Add universal solar panels for electricity, biogas harvesting from blackwater, greywater collection, and community composting and you have a modern version of an ancient city.
solar panels are not regenerative or sustainable, so don't add it to a perma desing. And in permaculture there is no blackwater either, it's compost toilet. But otherwise I'd be interested about this biogas option, can you share a link about the subject? Thank you!
These are good points. People forget that centralization IS more efficient than everyone doing their own thing. It is however not as resilient nor "free". Following your question would it be better for 20 homes to have 20 black/grey collection systems OR have one local but centralized system? Is it better to have 20 solar systems along with the associated cost and maintenance OR to have 1 system that can be maintained and monitored expertly.
@@DensityMatrix1 You should read the book "tribe" by Sebastian yunger. What you kinda described is a tribal situation 🙏 it's our true way of organising ourselves. This video is also kinda presenting a "transition town" it's a movement connecting with permaculture, Jem Bendell and prof rupert read talk about it. It will be nessesary if we are to "transition" to tribal like societies and avoid total civilisation collapse, many tribal societies were already practicing permaculture methods and principles before we even called it permaculture, for example the 3 sisters. 🙏
I've seen city planners attempt to implement permie concepts. They failed to make the paradigm shift. It can turn out expensive to make and maintain, be a design failure (one was physically dangerous!) and in need of further change. Always do oversight as much as you can on your local government.
People spend money on poison and crap they don't need everyday. Don't blame laziness for poor budgeting. Governments are not going to do anything for you, it's up to people to want better and get up to start doing for themselves.
@@MrSaint3 Think working with one's neighbors is great. It builds relationships. Fosters caring. Builds resiliency. It's really smart. I try to work with my neighbors. Every bit counts.
Well first this concept has to be made with taller buildings. Detached houses are highly unefficient since they waste too much space. And second, if you want to take it to the next step then you would need to incorporate a design that includes the well-being of humans, plants and animals on an equal level and not just design for humans
A wonderfully insightful presentation, yet again! I'd love to see you do another presentation on RETROFITTING existing neighborhoods that were badly designed (like most of them).
I was about to comment the inefficient road placement right before you optimise it. We are moving to community carpooling which is way more efficient than everyone holding personal vehicles and save garage space makes a great sense. Here in Brazil, most territory is between tropics so I think adapt this format to a more "square like" homes may be more efficient to save energy.
@@HeavyMetalorRockfan9 Well, a bus mainly helps if there is only a single place the whole community needs to go. Or if there is a certain regular path people need to take. In many cases that makes a lot of sense. Getting a decent bus line is something that basically any decently sized town could benefit from. But, using a bunch of cars carpooling for mass transport is pretty inefficient. It is better when it comes to land use because then you don't need a separate garage/driveway for everyone. although, it things are too centralized then things can get expensive and impractical again. For a bit, I lived in a tiny town that did a decent chunk of carpooling for grocery trips and such. Since the closest thing to an actual grocery in town was a dollar general.
I find 'garages' are more than 'car houses'. They are hard working adjuncts. The garage is where I keep my garden implements and large canners so they last longer and remain mine. They store work tools so my vehicles are lighter during my commute. The garage also serves as a comfortable place to process veggies for winter preservation and ferments. I keep my freezer there along with a minimally heated, insulated food storage room. The crocks are cooler in the garage than the porch, house or carport. Fermenting smells are out of the house. Animals and insects remain off my crocks here while they transform. The garage keeps my bike safe from nicking. I have room for project expansion. It conserves my work energy to leave the project out instead of being forced to put everything away nightly. My garage also gives me a place where I can get in and out of my car *safely* without slipping on the wet or sometimes mildly snowy pathways of my temperate region. This can be especially important for the disabled and the elderly. The vehicle avoids damage from frost and snow removal efforts, including snow plows. Well-made garages protect from overnight rodent damage to wiring a recurring issue in some areas. My neighbors lacked a porch so they would open their garage door, and sit in lawn chairs protected from the breezes and watch and visit with passersby. --A garage even adds to social connection, who knew! Garages are the modern day suburban barn and workhorse to our self sufficiency and resiliency efforts. Narrow reasoning is increasing the distance between the haves and the have-nots, subtly taxing the environment in ignored ways. The one-(small) size-fits-all mantra drummed into the heads of students is poor logic. Assess the true purpose and usefulness before making denigrating epithets... Think your neighborhood at 6:44 is oriented wrong. It messes with the homes' solar aspects.
@@b_uppy lol. Is this what it has come to for the far right? Bad mouthing permaculture videos on youtube. Or did you have nothing better to do while you wait for the horse dewomer to kick in?
just to add to this. if you had the water storage containers be able to pump some of the water into a container in the roof of your building you could use it to flush your toilet. also you could have another tank that could be hooked up to your solar panels to slowly heat it up so you can have hot showers. this is a great way to save energy and water.
Instead of using flush toilets, you could use composting toilets. They recycle nutrients back into your garden, are far cheaper, and smell nicer since they do not mix human wastes which is what causes odorous bacteria to grow. With this system in place you could then use the water roof storage system you suggested for not only showers, but also an automatic watering system.
I love these new designs, & I'd like to see fewer new developments & more retrofits. I've dreamt about the many backyard fences already in existence being retrofitted for a rotating neighborhood grazing herd. This would take cooperation amongst the community, & that's a challenge.
In Vedic architecture, the five elements of nature are considered and vastu is used to improve mental and physical body of the humans inconcert with nature.
@@jenniferspring8741 as per vastu, the central space has to be left for the air ventilation and light to move around called as bramha space which helps in increasing flow of air water and light.
@@jenniferspring8741 there is ABUNDANT literature relating to Vastu Shastra similar to fengshui of China available on internet. Also, you can see and search for traditional Indian homes for more info on the above
One issue I have with the collection of run off water from roads is, especially in colder climates, the fact that during winter a bunch of salt is dumped on the roads. Does anyone know how these salinity levels effect plants?
@@TheRydz11 Depends on the concentration too. In high school, we had a big problem with gas growing where we didn't want it on the baseball field. We tried digging it out, grass killer spray, salt, etc and had no success.
Plants don't like too much salt, but the salting of carthage is a myth. Also many places try to just use sand for keeping winter roads safe to drive on and reserve salt for truly bad weather and important roads. (And at very cold temps salt stops working anyway)
@@gustavohopkins242 It's the same thing, except if it's attached you can easily warm it up for working in the winter. Literally ANYONE who's had to fix a vehicle in the winter will agree with me. It's all good and well to design a utopian future where you decide what people need and don't need, but people can asses their needs better than others that's just a fact. Im all for building with nature but if it doesn't fit people into the equation it's no better than the old equation that was ONLY concerned with housing people and not nature. Balance my dude that's what we're talking about here. I live in a tiny home under 300 square feet. Trust me. I need a garage. The fact that I won't be heating or cooling it 90% of the year, will offset it's foot space, and combined with my house I'm still taking up less space than your average fug.
@@shawnp8628 then by all means get a garage instead of the front garden or whatever. The whole point was for him to challenge the idea that the average person needs a garage. You might work in it but the majority of people dont work on thier own car more then a simple oil change or filter change. Is it then justified to make garages the norm just to pile peoples excess stuff, because let's be honest you see most peoples garages and its not an organized workspace, its boxes of crap to the roof. Furthermore how many more people work enough in thier garages during cold winters to need it constantly heated. If they only did work a couple hours in per couple months, then it would be cheaper to heat it per that day rather then constantly. Lastly if we get to a point where we are building permaculture communities, then we will start applying permaculture principles to society as a whole. In this term that means more efficient public transportation or biking, further reducing the amount of cars which then further reduces the actual need for garages. But even then obviously these communities would be personalized and if that means a garage for you then so be it but I feel the whole point flew over your head
@@gustavohopkins242 ONE. I did say I wouldn't heat or cool it 90% of the time. Secondly, I didn't hear him say anything about customization. I heard him call my garage a "car house". Third what I SEE is lil boxes on the hill side 🎶🎶 lil boxes made of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same. 🎶🎶 Lastly I think maybe MY points have gone over your head as you still fail to acknowledge that farm equipment also needs repaired. Where will that happen? I had an idea for a community garage and shared tools, buttttt you'd still need at least ONE garage per neighborhood. Did it go over your head that we're talking about sustainability? How is it sustainable to not fix things? How is it you get the concept of growing your own food, but not the concept of repairing equipment that aids in that endeavor? Seems to me they would go hand and hand, and yet no mention of a space to do that except to sarcastically call them "car houses". Cuz that's clever. I don't care for dining rooms, I find them pointless. A room that's heated and cooled the whole year when most people only use them for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Even still I would NEVER presume to tell others that they don't need them and call them "Holiday Rooms". If they think they need them they should have them, because if the plan doesn't take into account human needs, than as I said before, its no better than the old plan that didn't take nature into account. Balance.
