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=== Permaculture === | === Permaculture === | ||
- | [[Permaculture]] is an integrated, interdependent, | + | Permaculture is an integrated, interdependent, |
Permaculture also reflects the ongoing evolution of our knowledge systems and can be intepreted to any area which might benefit from such holistic design theory and practice. Human settlements, | Permaculture also reflects the ongoing evolution of our knowledge systems and can be intepreted to any area which might benefit from such holistic design theory and practice. Human settlements, | ||
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A permaculture garden is not a garden seen in nature. Though it might have a configuration like a forest in terms of stability and efficiency, it is rich in functional plants which have a strong relationship with each other and result in high yields. In urban situations, space is limited, there may be little or no access to land, and various regulatory restrictions exist when it comes to gardening or having backyard animals. Some of the concepts that people have used in urban settings which have allowed them to circumnavigate these obstacles are discussed below. They are a mix of approaches, ranging from gardening to co-parenting, | A permaculture garden is not a garden seen in nature. Though it might have a configuration like a forest in terms of stability and efficiency, it is rich in functional plants which have a strong relationship with each other and result in high yields. In urban situations, space is limited, there may be little or no access to land, and various regulatory restrictions exist when it comes to gardening or having backyard animals. Some of the concepts that people have used in urban settings which have allowed them to circumnavigate these obstacles are discussed below. They are a mix of approaches, ranging from gardening to co-parenting, | ||
- | * Rooftop gardens: Rooftop gardens are a specific urban agriculture niche set within a broader system of city gardens, enjoying their own set of distinctive benefits. Rooftops are underutilized and rarely-considered urban spaces with great potential for creative development. There are essentially [[three options]] for rooftop gardens. The first is container gardening, a less formal, highly flexible, cheaper form of roof gardening which is commonly seen in cities worldwide. In container gardening, few to no modifications are made to the existing roof structure; containers – anything from plastic swimming pools to recycled-wood planters – are placed on a rooftop and filled with the desired soil type and plants. One of the problems here is the soil in rooftop containers might thaw on a warm winter day. Further roof container gardens dry out quickly and often require daily watering unless a mulch cover such as straw, wood chips or even a sub-soil layer of newspapers and compost is used to slow down evaporation. Also, in places with extreme climate, the container material must be carefully considered. | + | * Rooftop gardens: Rooftop gardens are a specific urban agriculture niche set within a broader system of city gardens, enjoying their own set of distinctive benefits. Rooftops are underutilized and rarely-considered urban spaces with great potential for creative development. |
- | The second type of roof garden is green roofs in which the rooftop actually becomes the planting medium. This involves more intensive investments(upto two times the cost of a normal roof), but comes with its own set of advantages, including greater storm-water retention, building insulation, and the formation of patchwork urban ecosystems, which work to reverse the fragmentation of ecosystems that follows urbanization by offering temporary habitats to fauna such as birds and butterflies during their long migrations. Green roofs are constructed using a special root and water-proof membrane | + | There are essentially [[three options]] |
- | The third rooftop garden possibility is rooftop hydroponics, | + | * Vertical gardens: Commonly seen in many western cities, vertical gardens act as good insulators and a source of food. They also increase the life of the structural wall behind. Vines are one of the most common plants used to create vertical green facades. |
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- | * http:// | + | |
- | * http:// | + | |
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- | Rooftop gardens: | + | |
- | * Cool and shade buildings reducing the 'heat island' | + | |
- | * Retain and utilize rainwater, provide wildlife habitat and enhance the roof membrane life | + | |
- | * Have an aesthetic appeal creating a private haven | + | |
- | * Remove heavy metals such as cadmium, copper, and lead from runoff. | + | |
- | * Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve the air quality by trapping and absorbing nitrous oxides, volatile organic compounds and airborne particulate matter | + | |
- | * Overcome the problem of restrictive land prices and with other vertical sufaces of a building infact create more land. | + | |
- | * Are better off with respect to pests, vandalism and theft as compared to community gardens on land. | + | |
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- | Some interesting developments: | + | |
- | * In Switzerland and parts of Germany, this kind of mental shift – resulting in imagining buildings as displacing and not destroying land surface – has become federal law: developers must either improve the biodiversity of existing land, or transfer the green space that they displace to their rooftop or other building surface. | + | |
- | * Rooftop gardens are a billion dollar industry in Germany | + | |
