is not on flat land at all so on a slope a neighborhood can be built along a contour line around a water harvesting pond the roadway can be arranged so it's also directing water into the pond and houses are built around the pond which reflects more light into the buildings in wintertime when the sun is low on the horizon and shines on the pond okay so you get the idea we can keep on going and going drawing different patterns of settlement which work intelligently with the light water slope and access in permaculture every site is recognized for its unique characteristics so every design is specific to its place there's no one way to design a permaculture neighborhood and the possibilities are literally endless but one thing that's required is an awareness of how natural forces like light and water move through the landscape and a desire to create a more harmonious interaction with these forces so good luck and may you be blessed to live in a permaculture neighborhood you

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 131,234

Keywords:

Id: 9R-fAc0wl10

Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 07 2021