In your first drawing you draw solar panels on the roofs. If those building had gable roofs instead of the hip roofs you drew, you would have more area oriented to the sun. Also, the gable end provides a place to install a vent fan to keep the interior cool.
Funny you should post this video because I was thinking of reaching out to a local “developer“ and pitching the idea of eco-Apartments, but I didn’t think to add edible plants into the mix. This is fascinating! The concept of all the backyards facing south is a great idea, the only problem I have with it is I don’t like the idea of a large community garden, because it doesn’t take human nature into account. I don’t want some “Karen- type” telling me that I can’t plant bamboo and because it’s community land going and ripping it out.
I think in systems like this you would have an 80/20 split. 80% of the food grown in community gardens where everyone help, then each daily has their personal garden for growing things they like that aren’t in the community.
Intelligence and information. 2 key concepts so underutilized... My hometown ordered a traffic management study. Mainly how to re-setup street directions to get rid of permanent bottlenecks. When the study was done they said: "What does this people know about out town if they don't live here?". That was ~20 years ago. The epitome of stupid management.
This permaculture concept will be observed by many civilizations beyond the sun, on a pale blue dot suspended in a beam of light. We are blessed. Thank you.
Long live earth! Long live plants! Thank you for your videos. Your ideas, along with many other's on youtube, allow me to imagine an utopia. Permaculture along with effective city design and flexible zoning bylaws can help create efficient livable communities that is both good on the habitat and on our wallet. At least it can exist in my dream.
Many of the small towns in my part of the central valley follow a similar pattern and you can see the amoebic off-growth of modern construction that often does not follow these principles and instead maximizes saleable units per acre. The old part of town will often have shotgun style houses arranged with knowledge of this "TEK". You can literally see the human mind disconnecting with the environment as air conditioning was added to dwellings. Its a fantastic real life historic mental map. The town centers have narrow streets and taller buildings to provide shade during the heat of the summer. Thank you for sharing and getting us thinking about our environment in an intelligent way.
"There's double the amount of roads that their needs to be." When you eliminate those roads and put in a food forest directly south of those gardens, those trees can shade out the gardens. It could work with dwarf trees, but larger trees would shade out much of the garden, and potentiality solar panels.
@@BlackSabbath1989 Point taken that it's not to scale. But full size trees can grow to be 50 feet or more. Around the equinox that means the shadows stretch 50 feet or more. Longer before and after the equinox. That is a lot of garden space lost. Most current urban yards are not much longer than 50 feet. At best you get 50 ft in the front and 50 ft in the back. If the home is 2 stories and 30 feet tall, between the shadow from the food forest and the home, you don't get a lot of full sun for annuals. You could make this work with full size trees, but it would take more space.
@@ronk4073 fruit trees don't get that big, ever.... you're thinking of nut trees or sap trees, which would be in far lesser numbers that that of genuine fruit trees
@@facelessdrone Yeah, I was thinking of nut trees. But full size apples can go well over 30 feet. I had a very old full size apple in my yard that was well over 30 ft. Not sure how tall, but taller than my 30+ ft house, perhaps 40 ft. I believe pears can get as large as apples. I think there are some tropical and semi-tropical fruit trees that get a lot taller than that, but I'm not as familiar with them. Also, paw paws are typically 20 ft, but can top out at 30 to 40 ft.
Minus the neighborhood aspect, I like what you have here. It's just that I still need a wood lot for harvesting firewood; room for chickens, sheep, and cows; and a minimum of an acre of garden space per person in my house.
Maybe you are designing this for those dense suburbs, but you are missing out by not having a Garage. Garages are great work places (if your home isn't already large) as well as another collector structure for rain water and solar. Garages are also great for vehicles in winter, if you've ever lived through one. Suburb roads need to be plowed after all, which means no street parking.
No garage means no personal cars which means less roads less cars less pollution and yes the roads need to be plowed but that’s the same as now and to replace a garage you can just have a basement and use the “garage space” as home space driving the value up of the property 3x win
Understandable but also many countries don't have garages and they get by all the same. Maybe some houses could have garages while keeping these design points in mind or maybe you'll just have to choose what you'd rather have.
Garage/workshop! Yes! And maybe the drawings of the houses were so close together for demo, but I would despise having to only have to look at my neighbors windows east and west or worse, huge tanks! Space the houses out so there is a tree or bit of garden between, then you have a decent design.
I'm going to impose two requirements on your designs: 1. Every house must have an attached two car garage. NOBODY is going to buy a house in which they park on a street, walk at night through a food forest carrying their suitcase and shopping to their house. You just aren't planning around the humans foremost. 2. Every house must have enough dedicated sun-facing roof space to enable solar charging of the house plus electric cars. The owners don't have to have two cars, but they need usable, SECURE, non-heated space to work and store possessions.
These guys always assume no crime, no differences between people, no needs beyond what they want. It's almost communist, and I wouldn't doubt they could subscribe to that. The underlying concepts are ok for some areas, I'd really appreciate if people who don't need empty grass zones could just have a fairly natural permaculture, but it's too much to ask.
I've had this idea for a long time now, to make just one large building for a lot of people, and instead of everyone having a little plot they won't ever use, cause we all know capitalism and overworking isn't going away, we can have one large garden/food forest/park. maybe even all around it. Parking lots can be designed around trees and pathways, making them more complicated for people who Have to have their car, and including a bus route that drives up to the building and back out. you could even have grocery stores and other commercial on the top middle and bottom floors depending on the size of this building. Common areas inside where things like indoor pools and other things can be built. People would have to give up having their own little garden space where their tiny dog can take a dump, but people would still move in if you make sure it remains affordable and the price isn't jacked up "just cause I can".
Ignoring 'established' allows for huge amounts of waste. 'From scratch' neighborhoods use a lot of resources. In-fill has speed saves effort and energy in its set up--all pluses. 'Established' neighborhoods are easily appropriated converting the hardscaped resources to permaculture. They create unique opportunities that teach and inform other projects. *Think* of how Brad Lancaster created curb cuts to harvest water before it escaped to drains, then think of what you can do locally...
@@b_uppy they are not saying to start building vastly more neighborhoods, but to instead create every single new neighborhood that is ALREADY going to be built, into a permaculture one, neighborhoods are going to be built either way, id rather have one done with less resources spent and at a higher living standard(permaculture) than one that uses vastly more resources, is ugly, is far more expensive to maintain, and creates a lower standard of living. When we do start to build new neighborhoods with permaculture in mind, it will be easier for others within a town or city to see the immense benefit of such a system and want to "retrofit" their neighborhood in a similar way.
@@facelessdrone You are reading a lot into his comment that isn't there. Additionally building all neighborhoods as permaculture ones suggest government enforcement and regulation. Governments usually take a broad club where finesse would do much better. Permaculture is about finesse and thinking. Government is not a thinking entity, bureaucracy proves that over and over. Permaculture is a beautiful thing. Let it breath.
I am loving learning about permaculture, but I'd like to understand how these designs support anti-islanding of the various habitat zones or wild areas. You say that this type of design is more in line with nature's water and light, but I'd be interested in how it can also support the larger fauna as well. Thanks for these wonderful lessons and visuals. :)
I believe that by keeping the villages clustered, and only allowing agriculture and forests to exist within a large space around each village, you maximize the potential animal habitats. It is important too, to design corridors for the various species to be able to shift between the areas.
This becomes significantly more effective if you’re combining it with high density development or at least combine the homes into row houses, which are thermally much more efficient.
From an urbanist perspective there's an aspect in this video that we should alter for optimum outcomes and that is on-street car parking. You have correctly realised that space within your property is valuable and far too much of it is taken up for car storage, but offloading that storage into the public realm means that we need the paved part of every street to be 2x wider than it would need to be if the street was just used for transport and not storage. Storage of private cars in public space means that everyone, including those who don't own cars, is subsidising those who do own them. Road maintenance becomes more expensive because there's more road space to maintain, utilities (water, gas, electricity, etc) become more expensive because houses need to be further apart and the streets become more difficult and dangerous to navigate.