- | * One clause of the Russian law states that authorities are obliged to help gardening associations with roads construction and repair, as well as water drainage and supply. | + | |
- | * Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright, both used roof gardens extensively in their architecture | + | |
- | * New York has established a green roof task force, which is exploring direct government support of green roofs, including tax credits and other | + | |
- | incentives. | + | |
- | * The Earth Pledge Foundation in New York strives to address sustainability at the local level – its programs include the Green Roof Initiative, which | + | |
- | encourages initiatives to green New York City’s rooftops, and the Waste=Fuel program, | + | |
- | * Hydroponics is found to be way too complex and expensive in lot of eastern countries and some of african countries too. In these places, roof gardens build out of local materials are most suitable. They are repair and maintained by the communities themselves. This is seen in places like India, St. Petersburg and Senegal. Infact, in Senegal people have devised a local solution using bricks and wooden box beds. In India too, the use of locally available cheap materials to create roof gardens is most successful. The “Doshi System” is offered as the most suitable method. It uses sugarcane stalks, collected from sugarcane juice vendors outside of his house, as biomass. This is lightweight, | + | |
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- | The most significant challenges facing roof top gardens in all its forms are issues of access and roof load capacity. These barriers are especially problematic in liability-obsessed countries like the United States, although concerns for safety and building protection are certainly valid. Lack of | + | |
- | knowledge or incentives, funding, water supply, safety, and the harshness of rooftop environments are also major barriers. Still, rooftop agriculture is slowly becoming more common, particularly in the developing world, where rooftop food production may have a significant impact on food security and income, solutions are creative and site-specific, | + | |
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- | For more details and case studies about rooftop gardens around the world, please click on the link below. This is a senior honors thesis from Cornell University. {{: | + | |
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* City farms: In New york, numerous vacant plots have been converted into city farms where communities grow there own food. These range from apples to pears. Further, by using graftign techniques, fences can be made entirely out of such plants. In Melbourne, the city farms also play the role of community education centres, which is a brilliant way to introduce kids to aspects of food production. In Davis, California, through the allocation of areas for directing rain water into catchment basins, //swail areas// have been created which over the years have now transformed into productive fruit farms. | * City farms: In New york, numerous vacant plots have been converted into city farms where communities grow there own food. These range from apples to pears. Further, by using graftign techniques, fences can be made entirely out of such plants. In Melbourne, the city farms also play the role of community education centres, which is a brilliant way to introduce kids to aspects of food production. In Davis, California, through the allocation of areas for directing rain water into catchment basins, //swail areas// have been created which over the years have now transformed into productive fruit farms. | ||
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* Cooperative Arrangements: | * Cooperative Arrangements: | ||
- | | + | * Co-Ownership of Assets: In Albuquerque, |
- | | + | * Grafting Fruit Trees: In limited spaces one can still get a variety of fruit, when using a technique of grafting. A desirable variety (early ripening, or developed for storage, etc) is grafted onto an existing rootstock, resulting in trees that bears several types of fruit (now, apples don’t become oranges, but there can be several different apples on the same tree!). |
- | | + | * Worm Composting: A plastic bin with holes can house a family of red wiggler worms, who will be happy to eat your kitchen waste (eliminating it from the urban waste stream), and these critters will make it into good odor-free compost. |
- | | + | * The BackYard Forester, Los Angeles: A nonprofit organization, |
- | | + | * The Citizen Pruner, New York: People can get trained in tree care and pruning, and be able to take care of trees, whenever and whereever needed. |
- | | + | * Chickens in a City: Depending on the location, people may be allowed to keep chickens in their urban yard! The City Chicken - a website, which includes every answer plus city by city listing of regulations for keeping chickens makes this possible! |
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+ | === Europe and India _ urban farming === | ||
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+ | see [[urban farming comparision]] | ||
=== Orient vs Occident_ traditional farming === | === Orient vs Occident_ traditional farming === | ||
- | see [[tradition | + | see [[traditional |
=== Possibilities for urban permaculture kits === | === Possibilities for urban permaculture kits === | ||
- | Note: The proposals and thoughts given below are diverse and vary from long term complex interventions | + | An important question considered by the researcher was, what are the growth symbols/ |
