This is an article I wrote with my friend Adelaide on my favorite urban permaculture/social change movement, City Repair. The article was for a
crowdsourced book called Sustainable (R)evolution
(click to check out this amazing project!). I also wrote articles on
the Bullocks Permaculture Homestead, the ecofarm movement in Thailand, a
brief overview of the natural farming movement in Japan, and on
chinampas.
＊This is the closest to our final draft, and the pictures are different from the book
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Mark Lakeman and the community of City Repair
Ariel view of one of the Intersection Repairs
Intersection Repair during the Village Building Convergence (a must experience!)
Urban retrofitting during the Village Building Convergence
Young volunteers learn from seasoned green builders to install light-straw clay insulation for an old home (aka The Planet Repair Institute)
The Planet Repair Institute from the street
The pointy tower is the Cat Palace
The iconic Mermaid Bench
This is one of the many cob benches made on private property for the public (faces the street not the house)
＊This is the closest to our final draft, and the pictures are different from the book
The City Repair Project and the Village Building Convergence
By Kai Sawyer
Established: 1996
Land (Location/Site
Details/Facilities): Various intersections, residential and commercial sites,
and open spaces throughout Portland, Oregon.
People (Residents/Participants):
City Repair projects are accomplished by a mostly volunteer staff and thousands
of volunteer citizen activists.
Water (Source, Systems)
Shelter (Housing Model,
Building Techniques): City Repair emphasizes low-cost, low-tech and ecologically
sustainable building techniques such as: cob, straw-bale, light straw clay, and
timber-frame. Several living roofs have been installed. Whimsical and artistic structures are also
encouraged such as a mermaid cob bench, the chicken and cat palace, and a
beehive shaped newspaper dispenser. Building structures is an important
opportunity for skill-building, and volunteers help build as they learn green
building techniques.
Objective
(Aim/Focus/Purpose): “City Repair is an organized group action that educates
and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform the places
where they live. City Repair facilitates artistic and ecologically-oriented
placemaking through projects that honor the interconnection of human
communities and the natural world.” From the City Repair website.
Food (Sources, Systems):
City Repair initiatives have reclaimed paved spaces for gardens (“Depave”) and
installed urban food forests. They have sprouted gardens and food forests
throughout Portland, from sidewalks to schools. Some residents have aquaculture
systems and are raising bees, chickens, and rabbits in their backyards.
Energy (Sources, Systems)
Education (Programs Offered,
Systems ): City Repair hosts various community workshops throughout the year.
Once a year, they organise the Village Buildling Convergence (VBC) where free
workshops are held in conjuction with neighborhood improvement projects
throughout Portland for 10 days. Concurrently with the VBC, the Village
Building Design Course is offered which explores placemaking indepth and trains
future placemakers.
Governance (Decision
Making): Creative community-centered consensus often involving residents around
specific intersections. Most projects
are decentralized and organized by site-based groups of people. The Board of
Directors, composed of committed CR volunteers meet regularly run the City
Repair non-profit. Projects such as Shift to Bike, Depave, and the Village
Building Convergence are supported by CR until they become autonomous
organizations.
City Repair
City Repair (CR) is a
community-led urban regeneration movement rooted in “placemaking” that first
spread throughout neighborhoods of Portland, Oregon, and is now moving beyond.
From transforming street intersections into public gathering places to planting
urban food forests for public grazing, the diversity and scope of the CR
movement is extraordinary. Through a collaborative mix of permaculture, green
building, art, and celebration, a growing number of empowered citizens are
reclaiming urban space to create public place. CR defines placemaking as “a
multi-layered process within which citizens foster active, engaged
relationships to the spaces which they inhabit, the landscapes of their lives,
and shape those spaces in a way which creates a sense of communal stewardship
and lived connection.”
To contextualize the need to
“repair” American cities, CR co-founder Mark Lakeman explains that while most
European and Latin American cities are built around plazas, and small villages
around central squares, the US was constructed following the Roman grid and
thus few towns and cities in the US have central meeting places. A
practical advantage inherent in the Roman grid, the design imposed on places
conquered by colonial powers starting with the Romans, is that people can be
more easily externally controlled because there is no place for them to come
together and create the power of community.
CR emerged from the idea
that “localization - of culture, of economy, of decision-making - is a
necessary foundation of sustainability. By reclaiming urban spaces to create
community-oriented places, community members plant the seeds for greater
neighborhood communication, empowering our communities and nurture our local
culture.” (City Repair[MS1] ). The movement sprouted in a backyard tea house made
from recycled material and piled with cushions that hosted weekly potlucks and
festivities. Mark recalls, “it was just a place for neighbors to sit down and
say hello and interact.” The gatherings grew to several hundred people before
the city condemned the illegal structure. This government intervention helped
catalyze the first CR action known as “Intersection Repair,” where a community
transforms an urban street intersection into a public square.
Failing to gain the City
Hall’s understanding and permission, residents decided to reclaim an
intersection by getting together to paint a beautiful mandala and build little
structures on each of the corners. Children inspired the beehive-shaped cob
dispenser for the local newspaper (The
Bee) and a kid’s clubhouse[MS2] , where toys can be exchanged, built from drift wood.
Residents also built a 24-hour tea station, a community bulletin board, a
little library, a stage, and a family-sized cob bench. Lakeman explains, “what
we were doing was we were seeding a garden of the village, we were regrowing
the village heart, with all of the functions and amenities that you’ll find.”
When city officials realized
the benefits of Intersection Repair, such as beautifying the city, slowing down
traffic, reducing crime, and building community through increased neighborhood
interaction, all without spending any tax money, “the City Council legalized
this whole process for all 96 neighbourhoods of the City of Portland. Several
dozen intersection repair and other placemaking projects have have since been
accomplished, some in other states.
These projects include installing gardens and cob benches in schools and
the construction of the Portland’s first straw-bale dwelling at Dignity
Village, a community of formerly homeless people. Many of these projects are
accomplished during the Village Building Convergence (VBC) that began in 2000.
Village Building Convergence by Adelaide Nalley
Billed by CR as "an annual ten-day placemaking festival
that combines crowdsourced activism, creative community development, hands-on
education and celebration", the (VBC) is where most of CR's endeavors come
together.
During VBC days, individual communities work to physically
manifest their collective visions. These projects are unique to the
communities, based on their needs, culture, taste, and collective identity, and
have included such things as: neighborhood composting centers, a naturally
refurbished public pottery studio, corner free boxes, outdoor classrooms and
food forests at local schools, a tool lending library, and a neighborhood
playhouse for children.
While projects are designed by the community, in an effort
to empower each community in their work, City Repair offers pre-VBC
facilitation, planning, fund-raising, and technical support. During the
VBC, skilled volunteers lead the construction and both visiting and community
volunteers come out to help turn the idea into reality. In exchange for
their time, volunteers learn new skills, receive locally donated food, build
relationships, and have fun.
There are also a number of free and low-cost workshops for
participants to attend throughout the VBC. In the evenings, participants
from all of the different sites come together to celebrate their accomplishments,
listen to guest lecturers, eat a locally produced meal, dance to live music,
and develop an even more extensive community. In this way, the VBC is
creating a number of small villages within the city of Portland and then
supporting their interconnection with one another.
A number of out-of-town visitors come to the VBC each
year and have the opportunity to not only participate in all of the
neighborhood efforts, but also to stay with local host families. Many
visitors have been so inspired by the annual event that they have brought it
back to their own communities. Versions of the VBC can now be found in
places like Asheville, NC, Seattle, WA, Brookfield, VT and Ottawa, CA.
Throughout the years, the VBC has been recognized for creating community,
promoting sustainability, and increasing neighborhood safety, and as a result
gained strong support from city officials.