My one criticism is lack of parking. I live in an area with a lot of victorian qnd edwardian era housinh, which has no parking because cars werent around or were only owned by the rich. This has resulted in streets with cars parked both sides of the road all the way down. This means children are crossing the road without being able to look properly and without drivers being able to see them untill they are in the cars path. It also results in vehicles getting in each others way, including delivery vehicles and more importantly ambulances which get delayed. To deal with this I would do 1 of 3 things. 1. Mitigate the traffic issue by making the roads one way and create crossing points in the road. 2. Give people a driveway that can be converted to an amenity space for those without a car. 3. Create community parking nearby, (this would also allow for greater security as the car park could fitted with cctv for easily than every driveway. Leaving the road exclusively to pedestrians, cyclists, works and emergency response vehicles and those with permits for mobility reasons. This would ensure greater access for those that need it most and make a safer neighbourhood for children :)
This is the one I wanted to see!! I love this and would love to see further into this with wildfire prevention and a larger community! One question, though, if you're taking away the homes for cars (smart...) and half the roads, where will people park? (I have back to the future going through my head... where we're going, we don't need roads.)
Think you mean to have the panels *adjusted* for latitude. There is also your personal priorities regarding seasonal variances that will figure into their angle of placement.
@@williamhad maybe if electric cars have a lot less... We can only hope..regenerative braking probably reduce his brake dust no oil no gas no antifreeze I don't think
Great video! A lot of these elements can be added to retrofit conventional developments. For example rainwater harvesting, Grey water systems, and of course food forests and vegetable gardens. The adventurous can even add chickens!
What's annoying is zoning laws and regs. For example, in my area, you are not allowed to compost. I get that some folks wont do it correctly but why not educate them instead of outright banning the practice? Smh, governments.
for those of us in the Desert would suspect you put gardens on the North and water/Trees to the south and not overshadowing the south facing roof, also including a garage for the same thing we all have them, a place to do work and store stuff you dont do in the house. who has room in a garage for a Vehicle?
One main concern I have with your development is that the houses on the north side of the street would have large road-facing windows and small yard facing windows, which most people tend not to like very much, especially in North America. I find this to be the largest reason why passive solar isn't readily adopted in my city. Also garages are a necessity if you own a car in my area, otherwise it can get hot and cold enough within the same day for engine blocks to crack (and batteries to start failing/catching fire).
In Australia, most houses are West East oriented which is the worst direction. I am convinced they do this purposely so we use more power. They cant be this stupid.
The main problem is effort. 1 effort of the home residents. 2. The increase of construction complexity and cost. climate community could be smart and use our advanced technology and free market capitalism to get around the 2 main issues. 1st Robotic Farming. 2nd Robotic maintenance. 3rd mass timber construction. 4th factory Pre-built housing sections. 5th graphene enriched concrete. 6th Karbon reinforcement Bar. 7th Home Biogas 8th Tesla roof.
I would throw in an Aquaponics/tilapia farm, chicken coop, and (since I recently saw an interesting video about it) attach a bottle to bottle beehive to some homes. Would be dope.
woot that pattern though right! do it on contour all across the land, I bet the tipping point is lower than we think to switch over to this vital source of food, and regenerative systems which can't help but replicate themselves with simple nudges from enlighten peoples. Keep growing your permaculture neighborhood out there folks, you are not alone globally. let's Go! Show don't tell too, as many references we can point to online the better.
I would love to design something like this for my extended family. In our particular situation the issue IS money 😂 Awesome concepts though, and I'm really hoping (optimistically of course) that this becomes the future!
How would permaculture be possible in a dense business/commercial district of a city? You tackle residential areas pretty well here but most metropolitan areas have heavy foot, vehicle traffic, dense building. How would you reconcile nature & modern architecture in that circumstance?
The only bit I’m concerned with is, will the water being seeded into the ground from the swales, impact the home foundations over time? What if any steps can be taken to minimize any potential structure issues? Otherwise this is great I live in an EQ prone area so solid foundations are critical when the earth decides to move
I think it depends on the area you live - precipitation, soil conditions, exact structure of the houses. I think if you share this info, you can get exact answer.
From what I've read, so long as water harvesting basins are more than 10ft away from the foundation and so long as all water drains away from the house(ie house is upslope from the basin) you shouldn't have problems.
The basins are sunken quite a bit and sloped away from the houses, but it would depend on your particular soil type and moisture conditions. The most prominent example of this design that I show in Davis, CA has sandy well drained valley-bottom soils. If you were in a really swampy area with a shallow water table, then you'd need to think about that aspect differently.
@@amillison I have another question about the swales, If they are being fed with water runoff from the road how do you stop contamination? (i.e. motor oil)
A person that has written a lot on the subject is Brad Lancaster. He talks about sloping away excess while harvesting the optimum rainwater. Buy his set of books called Rainwater Harvesting. Really interesting and informative.
Interesting ideas, and I agree with the basic concepts of the video, but this design leaves out crucial elements needed for a healthy neighborhood and treats it somewhat as a isolated system, to the point that many modifications would be needed as time went on to make it more sustainable and efficient. First I feel like it was implied that those habitations are for single families, which is not a very sustainable way to house people (in many cases) and far from viable for the vast majority of places and populations. Maybe the intent of the video was to just deal with this specific case, but the fact that many places face population pressure and most people live in urban areas, makes it almost obligatory to include some sustainable solutions for denser habitation in a video about neighborhood design. Then, if you start putting more people in this system, comes the question of how would it deal with bigger demands for water , food , energy and waste management. Also how would it accomodate other land uses besides housing, like commerce and services, other workplaces, storage etc which the local population would need nearby. This also makes necessary a mixed use of the land, in order to increase sustainability and quality of life. And finally, that all necessitates to include some solutions for mass transit in the design, because every place is necessarily connected to other places far and near, and people would need and want to go there. If the objective is sustainablity and quality of life, cars should receive the least amount of space possible, and other ways of thansportation should be intimately integrated with the neighborhood. How would it accomodate trains, trams, subways, buses etc? Of course, maybe all that is outside the scope of the video, which is okay. But some consideration should be given to these and other elements, or else we are left with a platonic ideal of a neighborhood design, appliable only in rare cases in the real world. Having said that, I really enjoy your content, and it gives me inspiration for where and how I'm gonna live my life in the future, thank you for your work! PS: This made me realize that the intersection of permaculture and urbanism is a still little explored vast well of techniques, solutions and design possibilities. If people from both fields worked more together, the advancements would be tremendous.
you are lacking any way to store the equipment for those gardens. I know we don't need garages for the cars but we at least need a shed and maybe a greenhouse for starts. but i like your idea
@Andrew Millison Andrew.....Pookie : ) Hope I don t offend you by suggesting you show us the real Life pictures first. I think it might make it easier to grasp ,comprehend and remember more details of your subject. Like cooking shows do? Whatever you decide dearest man you are for doing such a great teaching! I'm spreading this info around in this area... Sending you a great puff of energy beneath those angel wings of yours Andrew man person with a Grand Mission !! Bless you Bless you Bless you with the very best support Life has to offer, in delivering this fantastic plan. Cheers my GOOd man.
I like some of the ideas presented. However living in the northern hemisphere with a lot of snow I can say with some confidence that this design would not work here. Driveways and garages are absolutely necessary. In the winter months it is illegal to park in the street because the snow plow's need to be able to clear the roads of snow to allow for free movement and emergency vehicle access. Garages keep the snow and ice off your car / truck and allow you to do maintenance in relative comfort. I couldn't imagine needing to change a tire or work under the car in one of the many blizzards we get here. One day energy efficient technology permitting I think heated roads / sidewalks that could melt the snow / ice and drain the water into the proposed cisterns may solve that issue.
Yea so, you're mostly correct but you are missing some of the basic interdisciplinary principles of permacultural/low impact design (LID) and environmental planning. house spacing should be narrow frontage and deep, this provides increased population density and economic return on infrastructural costs as well as a more walkable neighbourhood. This also serves to decrease environmental impact per capita and improves biodiversity by elongating green fringe zones, improving impermeable to permeable surface area ratios, places more of your yard space further from the heat of the road, reduces energy costs to buildings I.E shade from adjacent structures and reduces southern exposure as per your suggested alignment. However.. Orientation also should not be based on compass points. I'll skip how local watersheds should be accounted for. The road grid should be largely determined based on 2 principles, access for transit maximizing permeability of human movement into/out of adjacent areas and to the existing topography of the area to utilize natural drainage and minimize the amount of bulldozing. Quick aside - the bulldozing of agricultural land for developments involves stripping all topsoil into large piles where it then dies and looses what little viability it had, brutal compaction of sub soils leading to much higher rates of foundational failures in structures from water. The two aforementioned principles encourage diverse design and environmental diversity over cookie cutter solutions this in turn favours property owners as individuals over big developers and banks. Keep up the good thinking!