- | 1. To create **unbound spaces** and explore a new language for urbanism, architecture and spatial semantics. It would challenge existing perceptions and mental constructs. It would create systems for generating such spaces which draw upon the adaptive, diverse, organic, cyclical and holistic sense of ecological existence. These spaces would ' | + | see [[urban permaculture kits]] |
- | {{: | + | ==== Discussion ==== |
- | {{: | + | |
- | A more short term approach could be to develop a series of plug-ins | + | see [[site visit and survey notes]] |
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- | 2. To create **green spider kits** which result in **spatial green micro environments** at an architectural level. Initially a playful framework which can be installed on existing vertical faces of buildings and finally creating a green envelope at a local level. The framework could be made of thin, colorful bamboo rings/loops combined with a tensile wire frame which supports appropriate plantations requiring minimum maintainance. The frames could be modularly attached over and over again. Over time the spatial framework will become invisible and the plantation layer ubiquitous. Such green bubbles would gradually become **spatial green rivers**, a regular feature in urban settings and over time evolve to become self sustaining ( they might develop features to catch mist from the air and fulfill their water requirements ! ) An important issue here would be to make this kit playful and modular such that middle class families could assemble and install it at an individual household level or community level. Further the source of the plants: the seed pod, could be residing inside these homes. This would create much needed awareness and sensitivity through a participatory approach resulting in effective, collective action. In certain areas which have buildings close to each other, say around a courtyard or continuous open space, these rivers would be more like green bridges, creating numerous overhead cross linkages through which sun light sprinkles down. The bridges could also be made of a string or a wire generating and evolving in a manner depending on what form the communty wants it to take. One of the interesting possibilities could be using seed balls which are strung together and suspended between buildings. Overtime these would sprout and act as green catalysts. As humans we would provide the structure and the geometry for the plantation. Some of the plants suitable for this could be **epiphytic or air plants**, for example orchids, ferns, mosses to name a few. | + | |
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- | 3. **Green strings**: A natural fibre string (possibly jute) which holds seed balls and can be strung between buildings. With time the seeds germinate and we have suspended plantations. Interesting possibilities could result over time with plants growing at an angle or upside down. The kit could actually pick up on the way prayer beads and flower garlands are assembled in India and would be an interesting add on to the existing trend of seed-balling. | + | |
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- | 4. To have ubiquitous planting we can create a series of green tiles which can be used in a modular manner in the construction and automobile industry. _ **a green brick**_ a brick which breathes and lives like a plant_ you could call it a plant tile too: a properly designed intelligent green organic modular brick which can have a range of plants/ | + | |
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- | The form of the tiles could be inspired from the field of biomimetics and would be strategically adapted to solve pressing problems specific to urban realms: | + | |
- | * Generate fragrance to counter foul smell of urine or rotting garbage which is so common in Delhi (e.g.: using queen of the night) | + | |
- | * Predate on pests and act as repellents for termites (Lantana is a pest repellent) | + | |
- | * Absorb noise and act as acoustic buffers. They could even generate light(bioluminescence) | + | |
- | * Become a source of nutrients, vitamins and herbal medicine ( Leucus aspara cures bronchitis and asthma, Lia Indica cures ulcers | + | |
- | * Become a source of additional revenue (Flowering plants and natural herbs like acaranthus used by dentists) | + | |
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- | The message here is, //we will not step back//, we will not cut back on the scale and pace of growth in urban realms but we //can// feed life and fertility into that growth and make it a green growth. | + | |
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- | 5. The next stage of the green tile could be to create an **enhanced, biorenewable moss tile**. This could be self replicating and possibly generate electricity by acting as sun catchers. By behaving as water retainers they could also contribute to regulating the ambient temperature. Existing building skins would gradually be replaced by these tiles. | + | |
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- | 6. To provide safe drinking water through modular **water purification kits** which use water purifying plants/ | + | |
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- | 7. To create biofuel through a modular **biofuel generating kit** which uses community/ | + | |
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- | 8. Creating **green umbrellas** which absorb light to create shadow spots and spew darkness. These would work as shadow generators in places like the desert or extremely hot weather. | + | |
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- | 9. Alternatively creating **green fireflies** which when surrounded by darkness start glowing to emit light. The latter could find real use in countries like India where energy and light is in big demand. Field of research: biolumniscence | + | |
