From: : Community_garden Digest, Vol 1296, Issue 1 > The notion of transitioning from the industrial and then > information society city and now to the organic city seems a concept/vision > worth > considering. I have a very brilliant friend who was aghast at the concept so > I have > challenged him to a test which I very much would appreciate your informing. > > Would you consider send out to some of your most verbal friends > the concept organic city as something we might consider focusing on as the > broader vision > informing the local food movement?
Response: James, this is a very thought-provoking concept. I agree with your friend. See the end of this (long) post for my suggestions. You assume that the local food movement only applies to cities. That's not true. Suburbs and rural areas have the same problems with imported food and need for relocalization. But, I'll assume we ARE talking only about cities. Cities are by definition ecological sacrifice zones. They cannot be self-sustaining. From earliest times, they always have been intended to bring together specialists in the service of the government, such as military suppliers, wholesale merchants, scribes, craftspeople, administrators, and priests/elite-identified culture purveyors, and provide the services these people need to live (schools, shops, etc.). The denser that cities are, the more land is available for agriculture on the periphery (at least until the 20th century and cities built for the automobile). The concept of the organic city is only even worth considering in relation to cities with a lot of usable land, i.e., cities built after the automobile (Detroit, etc.). Here the city fabric of the future can be, at least in theory, permeated with agriculture. The information and functional density of a city can be maintained despite some degree of local self-sufficiency, with electronic communications (though not as well as in a pre-automobile city like New York or Boston). But is this the best use of cities? Would it be better to relocate people closer to the city core? Maintenance of city services like roads,mass transit, schools and other government services is more efficient in denser areas. Whatever urban agriculturalists do in the next 20 or 30 yeras, I suspect that the ultimate result, will be that the more permeable outer areas will be ejected by city administrators and become agriculture-oriented townlets. The cities simply won't be able to afford serving them. S o, yes, the term "organic city" can be sort of applicable to post-automobile, deindustrializing cities. But that's all it applies to. For dense pre-automobile cities, ecologically, the term "organic city" doesn't resonate. Just think of the NYC garbage scows... They're not going to disappear, or even be substantially reduced. There just isn't enough land to absorb the packaging and locally recycle the furniture, building materials, etc. All of our DIY and responsible/sustainable living efforts are drops in the bucket in these cities. As to the community implications of organic/organism, I think the best we can hope for is civic pride. People are tribal and agonistic, and will always find ways to have Us and Them. Even if the United States were ethnically homogenous, think back to the 17th century English settlers: all white, all English, all Protestant, and most of them believing adherents of other denominations were going to hell. People agree that they want to live in a clean, attractive, peaceful city with good services, but that hardly fits my idea of community, which involves breaking bread together. What is a better term than "organic cities" for the "broader vision informing the local food movement"? The term "organic city" is, as I hope I've shown, too broad. "Sustainable city" is equally broad. I think that what we are trying to do is synthesize the prudent use of modern technology (including communications like e-mail, mass transit, etc.) with DIY and minimal technology where possible to reduce our footprints and foster relocalization. At this time, we advocates of today are not making sacrifices or asking anyone else to reduce their standard of living. We're just trying to get the society and economy to adopt *obviously* sensible policies like modular, recyclable computers, mass transit, green energy, and so on, instead of the distorted policies driven by bad economic theories and favors to political insiders. AT THIS POINT our vision is closer to "sensible cities" as in "pay attention to the facts!" I don't see any longer term vision informing the local food movement. In my view, if we want to mitigate the transition to a lower-energy, more agriculturally based society, it will involve bioregionalism, restricted immigration on a local or national level (to control population growth), population redistribution from the cities to agriculture (and for most people, considerably lower standards of living), acceptance of a lesser role of electronic technology in our lives, and so on. This is going to happen in some form whether we like it or not, but the unpleasantness of the choices that will have to be made means nobody wants to talk about it and I don't get the sense that many people are even thinking about it. Functionally, this vision is implicit in Herman Daly's concept of the steady-state economy: (see http://dieoff.org/page88.htm ) where the society recognizes that it can't grow indefinitely, because it's limited by the available energy, which is ultimately all solar energy. At base, even if we aren't thinking long-term, the green movement is about a change in the economic structure based on science and fairness, getting to a steady-state economy *in a humane way*. But I think "getting to a steady-state economy in a humane way", though the most accurate, is too complicated to disseminate to the general public as a broad vision infoming the local food movement. I like "the green movement" because to me it can encompass all of the above, short-term and long-term, but the term has been too coopted. Here are my suggestions for shorter but less comprehensive terms: 1. We COULD try to reclaim the term "common sense" from the right-wingers who have been using it for 20 years plus to bash government's regulatory power, but it would take a lot of repetition and reinforcement and argument to get it back. Is it worth fighting for "common sense green economy"? 2. "Relocalized green economy" doesn't have the community connotations, but they will come when it's actualized. 3. "Discorporating the economy" Anything catchier (better branded) like "the solar state" or "the land is your mother" would need a long-term marketing campaign to make it catch on and define its meaning against people who want to coopt it. Danila Oder Los Angeles _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: community_garden@list.communitygarden.org To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