The problem is people who care about plants generally don’t have enough money to buy a whole neighborhood and construct a whole neighborhood. Hopefully it happens soon I love this idea
Looks like it could be a HOA nightmare if the community gets too big. It's quite nice though. As long as everyone subscribes to the underlying principles, it's great.
@Jamie in that case the design with central gardens would be best. Then the members most interested in gardening can manage the whole space. Personally, I think every person should grow a few vegetables. For me gardening was the gateway to caring about the health of the earth.
Great idea, however it's not going to work. Excepting for the first row of houses & the reason is that once you put in trees that will growv taller than the Roof, you will start to shade the Solar panels on your Roof and as your tree grows, possibly the whole block of Neighbours! A ow of Mature Royal Palms, for I.e. can throw Shade up yo a full two blocks as the Sun sets! You can only grow your Mature trees on the South East to South West side of your house in the Southern Hemisphere, reverse for Northern and the can only be tall shrubs like Camelia for e.g. otherwise when the Sun is in the North, North West you will shade your Neighbours Solars. Best to have a Grove of Nut Trees as a Communal Park at the very last Rows' of houses, on everyone's South, East side. Before that have a grasses playground area with low growing Communal Vegie Gardens, Then Row's of Fruit Thees, then the road. This is so the Trees trap the heat from the Solid Surface, and doesn't heat everyone's homes, with reflected heat!
In your dream world no one fixes their own cars in their garage, and they get ticketed if they have Friends over. I get the principle. But I am so glad we have people that think of beauty and other important things. Also I have a garden that is tiny and yet it’s more than I can handle. Not everyone is a farmer.
It took me longer than I’d prefer to admit to figure out how he was writing in the proper orientation while on the other side of the board. 😅 I’m still not positive that this is how he’s doing it but I think he’s writing normally and simply reversing the recorded image.
My only contention with this concept is that it assumes non-homogeneous people groups would be able to live this closely and share the same food sources and spaces. It is efficient, beautiful, functional... and impractical. It is also highly socialized. The average person seeks their own best self interest and that of their kin first. It is difficult to combat human nature. Also, it doesn't take into account personal differences in life-style preferences. My "car house" is actually my gym. My cars go in the drive way. And while it might be cute to point out that we could park on the side of the road, you would need to double the width of the roads so that cars can weave between all the cars that are now on the roads. Additionally, much of this takes a great deal of technical knowledge. In a community this tight, even 10% of the populace mishandling their "waste" could have catastrophic consequences for the entire population.
I'll start off by saying I raise: chickens, geese, ducks. Have acres of gardens following different permaculture principles (hugelkultur, swales) and have starts of food forest. Collect rainwater, heat house with firewood yadda yadda yadda I don't think most people want to do any of this stuff. I think if you are going to ask people to garden it's better to do some sort of HOA where you pay a gardener. Likewise better to provide centralized (but local) power creation. I think everyone having their own version of a system is not as cost effective as sharing them between say 10 - 20 homes. Who gets the food from the food forest? Who has to maintain it? Prior to modern, industrial cultures shared resources had extremely complex (but organic) relationships for determining use. Also, I have a dual car garage. No cars are parked in them. I used them for workshops (welding, machining, wood working). Am I allowed a workshop?
hugelkultur and swales are not permaculture principles. These ones are techniques (not permaculture techniques as there is no such a thing) that you can use if it fits to the principles. In Slovenia, if you don't have a garden, you are suspicious - that something is wrong with you... So most of the people where? Transporting energy is very expensive and you just loose on the way. Some answers to your questions start with the permie mindset and of course, that you can't force to anyone. The last question you should ask from your child? ;-)
@@ginak5715 What a way to not answer a single question. Did you get a little dopamine hit from acting snotty on the internet. I hope so. You wasted your time and mine.
@@williamhad Quiet down millenial dopamine fiend. Boomer = Adult that has serious question about the topic and haven't flitted onto the next topic that the SCREEN presents to them. Do you want me to flex my acreage on you? Say the word I'll drop on you how I live much closer to the principles in the video.
I wonder how Andrew has time to make videos he must be fighting off governments from around the world. If I were a bill gates type I'd hand this guy a blank check book in a second. Also his concentrating while drawing face is mad adorable!
Yeah I wish! If governments were so interested in this, then we wouldn't be in the mess we're in! I'm still waiting for Bill Gate's billion dollar check :-)
@@amillison Well people just dont want it. we already have community food forests, those are called parks, and they have to remove all the rotten fruits every year because nobody wants them.
@@nox5555 exactly - Seattle implemented food forests and it was a massive failure because they had to hire more people to clean up rotten fruit, nobody wants to live next to a pile of rotting fruits, and you're asking people to do labour at the end of the day, if you rent it out to be managed, then why have it be there at all? If you have one parent staying at home with kids its fine, but a large reason for our absolute dependence on companies stems from the fact that people have to spend 9-10 hours a day minimum outside of the house, and there simply isn't time for people to manage their properties in our economic system.
Lol New housing developments here in Melbourne are all on small blocks with absolutely no front or back yard while still keeping astronomical costs. :D
Definitely need a garage to preserve cars in areas like Texas where wind, sand, sun, extreme heat, and ice can really degrade a car that’s left exposed. Also, too many cars on the street impedes emergency vehicles and invites vandalism and theft.
Love it, and would love for stuff like this to be the new norm…but one can only dream of this in capitalistic, conservative America. Won’t see this in our lifetime 😢
This is actually very conservative in mentality. But it's very anti Capitalist. Somehow, capitalism convinced conservatives they were compatible. They aren't.
Add universal solar panels for electricity, biogas harvesting from blackwater, greywater collection, and community composting and you have a modern version of an ancient city.
solar panels are not regenerative or sustainable, so don't add it to a perma desing. And in permaculture there is no blackwater either, it's compost toilet. But otherwise I'd be interested about this biogas option, can you share a link about the subject? Thank you!
These are good points. People forget that centralization IS more efficient than everyone doing their own thing. It is however not as resilient nor "free".
Following your question would it be better for 20 homes to have 20 black/grey collection systems OR have one local but centralized system? Is it better to have 20 solar systems along with the associated cost and maintenance OR to have 1 system that can be maintained and monitored expertly.
@@DensityMatrix1 You should read the book "tribe" by Sebastian yunger.
What you kinda described is a tribal situation 🙏 it's our true way of organising ourselves.
This video is also kinda presenting a "transition town" it's a movement connecting with permaculture, Jem Bendell and prof rupert read talk about it. It will be nessesary if we are to "transition" to tribal like societies and avoid total civilisation collapse, many tribal societies were already practicing permaculture methods and principles before we even called it permaculture, for example the 3 sisters. 🙏
@@ginak5715
They do add to personal resiliency which is an important concept in permaculture.
@@DensityMatrix1
A lot of that depends on your neighbors...
This should be common knowledge for all city planners, architects, and especially government - amazing concept!
I've seen city planners attempt to implement permie concepts. They failed to make the paradigm shift.
It can turn out expensive to make and maintain, be a design failure (one was physically dangerous!) and in need of further change.
Always do oversight as much as you can on your local government.
People spend money on poison and crap they don't need everyday.
Don't blame laziness for poor budgeting.
Governments are not going to do anything for you, it's up to people to want better and get up to start doing for themselves.
And neighbors
@@MrSaint3
Think working with one's neighbors is great. It builds relationships. Fosters caring. Builds resiliency. It's really smart.
I try to work with my neighbors. Every bit counts.
Well first this concept has to be made with taller buildings. Detached houses are highly unefficient since they waste too much space. And second, if you want to take it to the next step then you would need to incorporate a design that includes the well-being of humans, plants and animals on an equal level and not just design for humans
Garage is a must have especially in winter where roads need to be clear to remove snow/trees that fell/clean the sidelines.
A wonderfully insightful presentation, yet again! I'd love to see you do another presentation on RETROFITTING existing neighborhoods that were badly designed (like most of them).
I was about to comment the inefficient road placement right before you optimise it. We are moving to community carpooling which is way more efficient than everyone holding personal vehicles and save garage space makes a great sense. Here in Brazil, most territory is between tropics so I think adapt this format to a more "square like" homes may be more efficient to save energy.
community carpooling sure sounds like a bus
The best house shape for you might be circular.
The Indian bungalow with breezes going underneath?
That with white roofs and heat escapes on the top of walls (heat rises) sounds wonderful for your area.