- | An interesting counter example worth mentioning is the project, 'Green Light' by by Natalie Jeremijenko of the Experimental Design Lab. The product includes an integrated solar panel to power a super-efficient LED bulb to stimulate plants of high air filtrating varieties. However, the question, if this product is really ' | + | |
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- | 10. Creating **green charkhas** to make your own yarn and further your own clothes, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi' | + | |
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- | 11. Creating a **green clock**, which uses the natural rhythms of plants and flowers as a new way of denoting and communicating time. This would be an interesting way to look at the linear progression of time in a different way. Flowers, following their circadian rhythms can prove to be interesting timekeepers. What if we could coordinate the blooming such that flowers open and close at set times of the day or connect it with the movement of leaves? Swedish botanist Carolus Linneaus first made the connection between flowers and time. The formal study of biological temporal rhythms such as daily, weekly, seasonal, and annual rhythms, is called chronobiology and the study of this could inform this design. Some of the flowering plants and their opening times are given below: | + | |
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- | * Common morning glory: 6 am | + | |
- | * Water Lily: 7 am | + | |
- | * Field marigold: 9 am | + | |
- | * Star-of-Bethlehem: | + | |
- | * Passion flower and carnation: noon | + | |
- | * Moon flower: 5 pm | + | |
- | * Evening primrose: 6 pm | + | |
- | * Fig marigold: 7 to 8 pm | + | |
- | * Night blooming cereus: 8 to 9 pm | + | |
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- | These times are accurate to Uppsala, Sweden where Linnaeus grew these plants. | + | |
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- | 12. **Seed Spot Project** | + | |
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- | Bacground: //Rural vs Urban//: During the course of this journey, Sanjeev has begun to question the proposed duality between rural and urban. Instead of partitioning and segmenting one field or one reality from the other, our true strength lies in synthesising both realities. We need to create a new reality. //We need to involve and evolve the city with the country people//. We need to create linkages. We need to have cities which have ' | + | |
- | During his travels to remote rural parts, Sanjeev sometimes wonders if the experience is real? How could both experiences be real and how could he feel a part of two seemingly different spatial, mental constructs? Certain parts of Delhi( e.g. Chandni Chowk) and Bombay(pigeon feeding spots) create a sense of absolute ' | + | |
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- | In his mind there is no difference between the real and the virtual. There is always a constant and complimentary force at play. A city's bedrock are its variables, its idiocyncracies, | + | |
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- | We could start with an attempt to declare spaces within a city as ' | + | |
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- | Some questions: What would be the defining feature of such a space? Why does it work in a place like India and not in the West? Can the Indian model be analysed, distilled and reintepreted? | + | |
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- | ==== Discussion ==== | + | |
- | | + | * **Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam** |
Established in 1663, the hortus is one of the oldest botanic gardens in the world with more than 6000 plants from all over. What started out as a medicinal herb garden, the hortus grows only pure plant species, as they are found in nature. It is also the first botanic garden in the Netherlands to display the molecular systemics of plants to everyone and continues to organize various cultural, educational and botanical activities through out the year. | Established in 1663, the hortus is one of the oldest botanic gardens in the world with more than 6000 plants from all over. What started out as a medicinal herb garden, the hortus grows only pure plant species, as they are found in nature. It is also the first botanic garden in the Netherlands to display the molecular systemics of plants to everyone and continues to organize various cultural, educational and botanical activities through out the year. | ||
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- | | + | * **Current Status of Organic farming in India** |
Organic farming is gathering momentum all over the globe and is currently practiced in more than 100 countries. Although the term ' | Organic farming is gathering momentum all over the globe and is currently practiced in more than 100 countries. Although the term ' | ||
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Further, almost all bank loans are for pure crop farmers, that is, monoculturalists. While many of these big-business farmers use harmful chemicals and processes, small farmers fertilizing their soil with recycled organic wastes are usually ineligible for insurance, much less state subsidies. | Further, almost all bank loans are for pure crop farmers, that is, monoculturalists. While many of these big-business farmers use harmful chemicals and processes, small farmers fertilizing their soil with recycled organic wastes are usually ineligible for insurance, much less state subsidies. | ||
- | + | * **Case Study Delhi** | |
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Some pointers related to organic farming in Delhi: | Some pointers related to organic farming in Delhi: |