How to turn your Neighborhood into a Village

we have the fewest number of community gathering places of all first world nations in the neighborhoods of the United States where we don't live in villages we live in a development mechanism propelled by the interests of developers and bankers to make money off of creating housing it's very different than a village that is created by villagers as a way of helping people to help themselves to meet their own needs thank you so the primary lesson of this model is to juxtapose where we live and the patterns that we're living in with a new understanding of how people live in villages with very high rates of participation and very high indicators of Public Health when places are designed by other people then then the people who live there and then the people who are who live there are told that they are powerless that that is a broken design so what we're doing today is engaging a typical circumstance a model that has been designed within a great imposed graded landscape that is so familiar to people who live in North America we're engaging it with a villager sensibility and we're asking ourselves how can we unlock the creativity which is resident here all the time and yet people don't tend to even speak to each other it looks completely normal and yet at the same time we don't quite tend to understand what we're seeing let's look at the facts all of the houses tend to address the street across the space where all across the country people are told that they have no power they have no ability to to take the street and make it into a space that actually brings people together that's a big issue also though they might have back doors back porches back decks and maybe even Gardens their separation is enforced by lines that say this is yours and this is mine I'm actually not decrying the idea that people have separate interests it's just that all across the country quite unlike thousands upon thousands of years of Village design there's been no effort made to create something that they would Steward in common retrofitting a neighborhood block like this to make it work like a village again consists of several different design patterns that characterize the most lovely and robust villages in the world the first one being whether or not there's a great Village Commons where everyone knows that they belong such a space tends to exist in a central location between where everyone lives so they all have an equal access to it in fact this would tend to straddle property lines and be something that brought people together across those lines but this is the first piece this is the most important piece of the village because it tells everyone that they're all part of a greater whole another one of the really significant design patterns that has to characterize a village is that when you come to the perimeter of the village that there are portals you might call them gateways or entrances that celebrate your arrival and also your passage out of the village they can be a lovely you know arch with some grapes or kiwis arching overhead something that celebrates the fact that you're entering the perimeter and it says welcome to you and it also invites you to return as you leave when people live in the colonial grid like we do the pathways tend to be long and straight and flat Americans have this challenge around obesity largely because their environments don't engage them to want to get out and move around if your environment is repetitious and monotonous it's not inviting to us to want to come outside and move around but particularly because the environment the experience of moving around is kind of almost all the same and you're relying on the differences of architecture to make it more interesting but when you don't even have places where people are outside interacting and Gathering like you would in a good Spanish or Italian Village then why get off the couch why why even go outside you're not going to have a place a destination so what we're seeing now are Pathways that link people from the gateways where they arrive in their block to the Common Center so everyone is linked notice that these lines are not flat and straight but they actually curve and they adjust as people are moving between things and the pathway can be established through something as simple as wood chips there's many different ways to to create a sense of a path another thing to think about is connecting to people across public space typically in the USA we're told that we don't have any power in the public right-of-way I can assure you in Portland Oregon that is no longer the case we now have the ability to transform Street intersections into public squares for free Beginning by painting the streets we can install benches and kiosks for free on our own 30 in a collaborative set of agreements that we've created before 1920 when the federal government decided that streets were only for cars for all the Millennia of human existence streets had multiple different kinds of uses that were enacted in that space every single day and maybe the biggest and more most important of all were the combined birthday parties of all the children that would live in an area of what we call a neighborhood they would come out into the streets and that was the space where children would play and they would be safe there is a lot that's missing trees should have tree houses in them do you live in a neighborhood without a swing within a block of where every child lives in my world I would have a sitting bench at least within 50 feet of where everyone lives so we have some examples of the kinds of things that would bring people together as a village like a community market a tool sharing Library sacred spaces greenhouses things like that benches everywhere all around the block why isn't there an art studio why isn't there a cafe why isn't there a place for a music venue why do you have to go to a music festival or a place like burning man in order to find that kind of integration and then you come home save your money to want to go away again why don't we engage in this place and bring this Rich program of the village back into our lives so just put down orange circles designating water catchment cisterns on the back corner of everyone's house because we want to catch water so the reason we're having these cisterns happen is because we're going to put in a common water course that is yet another form of Commons that will bring people's lives together and all of their rooftops will be like Hills and Valleys where rain comes down from the high places and flows down to the Low Places except with these cisterns we're going to intercept that water so that we can collect it and use it and then release it again letting it eventually get back into the landscape so that it recharges the water table I hope everyone is actually thrilled when you consider as you lay down these water courses that every time a pathway intersects with a Watercourse it becomes an opportunity for a bridge imagine walking curving pathways through an abundant landscape punctuated by bridges over water as you simply walk from your house to your friends as opposed to having to go out your front door walk a straight line turn a 90 degree angle in order to come in through another front door just to visit someone on your block okay so now I'm going to lay down some ponds what if there were pawns on your block that were fed by the runoff from your rooftops so that at the top of your water course there was actually a place with a fountain where ducks would sometimes land and frogs and dragonflies loved to dwell and as the water was flowing from that pond down toward the center your Gathering Place would also have bodies of water along the edge and perhaps those could reflect light at the end of the day as the sun was setting and these are the kinds of things that villagers actually create for their own aesthetic Legacy to leave to the Future Generations like this is what Americans are missing out on when we just think of our homes as Commodities that we liquidate cash out and move on from to somewhere that we hope will be better [Music] when you're considering an urban agriculture strategy some of the most important pieces are going to be perennial systems oftentimes in the form or form of food forests you're also going to be at the same time as you're thinking about that layer you're probably going to be thinking about supporting native species and then also annual agriculture that tends to require more sunlight tomatoes and basil and you know artichokes eggplant corn the abundance that is possible in places where we've just thought that we're going to grow Lawns that we scarcely use becomes impossibly exciting if we treat this side of the model as South then I'm going to be placing these representations of annual Gardens in light green on the south facing available Open Spaces I'm also going to be thinking of where the light is coming down both in the summertime and in the winter time because in the wintertime we're going to have much less available light where would those spots still be available where we could actually grow anything in the form of say a winter garden so I'm going to locate these in Open Spaces in a neighborhood where people work no one typically across the country has ever looked at the Sun the direction of the Sun as it rises and as it sweeps across the landscape and as it goes down over the horizon at the end of the day to consider how sunlight actually falls upon the space and I'm not just talking about passive solar gain or photovoltaic solar panels or solar hot water I'm talking about the whole sensibility around spaces and places that you'll find in villages across the world made by indigenous people so say some friends here don't necessarily like to see each other all that often one of the things you can consider is rather than having a fence you could actually have a living edge with something like what we like to call a fedge or a food hedge these can go kind of all over the place depending on the species that you're planting so these food forests can freaking go everywhere another layer in the urban environment is animal husbandry people love animals kids really Thrive around animals and learning how to take responsibility taking care of animals is a great way to grow up a kid just to mention some of the potential animal species that can easily coexist with people even in the confines of a block like this piglets goats rabbits chickens Ducks other kinds of foul and that's just to get started you can actually have bees as well in an urban environment foreign to talking about energy what we like to say is that before you start calculating how to create an Alternative Energy System first you've engaged strategies that reduce your load that reduce your need and so one of the most popular things that we've been doing on our block is actually to paint rooftops with reflective colors so that we immediately reduce our energy load for cooling by creating reflective surfaces so you might have a south facing Greenhouse where you concentrate heat and then you might have a reflective roof you could do this all over the block another strategy related to energy is the idea of installing a green roof so on a slope and on a structural system that can handle an installation of an Eco roof you could actually decide to create a living respirating surface like a green roof imagine that every single house could be generating its own power and then tied together in a resilient localized kind of network so that you always had enough so imagine that every one of these homes could have a solar hot water system as well as solar electric when we start to reconsider our lives at this scale the greatest consequence of this is that our voice and our sense of capacity and Power actually becomes Limitless and for an American that is a big deal to go from thinking that we are just a consumer or we are just a job description or we are just what we have in our bank account to feeling like you can do anything then you start to do stuff like this why not curve the pathways of Our Lives into something more aesthetic and beautiful that still enables us to have driveways and to come home but that starts to fill in the surfaces of the grid so that that arable land becomes available to us to grow and create it becomes more beautiful and interesting for our gathering needs and at the same time we no longer just travel long straight flat lines for the rest of our lives and even more than that considering the fact that where intersections happen the pathways of Our Lives come together that's the most essential pattern of the public gathering place in the history of villages in all the world so every one of these nodes should be places of community convergence so the village expands outward to connect all of the other scales of the village as we transform the whole world really so whether the pathways become curving or they have stations for people to charge their vehicles or their Community bike parking stations or they're just gathering places or sacred spaces or or what have you what if you're able to walk through your entire neighborhood and have food just growing along the edge of the primary Pathways you travel and your children travel would we have a few food insecurity issue so I'll just close by saying that the point of this game again is about people coming into their agency and realizing that anything is possible and what we thought was boring and mundane is actually potentially a context or a palette for rediscovering the ancient Village that still lives inside of all of us