@@HeavyMetalorRockfan9 Well, a bus mainly helps if there is only a single place the whole community needs to go. Or if there is a certain regular path people need to take. In many cases that makes a lot of sense.
Getting a decent bus line is something that basically any decently sized town could benefit from.
But, using a bunch of cars carpooling for mass transport is pretty inefficient. It is better when it comes to land use because then you don't need a separate garage/driveway for everyone. although, it things are too centralized then things can get expensive and impractical again.
For a bit, I lived in a tiny town that did a decent chunk of carpooling for grocery trips and such. Since the closest thing to an actual grocery in town was a dollar general.
I find 'garages' are more than 'car houses'. They are hard working adjuncts. The garage is where I keep my garden implements and large canners so they last longer and remain mine. They store work tools so my vehicles are lighter during my commute. The garage also serves as a comfortable place to process veggies for winter preservation and ferments. I keep my freezer there along with a minimally heated, insulated food storage room. The crocks are cooler in the garage than the porch, house or carport. Fermenting smells are out of the house. Animals and insects remain off my crocks here while they transform.
The garage keeps my bike safe from nicking. I have room for project expansion. It conserves my work energy to leave the project out instead of being forced to put everything away nightly.
My garage also gives me a place where I can get in and out of my car *safely* without slipping on the wet or sometimes mildly snowy pathways of my temperate region. This can be especially important for the disabled and the elderly. The vehicle avoids damage from frost and snow removal efforts, including snow plows.
Well-made garages protect from overnight rodent damage to wiring a recurring issue in some areas.
My neighbors lacked a porch so they would open their garage door, and sit in lawn chairs protected from the breezes and watch and visit with passersby. --A garage even adds to social connection, who knew!
Garages are the modern day suburban barn and workhorse to our self sufficiency and resiliency efforts. Narrow reasoning is increasing the distance between the haves and the have-nots, subtly taxing the environment in ignored ways. The one-(small) size-fits-all mantra drummed into the heads of students is poor logic. Assess the true purpose and usefulness before making denigrating epithets...
Think your neighborhood at 6:44 is oriented wrong. It messes with the homes' solar aspects.
AND BABY JESUS WAS BORN IN A GARAGE!!! How dare you denigrate the sanctity of my car room Andrew. ruclips.net/video/HaoySOGlZ_U/видео.html
@@tray2637
Using mockery reflects badly on you, and your strawman argument.
Think Andrew would be insulted, even...
@@b_uppy When are people going to think of the "sometimes snowy pathways" ruclips.net/video/NZNHUzPzGMY/видео.html
@@tray2637
When they've happened for one. I do. It is a concern for elderly and disabled people also.
@@b_uppy lol. Is this what it has come to for the far right? Bad mouthing permaculture videos on youtube. Or did you have nothing better to do while you wait for the horse dewomer to kick in?
just to add to this. if you had the water storage containers be able to pump some of the water into a container in the roof of your building you could use it to flush your toilet. also you could have another tank that could be hooked up to your solar panels to slowly heat it up so you can have hot showers. this is a great way to save energy and water.
Instead of using flush toilets, you could use composting toilets. They recycle nutrients back into your garden, are far cheaper, and smell nicer since they do not mix human wastes which is what causes odorous bacteria to grow. With this system in place you could then use the water roof storage system you suggested for not only showers, but also an automatic watering system.
@@facelessdrone humanure needs to be composted for five years to be safe
I love these new designs, & I'd like to see fewer new developments & more retrofits. I've dreamt about the many backyard fences already in existence being retrofitted for a rotating neighborhood grazing herd. This would take cooperation amongst the community, & that's a challenge.
In Vedic architecture, the five elements of nature are considered and vastu is used to improve mental and physical body of the humans inconcert with nature.
That sounds interesting! How would you add to Andrew's design to fulfill Vedic architecture?
@@jenniferspring8741 as per vastu, the central space has to be left for the air ventilation and light to move around called as bramha space which helps in increasing flow of air water and light.
@@jenniferspring8741 there is ABUNDANT literature relating to Vastu Shastra similar to fengshui of China available on internet. Also, you can see and search for traditional Indian homes for more info on the above
One issue I have with the collection of run off water from roads is, especially in colder climates, the fact that during winter a bunch of salt is dumped on the roads. Does anyone know how these salinity levels effect plants?
Horibly they just die. Great example is carthage after Rome Burn it and use Salt so nothing will grow.
@@TheRydz11 Depends on the concentration too. In high school, we had a big problem with gas growing where we didn't want it on the baseball field. We tried digging it out, grass killer spray, salt, etc and had no success.
I wonder if we could design roads that do not need this salt.
Otherwise we just use salt plants.
a lot of places ban salting roads
Plants don't like too much salt, but the salting of carthage is a myth.
Also many places try to just use sand for keeping winter roads safe to drive on and reserve salt for truly bad weather and important roads. (And at very cold temps salt stops working anyway)
The way u teach visually is amazing from the drawings to the cool sandbox demonstrations great job keep up the good work
Garages are great spaces for working on equipment, like say, farm equipment. They're not just car houses, they are work spaces.
Then get a shed....
@@gustavohopkins242 It's the same thing, except if it's attached you can easily warm it up for working in the winter. Literally ANYONE who's had to fix a vehicle in the winter will agree with me. It's all good and well to design a utopian future where you decide what people need and don't need, but people can asses their needs better than others that's just a fact. Im all for building with nature but if it doesn't fit people into the equation it's no better than the old equation that was ONLY concerned with housing people and not nature. Balance my dude that's what we're talking about here. I live in a tiny home under 300 square feet. Trust me. I need a garage. The fact that I won't be heating or cooling it 90% of the year, will offset it's foot space, and combined with my house I'm still taking up less space than your average fug.
@@shawnp8628 then by all means get a garage instead of the front garden or whatever. The whole point was for him to challenge the idea that the average person needs a garage.
You might work in it but the majority of people dont work on thier own car more then a simple oil change or filter change. Is it then justified to make garages the norm just to pile peoples excess stuff, because let's be honest you see most peoples garages and its not an organized workspace, its boxes of crap to the roof. Furthermore how many more people work enough in thier garages during cold winters to need it constantly heated. If they only did work a couple hours in per couple months, then it would be cheaper to heat it per that day rather then constantly.
Lastly if we get to a point where we are building permaculture communities, then we will start applying permaculture principles to society as a whole. In this term that means more efficient public transportation or biking, further reducing the amount of cars which then further reduces the actual need for garages.
But even then obviously these communities would be personalized and if that means a garage for you then so be it but I feel the whole point flew over your head
@@gustavohopkins242 ONE. I did say I wouldn't heat or cool it 90% of the time. Secondly, I didn't hear him say anything about customization. I heard him call my garage a "car house". Third what I SEE is lil boxes on the hill side 🎶🎶 lil boxes made of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same. 🎶🎶 Lastly I think maybe MY points have gone over your head as you still fail to acknowledge that farm equipment also needs repaired. Where will that happen? I had an idea for a community garage and shared tools, buttttt you'd still need at least ONE garage per neighborhood. Did it go over your head that we're talking about sustainability? How is it sustainable to not fix things? How is it you get the concept of growing your own food, but not the concept of repairing equipment that aids in that endeavor? Seems to me they would go hand and hand, and yet no mention of a space to do that except to sarcastically call them "car houses". Cuz that's clever. I don't care for dining rooms, I find them pointless. A room that's heated and cooled the whole year when most people only use them for Christmas and Thanksgiving. Even still I would NEVER presume to tell others that they don't need them and call them "Holiday Rooms". If they think they need them they should have them, because if the plan doesn't take into account human needs, than as I said before, its no better than the old plan that didn't take nature into account. Balance.
You know there is the option of designing a metropolitan area that doesn't necessitate the use of cars...
In your first drawing you draw solar panels on the roofs. If those building had gable roofs instead of the hip roofs you drew, you would have more area oriented to the sun. Also, the gable end provides a place to install a vent fan to keep the interior cool.
Shed roofs would allow even more.
Funny you should post this video because I was thinking of reaching out to a local “developer“ and pitching the idea of eco-Apartments, but I didn’t think to add edible plants into the mix. This is fascinating! The concept of all the backyards facing south is a great idea, the only problem I have with it is I don’t like the idea of a large community garden, because it doesn’t take human nature into account. I don’t want some “Karen- type” telling me that I can’t plant bamboo and because it’s community land going and ripping it out.
Hose Karen down and tell her to mind her own business
@@johnransom1146 LMAO 🤣
I think in systems like this you would have an 80/20 split. 80% of the food grown in community gardens where everyone help, then each daily has their personal garden for growing things they like that aren’t in the community.
