
New Neighborhood Will Grow Its Own Food, Power Itself, and Handle Its Own Waste - namenotrequired
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3060167/this-new-neighborhood-will-grow-its-own-food-power-itself-and-handle-its-own-waste
======
rigobert_slim
The creation of something this sustainable (especially for lower and middle
income communities) needs an equally sustainable tool-shed and parts factory
for use at the same time.

These are not things that industry tends to provide on an individual or even
communal basis, so they will most likely have to be built into communities
themselves through fabrications labs and community-owned 3d printers.

neil gershenfeld's talk on fab labs and their social applications if anyone's
interested (warning: tedtalk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n-APFrlXDs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n-APFrlXDs)

he has a bunch of good ideas. if anyone's curious, buy his books or watch any
of his most recent talks discussing digital reality

------
zeristor
I love the idea but I have questions, questions, questions.

Will it scale; how do you keep the village to 100 people? 100 seems to be
small enough that you can have a social community, but people will move in and
move out over time.

Social communities just don't happen, there's a certain amount of trust to be
developed.

This seems to be a stepped removed from communal living where a group of
people lived in one house. Is this a refinement of that, with groups in
separate properties for family privacy.

Who is responsible for making sure everything gets done?

I'll read up on this and track it.

[http://www.regenvillages.com/](http://www.regenvillages.com/)

A class act videos on Vimeo:

[https://vimeo.com/161147258](https://vimeo.com/161147258)

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I'm with you on the questions.

You are correct, who IS responsible for making sure it gets done? Who will
teach folks and set up a schedule for garden care? Is 100 people enough to
actually do all the stuff? Will the people have time to work outside the
community? What happens when folks have another child or two? When the kids
grow up, do they have to leave the village if they get married at 18?

If they implement this in different areas, how do you entice people
(especially poor folks) into leaving their homes? Can it be adapted to
different cultures? Do folks need to give up variety in foods to live there?

A town of 3000 people can seem pretty intrusive if you are a private person
and it really sucks being the weird one in such a group. I'm usually the weird
one. Now, luckily this particular village is a suburb of Amsterdam so some
things really won't be so much of an issue. But I think if it plays out, not
all will be such. How do they plan on combating stuff like this... let alone
racism and bigotry in such a small community?

I like the idea of vertical farming as mentioned in the article and have been
a proponent for some time now, but would like to see it on a more industrial
scale so that it can go into existing large cities. New York, Oslo, Delhi,
Hong Kong, Manilla, etc. Because this is where many people currently live. I
think this is a decent start, but truly in its infancy.

~~~
developer2
>> would like to see it on a more industrial scale so that it can go into
existing large cities

This will not happen in our lifetimes. Large cities with millions of people
will never be self-sustainable. "Industrial scale" and "sustainable" are
mutually exclusive concepts.

~~~
wallace_f
What? That's pessimistic. I can't think of any rule governing the universe
that mandates "industrial scale" to be "insustainable." Improvements in
science and technology have changed the course of human history, making what
seemed previously impossible to be now common place, and taken for granted.

~~~
pessimizer
> making what seemed previously impossible to be now common place, and taken
> for granted.

In lockstep with that progress in science and technology came a commensurate
decay in sustainability. Nobody imagined that we could eradicate most of its
diversity, burn enough of it to actually drive up its temperature permanently,
or create the possibility of exploding and irradiating the entire thing with
the press of a button. Now those things are commonplace, and taken for
granted. Before improvements in science and technology there was no question
that human life as it was lived was sustainable indefinitely; after those
improvements, there are very few serious scientists who wouldn't register
disgust at hearing that claim made now.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I disagree - we never have really thought that we could live indefinitely and
sustain ourselves. Overpopulation has been a fear since Plato at least
([https://fee.org/articles/overpopulation-the-perennial-
myth/](https://fee.org/articles/overpopulation-the-perennial-myth/)). We
hunted things to extinction and knew it. Plus there were more diseases to
worry about, death rates for child-bearing women were high as well as the
child death rate. Really, if you weren't worried one way, you were worried
another.

Different times simply frame problems differently. At least we are more aware
of some of the stuff now, even if we haven't scientifically figured it all out
nor figured out how to work together enough to solve them.

~~~
wallace_f
Exactly.

Fear of technology, and even industrialization, have also been around,
probably as long as technology and industrialization have.

Every generation has had these same sentiments and concerns, just framed in a
different era.

------
sintaxi
Its great to see Michael Reynolds vindicated after originally losing his
Architect license while developing these types of techniques in the 70s.

------
Null-Set
What we learn from some of the challenges here can be applied to eventual Mars
colonies.