Channel: Andrew Millison

Views: 1,047,416

Keywords: intentional community, animal crossing, intentional community living, intentional community oregon, how to build an intentional community, the garden intentional community, starting an intentional community, portland oregon, city repair project, mark lakeman, andrew millison, permaculture, urban permaculture, urban garden, urban homestead

Id: VoYZlyBHyQM

Length: 16min 8sec (968 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 16 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/Ok-Policy-8284]

I had no idea permaculture could rearrange houses.

[u/aykana_dbwashmaya]

Villaging is a way many of us want to go! It requires trust and risk, but is sustainable, allows sharing of resources, built-in safety net and community (someone to watch your dog, watch your kid, give you a hand). Co-housing is one way this is happening...

[u/Past_Plantain6906]

Check out what they have done in Detroit. Once upon a time people were forced to plant victory gardens. It appears a smack in the face is necessary.

[u/Syllogism19]

Mark Lakeman is behind the City Repair project. Some amazing transformations. https://cityrepair.org/

[u/Really_Need_To_Poop]

Barcelona is a great example of urban planning. Europe in general seems to have this down pretty well, But it’s also their lifestyle and cultural differences. Everyone wants a big single family house in the US, and the US is somewhat defined by its complex set of laws built for the individualist.

[u/AllMeatusMarvel]

Fences make for good neighbors.

[u/Raul_McCai]

his conclusions are bogus. H e has confused causation with coincidence in location and time.

The reason we have these ticky tack developments is obvious. People seek employment and the employment location is where they move.

Look at Virginia, the Fairfax area as a perfect example. It used to be farm land, rolling un touched hills, and then all the companies that did contracting for the US government decided to establish headquarters in DC bringing their employees by the millions.

And the result is an endless explosion of tasteless condominiums.

The construction is merely filling a need created by the people who work for companies that relocated to the area.

This guy in the video has that all backwards. He posits the developers as manipulating us. They aren't, they are just earning a buck off our predilections. His narrative falls apart the instant we don't accept him describing us as Victims of some dark forces.

[u/Complex_Air8]

None of my neighbors care about this but me. They have a shitty lawn that's it.

[u/Agitated_Teach_7484]

Detroit feels like a great opportunity to do this. There’s so much vacant space. Realistically you could just build new houses in circles like this