Highly satisfied that I found your channel and can learn from you. Thanks for posting.
grow gardens not lawns
I’m very excited to be working with a design client on a full community design. We need permaculture development and redevelopment!
Where and when will your design be implemented??
You are the kind of people that we need in our government key positions for land management of the United States.
Exceptional and inspiritional content like this gives me hope, thank you very much.
I'm glad you enjoyed it, thank you! :)
A local shared food forest sounds so amazing... I wish this was the case every where
On Latam is practically dangerous.
i literally have been drawing this design from seeing an ocean front in South Carolina!
Andrew Millison for president! Town planners, listen to this man!
Intelligence and information. 2 key concepts so underutilized...
My hometown ordered a traffic management study. Mainly how to re-setup street directions to get rid of permanent bottlenecks. When the study was done they said: "What does this people know about out town if they don't live here?".
That was ~20 years ago. The epitome of stupid management.
This permaculture concept will be observed by many civilizations beyond the sun, on a pale blue dot suspended in a beam of light.
We are blessed. Thank you.
Thank you for making your hope-filled and informative videos, to whet the appetite of people who want to explore these ideas further
It's my pleasure! Thank you for watching! :)
Long live earth! Long live plants!
Thank you for your videos. Your ideas, along with many other's on youtube, allow me to imagine an utopia.
Permaculture along with effective city design and flexible zoning bylaws can help create efficient livable communities that is both good on the habitat and on our wallet. At least it can exist in my dream.
Many of the small towns in my part of the central valley follow a similar pattern and you can see the amoebic off-growth of modern construction that often does not follow these principles and instead maximizes saleable units per acre. The old part of town will often have shotgun style houses arranged with knowledge of this "TEK". You can literally see the human mind disconnecting with the environment as air conditioning was added to dwellings. Its a fantastic real life historic mental map. The town centers have narrow streets and taller buildings to provide shade during the heat of the summer. Thank you for sharing and getting us thinking about our environment in an intelligent way.
"There's double the amount of roads that their needs to be." When you eliminate those roads and put in a food forest directly south of those gardens, those trees can shade out the gardens. It could work with dwarf trees, but larger trees would shade out much of the garden, and potentiality solar panels.
i would assume the garden is not to scale and the property is much longer on the east and west facing sides.
@@BlackSabbath1989 Point taken that it's not to scale. But full size trees can grow to be 50 feet or more. Around the equinox that means the shadows stretch 50 feet or more. Longer before and after the equinox. That is a lot of garden space lost. Most current urban yards are not much longer than 50 feet. At best you get 50 ft in the front and 50 ft in the back. If the home is 2 stories and 30 feet tall, between the shadow from the food forest and the home, you don't get a lot of full sun for annuals. You could make this work with full size trees, but it would take more space.
@@ronk4073 yeah better to prone those trees, harvesting fruits 50 feet in the air is not so much fun either...
@@ronk4073 fruit trees don't get that big, ever.... you're thinking of nut trees or sap trees, which would be in far lesser numbers that that of genuine fruit trees
@@facelessdrone Yeah, I was thinking of nut trees. But full size apples can go well over 30 feet. I had a very old full size apple in my yard that was well over 30 ft. Not sure how tall, but taller than my 30+ ft house, perhaps 40 ft. I believe pears can get as large as apples. I think there are some tropical and semi-tropical fruit trees that get a lot taller than that, but I'm not as familiar with them. Also, paw paws are typically 20 ft, but can top out at 30 to 40 ft.
This channel Will give unlimited benefit for all of the world.. Great teacher 😁👍
Minus the neighborhood aspect, I like what you have here. It's just that I still need a wood lot for harvesting firewood; room for chickens, sheep, and cows; and a minimum of an acre of garden space per person in my house.
This is one of the most important videos on this topic. Thank you.
Maybe you are designing this for those dense suburbs, but you are missing out by not having a Garage. Garages are great work places (if your home isn't already large) as well as another collector structure for rain water and solar. Garages are also great for vehicles in winter, if you've ever lived through one. Suburb roads need to be plowed after all, which means no street parking.
No garage means no personal cars which means less roads less cars less pollution and yes the roads need to be plowed but that’s the same as now and to replace a garage you can just have a basement and use the “garage space” as home space driving the value up of the property 3x win
I'm with you. A large, secure, open, non-climate-controlled space is supremely useful and enjoyable.
Understandable but also many countries don't have garages and they get by all the same. Maybe some houses could have garages while keeping these design points in mind or maybe you'll just have to choose what you'd rather have.
Community garages you can book?
Garage/workshop! Yes! And maybe the drawings of the houses were so close together for demo, but I would despise having to only have to look at my neighbors windows east and west or worse, huge tanks! Space the houses out so there is a tree or bit of garden between, then you have a decent design.
I'm going to impose two requirements on your designs: 1. Every house must have an attached two car garage. NOBODY is going to buy a house in which they park on a street, walk at night through a food forest carrying their suitcase and shopping to their house. You just aren't planning around the humans foremost.
2. Every house must have enough dedicated sun-facing roof space to enable solar charging of the house plus electric cars. The owners don't have to have two cars, but they need usable, SECURE, non-heated space to work and store possessions.
These guys always assume no crime, no differences between people, no needs beyond what they want. It's almost communist, and I wouldn't doubt they could subscribe to that. The underlying concepts are ok for some areas, I'd really appreciate if people who don't need empty grass zones could just have a fairly natural permaculture, but it's too much to ask.
I've had this idea for a long time now, to make just one large building for a lot of people, and instead of everyone having a little plot they won't ever use, cause we all know capitalism and overworking isn't going away, we can have one large garden/food forest/park. maybe even all around it. Parking lots can be designed around trees and pathways, making them more complicated for people who Have to have their car, and including a bus route that drives up to the building and back out. you could even have grocery stores and other commercial on the top middle and bottom floors depending on the size of this building. Common areas inside where things like indoor pools and other things can be built. People would have to give up having their own little garden space where their tiny dog can take a dump, but people would still move in if you make sure it remains affordable and the price isn't jacked up "just cause I can".
Very cool. Great information 👍🏾👍🏾
Love it! More and more people are def wanting to live better and in harmony with the earth and other animals and plant kingdoms! 👽✨💞
this is great for retrofitting existing suburbs but i think we could do a lot better if we started from scratch
Ignoring 'established' allows for huge amounts of waste. 'From scratch' neighborhoods use a lot of resources. In-fill has speed saves effort and energy in its set up--all pluses. 'Established' neighborhoods are easily appropriated converting the hardscaped resources to permaculture. They create unique opportunities that teach and inform other projects. *Think* of how Brad Lancaster created curb cuts to harvest water before it escaped to drains, then think of what you can do locally...
@@b_uppy they are not saying to start building vastly more neighborhoods, but to instead create every single new neighborhood that is ALREADY going to be built, into a permaculture one, neighborhoods are going to be built either way, id rather have one done with less resources spent and at a higher living standard(permaculture) than one that uses vastly more resources, is ugly, is far more expensive to maintain, and creates a lower standard of living. When we do start to build new neighborhoods with permaculture in mind, it will be easier for others within a town or city to see the immense benefit of such a system and want to "retrofit" their neighborhood in a similar way.
@@facelessdrone
You are reading a lot into his comment that isn't there. Additionally building all neighborhoods as permaculture ones suggest government enforcement and regulation. Governments usually take a broad club where finesse would do much better. Permaculture is about finesse and thinking. Government is not a thinking entity, bureaucracy proves that over and over.
Permaculture is a beautiful thing. Let it breath.
I am loving learning about permaculture, but I'd like to understand how these designs support anti-islanding of the various habitat zones or wild areas. You say that this type of design is more in line with nature's water and light, but I'd be interested in how it can also support the larger fauna as well. Thanks for these wonderful lessons and visuals. :)
I believe that by keeping the villages clustered, and only allowing agriculture and forests to exist within a large space around each village, you maximize the potential animal habitats. It is important too, to design corridors for the various species to be able to shift between the areas.
This video has so many great takeaways.... definitely will be implementing alot on my homestead.
I need one that is titled, "How Permaculture Will Overthrow Tyrants". Thx.
The people will have to collectively overthrow and replace them with something much more harmonious.
This becomes significantly more effective if you’re combining it with high density development or at least combine the homes into row houses, which are thermally much more efficient.
From an urbanist perspective there's an aspect in this video that we should alter for optimum outcomes and that is on-street car parking. You have correctly realised that space within your property is valuable and far too much of it is taken up for car storage, but offloading that storage into the public realm means that we need the paved part of every street to be 2x wider than it would need to be if the street was just used for transport and not storage. Storage of private cars in public space means that everyone, including those who don't own cars, is subsidising those who do own them. Road maintenance becomes more expensive because there's more road space to maintain, utilities (water, gas, electricity, etc) become more expensive because houses need to be further apart and the streets become more difficult and dangerous to navigate.
What a great application! Cool drawing and presentation. Really like it.
this is absolutely fascinating...so glad I found your channel!
My one criticism is lack of parking. I live in an area with a lot of victorian qnd edwardian era housinh, which has no parking because cars werent around or were only owned by the rich.
This has resulted in streets with cars parked both sides of the road all the way down. This means children are crossing the road without being able to look properly and without drivers being able to see them untill they are in the cars path.
It also results in vehicles getting in each others way, including delivery vehicles and more importantly ambulances which get delayed.
To deal with this I would do 1 of 3 things.
1. Mitigate the traffic issue by making the roads one way and create crossing points in the road.
2. Give people a driveway that can be converted to an amenity space for those without a car.
3. Create community parking nearby, (this would also allow for greater security as the car park could fitted with cctv for easily than every driveway. Leaving the road exclusively to pedestrians, cyclists, works and emergency response vehicles and those with permits for mobility reasons. This would ensure greater access for those that need it most and make a safer neighbourhood for children :)
This is the one I wanted to see!! I love this and would love to see further into this with wildfire prevention and a larger community!
One question, though, if you're taking away the homes for cars (smart...) and half the roads, where will people park?
(I have back to the future going through my head... where we're going, we don't need roads.)
In the ideal world we have less cars :-) But people can park on the street in this design.
Make sure the angle of the roof is the same angle as ur latitude for maximum solar panel efficiency!
Think you mean to have the panels *adjusted* for latitude. There is also your personal priorities regarding seasonal variances that will figure into their angle of placement.
Road runoff contains brake dust antifreeze gasoline rubber you do not want that in anyting
Woody perennial species (like trees) bind pollutants up in their tissues. Road runoff has to go somewhere...
If it doesn't go into a basin next to the road it will just end up in a river.
@@williamhad maybe if electric cars have a lot less... We can only hope..regenerative braking probably reduce his brake dust no oil no gas no antifreeze I don't think
@@amillison yes my cattails pull Mercury out of the and other plants extract lithium...
@@Interglacial_optimist there's been lots of studies on this shit. But I bet you know better...
Been really digging your videos! Thanks for the work you put into them.
This is an interesting concept.
Thanks for watching!
Great work as usual Andrew; excellent content!
Great video! A lot of these elements can be added to retrofit conventional developments. For example rainwater harvesting, Grey water systems, and of course food forests and vegetable gardens. The adventurous can even add chickens!
What's annoying is zoning laws and regs. For example, in my area, you are not allowed to compost. I get that some folks wont do it correctly but why not educate them instead of outright banning the practice? Smh, governments.
Amazing ideas 💡 thank you so much
now do one for an arid landscape!!
What kind of arid environment? They aren't all the same.
Excellent video
It would be awsome to expand to village design including how it interacts with zones
for those of us in the Desert would suspect you put gardens on the North and water/Trees to the south and not overshadowing the south facing roof, also including a garage for the same thing we all have them, a place to do work and store stuff you dont do in the house. who has room in a garage for a Vehicle?
Dang! Just found this channel today but I instantly fell in love! This is so AMAZING! Thank you so much!!!!
your ideas are great
One main concern I have with your development is that the houses on the north side of the street would have large road-facing windows and small yard facing windows, which most people tend not to like very much, especially in North America. I find this to be the largest reason why passive solar isn't readily adopted in my city.
Also garages are a necessity if you own a car in my area, otherwise it can get hot and cold enough within the same day for engine blocks to crack (and batteries to start failing/catching fire).
In Australia, most houses are West East oriented which is the worst direction.
I am convinced they do this purposely so we use more power. They cant be this stupid.
These designs are still very car centric. We need to be building neighborhoods with sustainable transportation in mind as well!
The main problem is effort.
1 effort of the home residents.
2. The increase of construction complexity and cost.
climate community could be smart and use our advanced technology and free market capitalism to get around the 2 main issues.
1st Robotic Farming.
2nd Robotic maintenance.
3rd mass timber construction.
4th factory Pre-built housing sections.
5th graphene enriched concrete.
6th Karbon reinforcement Bar.
7th Home Biogas
8th Tesla roof.
I love these ideas but think the biggest obstacle is getting reluctant homeowners to share land with neighbours. A new mindset is needed.
I would throw in an Aquaponics/tilapia farm, chicken coop, and (since I recently saw an interesting video about it) attach a bottle to bottle beehive to some homes. Would be dope.
U are crazy sir...so much efforts...like straight awau
woot that pattern though right! do it on contour all across the land, I bet the tipping point is lower than we think to switch over to this vital source of food, and regenerative systems which can't help but replicate themselves with simple nudges from enlighten peoples. Keep growing your permaculture neighborhood out there folks, you are not alone globally. let's Go! Show don't tell too, as many references we can point to online the better.
Absolutely, love it!
I would love to design something like this for my extended family. In our particular situation the issue IS money 😂
Awesome concepts though, and I'm really hoping (optimistically of course) that this becomes the future!
How would permaculture be possible in a dense business/commercial district of a city? You tackle residential areas pretty well here but most metropolitan areas have heavy foot, vehicle traffic, dense building. How would you reconcile nature & modern architecture in that circumstance?
The only bit I’m concerned with is, will the water being seeded into the ground from the swales, impact the home foundations over time? What if any steps can be taken to minimize any potential structure issues? Otherwise this is great
I live in an EQ prone area so solid foundations are critical when the earth decides to move
I think it depends on the area you live - precipitation, soil conditions, exact structure of the houses. I think if you share this info, you can get exact answer.
From what I've read, so long as water harvesting basins are more than 10ft away from the foundation and so long as all water drains away from the house(ie house is upslope from the basin) you shouldn't have problems.
The basins are sunken quite a bit and sloped away from the houses, but it would depend on your particular soil type and moisture conditions. The most prominent example of this design that I show in Davis, CA has sandy well drained valley-bottom soils. If you were in a really swampy area with a shallow water table, then you'd need to think about that aspect differently.
@@amillison I have another question about the swales, If they are being fed with water runoff from the road how do you stop contamination? (i.e. motor oil)
A person that has written a lot on the subject is Brad Lancaster. He talks about sloping away excess while harvesting the optimum rainwater. Buy his set of books called Rainwater Harvesting. Really interesting and informative.
Interesting ideas, and I agree with the basic concepts of the video, but this design leaves out crucial elements needed for a healthy neighborhood and treats it somewhat as a isolated system, to the point that many modifications would be needed as time went on to make it more sustainable and efficient.
First I feel like it was implied that those habitations are for single families, which is not a very sustainable way to house people (in many cases) and far from viable for the vast majority of places and populations. Maybe the intent of the video was to just deal with this specific case, but the fact that many places face population pressure and most people live in urban areas, makes it almost obligatory to include some sustainable solutions for denser habitation in a video about neighborhood design.
Then, if you start putting more people in this system, comes the question of how would it deal with bigger demands for water , food , energy and waste management. Also how would it accomodate other land uses besides housing, like commerce and services, other workplaces, storage etc which the local population would need nearby. This also makes necessary a mixed use of the land, in order to increase sustainability and quality of life.
And finally, that all necessitates to include some solutions for mass transit in the design, because every place is necessarily connected to other places far and near, and people would need and want to go there. If the objective is sustainablity and quality of life, cars should receive the least amount of space possible, and other ways of thansportation should be intimately integrated with the neighborhood. How would it accomodate trains, trams, subways, buses etc?
Of course, maybe all that is outside the scope of the video, which is okay. But some consideration should be given to these and other elements, or else we are left with a platonic ideal of a neighborhood design, appliable only in rare cases in the real world. Having said that, I really enjoy your content, and it gives me inspiration for where and how I'm gonna live my life in the future, thank you for your work!
PS: This made me realize that the intersection of permaculture and urbanism is a still little explored vast well of techniques, solutions and design possibilities. If people from both fields worked more together, the advancements would be tremendous.
you are lacking any way to store the equipment for those gardens. I know we don't need garages for the cars but we at least need a shed and maybe a greenhouse for starts. but i like your idea
@Andrew Millison Andrew.....Pookie : ) Hope I don t offend you by suggesting you show us the real Life pictures first. I think it might make it easier to grasp ,comprehend and remember more details of your subject. Like cooking shows do? Whatever you decide dearest man you are for doing such a great teaching! I'm spreading this info around in this area... Sending you a great puff of energy beneath those angel wings of yours Andrew man person with a Grand Mission !! Bless you Bless you Bless you with the very best support Life has to offer, in delivering this fantastic plan. Cheers my GOOd man.
