Doing permaculture in the city can be more complex than designing a rural homestead, and one of the first obstacles many of us have to overcome is the lack of access to available land.
Here is a quick-and-dirty collection of examples for how people have found amazing and creative ways to grow food in the city, even if they didn’t own land.
Seattle. The Beacon Food Forest as an example of community sharing. They engaged in a collective process for many years, created a design, and made it happen. Here’s an inspiring map of their project:
Detroit, Michigan. The Georgia Street Community Collective in Detroit is an excellent example of a community permaculture program that has really made the effort to connect with what stakeholders need and want.
New York City has thousands of gardens in public and private places all over the city. Even though the cost of living is extremely high and people struggle with extreme poverty and ongoing threats of violence on a level much more intense than most places, you can still find food, flowers, and sanctuary in every neighborhood. Here are a few quick examples:
Want to see more Examples?
Check out the curated collection we put together for students in the Permaculture Women’s Guild online Permaculture Design Course. This article is excerpted from the “Urban Permaculture” class in that course, and at the end of every class, we have a button like this:
