The Permaculture City: Regenerative Design for Urban, Suburban, and Town Resilience

by Toby Hemenway

Permaculture is more than just the latest buzzword; it offers positive solutions for many of the environmental and social challenges confronting us. And nowhere are those remedies more needed and desired than in our cities. The Permaculture City provides a new way of thinking about urban living, with practical examples for creating abundant food, energy security, close-knit communities, local and meaningful livelihoods, and sustainable policies in our cities and towns. The same nature-based approach that works so beautifully for growing food—connecting the pieces of the landscape together in harmonious ways—applies perfectly to many of our other needs. Toby Hemenway, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of permaculture design, illuminates a new way forward through examples of edge-pushing innovations, along with a deeply holistic conceptual framework for our cities, towns, and suburbs.

The Permaculture City begins in the garden but takes what we have learned there and applies it to a much broader range of human experience; we’re not just gardening plants but people, neighborhoods, and even cultures. Hemenway lays out how permaculture design can help towndwellers solve the challenges of meeting our needs for food, water, shelter, energy, community, and livelihood in sustainable, resilient ways. Readers will find new information on designing the urban home garden and strategies for gardening in community, rethinking our water and energy systems, learning the difference between a “job” and a “livelihood,” and the importance of placemaking and an empowered community.

This important book documents the rise of a new sophistication, depth, and diversity in the approaches and thinking of permaculture designers and practitioners. Understanding nature can do more than improve how we grow, make, or consume things; it can also teach us how to cooperate, make decisions, and arrive at good solutions. 

Genres: Gardening, Nonfiction, Environment, Nature, Sustainability, Urban Planning, Reference

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2015

About the author

Toby Hemenway was an American author and educator who has written extensively on permaculture and ecological issues. He was an adjunct professor at Portland State University, Scholar-in-Residence at Pacific University and a field director at the Permaculture Institute (USA).

Reviews

[Wendy Wagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remarkably positive! Lots of basic permaculture information in here (including some good gardening/homesteading stuff), but with a focus on using human ingenuity and people power to get us out of the climate, economic, and environmental disasters we'll be facing in coming years.

[Dave · Rating 1 out of 5]

Any energy put into making cities greener is just a waste of energy. Toby Hemenway, and the rest of the permaculture crowd, really should know better. All efforts by urbanites should be focused on land redistribution, getting public education to train people for rural work/lifestyles rather than for office work, and abolishing the economic system's growth imperatives. He says himself that in the long-term we need horticulture-scale villages instead, so why wait? If people focus on getting the government to subsidize projects for redesigning farms, planting on contour, alley-cropping perennials, diversifying harvests, rotating grazing animals outside humanely, etc. then within a decade those deserts-in-the-making could be ideal human habitat that sequesters rather than emits carbon. Just spread out some simple dwellings on that land and people are capable of providing their own necessities locally and with simple technology. If we put all our effort into greening cities and businesses instead then the world will likely be completely destroyed before we get anything accomplished. It's not that complicated. I know there are serious obstacles in the way but if we're not even fighting for the right things then we're just wasting our time. And pointing out things like high population densities leading to more creativity shouldn't make any difference. I mean, do you really think that lack of innovation is the reason the world is falling apart right now? There's just no way I can support messages like this.

[Julianna E Mueller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Provides examples of how to prioritze living in a permaculture mindset in an urban environment and practical steps to make it happen. I appreciate the observation that city life is special because people can be so creative. Hemenway makes the point that by gathering in large numbers people can interact in diverse ways, explore opportunitie, share ideas, and adapt in ways that would not be possible individually. Another helpful point I gathered is how gardenjng in urban spaces can be an avenue for hope.

[Corey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Summary:
An interesting read that discusses cities as a necessary evil that we may as well apply good design to in order to harmonise with nature as best as possible. I enjoyed the application of permaculture principles from what you normally see (gardens) to all kinds of elements in life. As far as practical tips, there's not many, although the core tenets of permaculture are discussed in good detail. This book does lay good groundwork for why permaculture design should be applied to cities, the next step would be more ways on how!

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in permaculture.

The main message I took from this book is that permaculture design can be applied to most aspects of life.

Some notable points:
- Rural self-sufficiency rarely exists.

- 96 percent of all product innovation occurs in cities.

- Before and during every design project, permaculture designers ask, "Is what we are doing caring for the earth? Does it care for people? Are we reinvesting a portion of the design's products to support the earth and the people that make it all possible?"

- A strategy is a pattern in a stream of decisions.

- Resources can be grouped into five categories. In descending order from most to least desirable, they are resources that:
1. increase with use;
2. are lost when not used;
3. are unaffected by use;
4. are destroyed when used;
5. pollute or degrade other systems when used.

- Self-sufficiency in an urban setting is also rare, but self-reliance done as a community is more feasible.

- Human shelter should provide prospect, the ability to see what's approaching and on the horizon and refuge, a sense of protection, security; and being enfolded.

- The zones of food radiate outwards from your garden, to your neighbour's and community gardens, to farmer's markets and CSAs, to independent groceries with regional focus to chain supermarkets.

[Sara Van Dyck · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hemenway tries to squeeze so much under the umbrella of “permaculture” that his book becomes a mix of sensible ideas that have been successful, theories, generalities, and obvious or impractical suggestions. The book becomes abstract and schematic when the author presents charts, diagrams, and analysis of “sectors” or “zones.” Still, there is value in the few places where he provides an example or a story of what has worked – and how it happened. It’s encouraging to learn how Sacramento residents got permission to grow veggies in their front yards, how one Portland architect worked his way around a needless building restriction, and even how an indoor-outdoor worm bin can function in the high desert of New Mexico. Hemenway does offer some thoughts on how to start from whatever situation you are dealing with, and I greatly appreciate his honesty is showing that DIY is often not the most effective course.

[Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Su mentioned this book even though she had not read it.

I didn't read the book deeply but went through the parts most interesting to me.
The introduction was extremely high level and a bit off-putting because of it.
However, the following chapters were great and had really actionable things to do and good explanations of their tradeoffs. Most of this felt like it applied more to someone who owns a home but the general ideas were there.

One inspiring tidbit from the book was learning about the Beacon Food Forest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_...

Emergy - the amount of energy consumed in direct and indirect transformations to make a product or service

Overall, definitely recommend if you're thinking about living sustainably at multiple levels of your live (from house to community to planet).

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Continuing the trend of reading and learning more about permaculture- here's another book! I actually loved the open-ended nature of many of the author's points and suggestions, allowing the reader to impose their own context and insights onto the framework.

The water re-use chapter was extremely long and detailed, more so than the rest of the book, which just suggests to me it's a topic the author cares deeply about. I mostly skipped it. Not a renter-friendly chapter unfortunately.

I loved the chapter on "Livelihood, Real Wealth, and Becoming Valuable" which articulated many thoughts I have had piecemeal and recommitted me to permaculture as a lifestyle.

[Felicity Fields · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly delightful read. Unlike most permaculture books, which focus on the individual gardener or homesteader, this book argues for cities. As a small city / big town person myself, I really appreciated Hemenway's defense of cities and how they are beneficial.

Of course, there are more ways to make them beneficial. Otherwise this book wouldn't exist! His emphasis on applying the permaculture philosophy and toolkit outside of a garden / food growing context is refreshing and has given me a lot of be ideas and further reading.

[Evrim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Toby Hemenway'in permakultur bahçeleri kitabını çok beğendiğim için piyasaya çıkar çıkmaz aldım. Ancak Hemenway'in bahsettiği şehirler bizim apartman dairesine sıkışmış şehirlerimizde çok Amerika'daki iki katlı bahçeli, bol alanlı şehirlere yönelik. Bir gün öyle bir eve tasinirsam eminim başucu kitabım olacak

[Clivemichael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! Well presented, informative, accessible and thought provoking

[Veronika Munro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant and thought provoking. My brain is full of ideas that sprung out of the pages. I was borrowing this from the library but it is so inspiring and useful I have bought my own copy.

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely useful application of permaculture in the urban setting. Lots of resources for how to navigate a regenerative future in our cities.

[Andrew Mathis · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece.

[Jelena · Rating 1 out of 5]

One more of those books that say much about absolutely nothing! I tried reading it and was waiting for the author to explain what permaculture is. He never did. Not even throughout the whole book which i screened through searching for the meaning of what i was reading..."flowers" "circles" "zones" "leveraging" were the words repeating themselves infinitely. Incoherently and burdensomely. But, no sign of ever getting closer to any explanation of the concept in matter. And, i can't believe that the concept of permaculture is so complex to explain that it actually escapes the comprehension by us, poor common people. The same people that, however, were more than able to grasp the very difficult concepts of science, sociology, politics. But no, not of permaculture. Maybe because there is no meaning to permaculture at all? I think so. Just some common sense things dressed in difficult words with the purpose of catching the readers attention, leading it astray of the meaning that doesn't exist, making the reader feel stupid if he/she does not understand the concept that doesn't exist. I am sorry that i bought this book but at least i didn't waste more than two days in understanding that i do not want to spend twenty days in reading it. I give this book no star.

[Malia Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one took me a while to finish because I wanted to give it the time it deserves. Lots of thought provoking ideas about urban and suburban permaculture. This is a keeper and will be on the shelf next to Gaia's Garden, ready for rereading opportunities and reference.

[Bobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting, ecological way of looking at our cities.

[Mike Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

17) park(ing) day
90) stone pine
pea shrub
American licorice
Groundnut