I like some of the ideas presented. However living in the northern hemisphere with a lot of snow I can say with some confidence that this design would not work here. Driveways and garages are absolutely necessary. In the winter months it is illegal to park in the street because the snow plow's need to be able to clear the roads of snow to allow for free movement and emergency vehicle access. Garages keep the snow and ice off your car / truck and allow you to do maintenance in relative comfort. I couldn't imagine needing to change a tire or work under the car in one of the many blizzards we get here. One day energy efficient technology permitting I think heated roads / sidewalks that could melt the snow / ice and drain the water into the proposed cisterns may solve that issue.
awesome content
Yea so, you're mostly correct but you are missing some of the basic interdisciplinary principles of permacultural/low impact design (LID) and environmental planning.
house spacing should be narrow frontage and deep, this provides increased population density and economic return on infrastructural costs as well as a more walkable neighbourhood. This also serves to decrease environmental impact per capita and improves biodiversity by elongating green fringe zones, improving impermeable to permeable surface area ratios, places more of your yard space further from the heat of the road, reduces energy costs to buildings I.E shade from adjacent structures and reduces southern exposure as per your suggested alignment. However..
Orientation also should not be based on compass points. I'll skip how local watersheds should be accounted for. The road grid should be largely determined based on 2 principles, access for transit maximizing permeability of human movement into/out of adjacent areas and to the existing topography of the area to utilize natural drainage and minimize the amount of bulldozing.
Quick aside - the bulldozing of agricultural land for developments involves stripping all topsoil into large piles where it then dies and looses what little viability it had, brutal compaction of sub soils leading to much higher rates of foundational failures in structures from water.
The two aforementioned principles encourage diverse design and environmental diversity over cookie cutter solutions this in turn favours property owners as individuals over big developers and banks.
Keep up the good thinking!
I tried like hell to set up and tiny house permiculture community for veterans.... Sure wish it would have worked out.
The problem is people who care about plants generally don’t have enough money to buy a whole neighborhood and construct a whole neighborhood. Hopefully it happens soon I love this idea
Great Andrew! Thanks!
I would like a workshop-garage in this design though and a basement
Looks like it could be a HOA nightmare if the community gets too big. It's quite nice though. As long as everyone subscribes to the underlying principles, it's great.
@Jamie in that case the design with central gardens would be best. Then the members most interested in gardening can manage the whole space. Personally, I think every person should grow a few vegetables. For me gardening was the gateway to caring about the health of the earth.
Wow, this is awesome!!!
Cutting the roads back by half is neat, but I wouldn't want to be a house without food forest access!
The roads should all be built with permeable concrete which will allow water to run through the concrete and soak into the ground
Great idea, however it's not going to work. Excepting for the first row of houses & the reason is that once you put in trees that will growv taller than the Roof, you will start to shade the Solar panels on your Roof and as your tree grows, possibly the whole block of Neighbours! A ow of Mature Royal Palms, for I.e. can throw Shade up yo a full two blocks as the Sun sets! You can only grow your Mature trees on the South East to South West side of your house in the Southern Hemisphere, reverse for Northern and the can only be tall shrubs like Camelia for e.g. otherwise when the Sun is in the North, North West you will shade your Neighbours Solars. Best to have a Grove of Nut Trees as a Communal Park at the very last Rows' of houses, on everyone's South, East side. Before that have a grasses playground area with low growing Communal Vegie Gardens, Then Row's of Fruit Thees, then the road. This is so the Trees trap the heat from the Solid Surface, and doesn't heat everyone's homes, with reflected heat!
In your dream world no one fixes their own cars in their garage, and they get ticketed if they have Friends over. I get the principle. But I am so glad we have people that think of beauty and other important things. Also I have a garden that is tiny and yet it’s more than I can handle. Not everyone is a farmer.
No, in my dream world, everybody doesn't need to have their own car.
It took me longer than I’d prefer to admit to figure out how he was writing in the proper orientation while on the other side of the board. 😅
I’m still not positive that this is how he’s doing it but I think he’s writing normally and simply reversing the recorded image.
My only contention with this concept is that it assumes non-homogeneous people groups would be able to live this closely and share the same food sources and spaces. It is efficient, beautiful, functional... and impractical. It is also highly socialized. The average person seeks their own best self interest and that of their kin first. It is difficult to combat human nature. Also, it doesn't take into account personal differences in life-style preferences. My "car house" is actually my gym. My cars go in the drive way. And while it might be cute to point out that we could park on the side of the road, you would need to double the width of the roads so that cars can weave between all the cars that are now on the roads. Additionally, much of this takes a great deal of technical knowledge. In a community this tight, even 10% of the populace mishandling their "waste" could have catastrophic consequences for the entire population.
This is awesome!
I'll start off by saying I raise: chickens, geese, ducks. Have acres of gardens following different permaculture principles (hugelkultur, swales) and have starts of food forest. Collect rainwater, heat house with firewood yadda yadda yadda
I don't think most people want to do any of this stuff.
I think if you are going to ask people to garden it's better to do some sort of HOA where you pay a gardener. Likewise better to provide centralized (but local) power creation. I think everyone having their own version of a system is not as cost effective as sharing them between say 10 - 20 homes.
Who gets the food from the food forest? Who has to maintain it? Prior to modern, industrial cultures shared resources had extremely complex (but organic) relationships for determining use.
Also, I have a dual car garage. No cars are parked in them. I used them for workshops (welding, machining, wood working). Am I allowed a workshop?
Okay boomer
hugelkultur and swales are not permaculture principles. These ones are techniques (not permaculture techniques as there is no such a thing) that you can use if it fits to the principles.
In Slovenia, if you don't have a garden, you are suspicious - that something is wrong with you... So most of the people where?
Transporting energy is very expensive and you just loose on the way.
Some answers to your questions start with the permie mindset and of course, that you can't force to anyone.
The last question you should ask from your child? ;-)
@@ginak5715 What a way to not answer a single question. Did you get a little dopamine hit from acting snotty on the internet. I hope so. You wasted your time and mine.
@@williamhad
Quiet down millenial dopamine fiend.
Boomer = Adult that has serious question about the topic and haven't flitted onto the next topic that the SCREEN presents to them.
Do you want me to flex my acreage on you? Say the word I'll drop on you how I live much closer to the principles in the video.
@@DensityMatrix1 that was literally the dumbest thing I've read all day.... congratulations for proving their point for them....
I wonder how Andrew has time to make videos he must be fighting off governments from around the world. If I were a bill gates type I'd hand this guy a blank check book in a second. Also his concentrating while drawing face is mad adorable!
Yeah I wish! If governments were so interested in this, then we wouldn't be in the mess we're in! I'm still waiting for Bill Gate's billion dollar check :-)
@@amillison Well people just dont want it. we already have community food forests, those are called parks, and they have to remove all the rotten fruits every year because nobody wants them.
@@nox5555 exactly - Seattle implemented food forests and it was a massive failure because they had to hire more people to clean up rotten fruit, nobody wants to live next to a pile of rotting fruits, and you're asking people to do labour at the end of the day, if you rent it out to be managed, then why have it be there at all?
If you have one parent staying at home with kids its fine, but a large reason for our absolute dependence on companies stems from the fact that people have to spend 9-10 hours a day minimum outside of the house, and there simply isn't time for people to manage their properties in our economic system.
Im thinking that if you work with a game designer to make a sim game of these concepts, people will automagically design this in the real world
Thank you. Any Suggestions for Perú? Say a neighborhood in a mild rainforest?
Lol New housing developments here in Melbourne are all on small blocks with absolutely no front or back yard while still keeping astronomical costs. :D
Definitely need a garage to preserve cars in areas like Texas where wind, sand, sun, extreme heat, and ice can really degrade a car that’s left exposed. Also, too many cars on the street impedes emergency vehicles and invites vandalism and theft.
Wow, this is a GOOD video !🇿🇦💚
world class content
Love it, and would love for stuff like this to be the new norm…but one can only dream of this in capitalistic, conservative America. Won’t see this in our lifetime 😢
This is actually very conservative in mentality. But it's very anti Capitalist. Somehow, capitalism convinced conservatives they were compatible. They aren't.
Can you expand this to walkable urban areas?
Keep up the excellent work