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In yesterday’s post (and on my radio show linked in the post), I shared some thoughts about smart growth. Here are a few examples of dumb growth. Note, the point is not to chastise or shame. Rather, calling out dumb growth can help us avoid the same mistakes in future. It also can serve as a guide for introducing smart green retrofits into our existing built environments.

Examples of dumb growth:

– Building a retirement community in such a manner that the only viable mode of transport is the personal automobile.

– Building any housing development in such a manner that the only viable mode of transport is the personal automobile.

– Grading and draining wetlands, which provide natural stormwater mitigation, then spending millions to build and maintain retention ponds, which are inferior not only in terms of function and cost-effectiveness (it’s hard to beat Mother Nature’s free ecosystem services) but also in terms of beauty and biodiversity.

– Widening a road that goes through a residential area, past a school, etc. Even with crossing guards, kids should not have to attend school next to a four-lane “stroad.”

– Widening roads inside cities in general. Only widen a road if you want to speed traffic through a place. Save arterials for the edge of the city, to send through-traffic on its way. If you care about local business, quality of life, public safety, and social cohesion, avoid widening roads that run through town. (Some cities that have at one time widened a road that runs through town, are now turning those roads back into narrower, slower-speed streets.)

– Letting old usable buildings crumble and decay to the point where they have to be torn down, and then a whole new building has to be constructed, with all the expense and eco footprint, and loss of local history and character, that entails.

– Unduly restricting home-based businesses, which enable residents to earn a livelihood while serving their neighborhoods.

– Continuing to build sprawl developments while making it costly and time-consuming to get building permits within the historic city limits.

– Demolishing large swathes of woods and meadows, and removing the topsoil, to construct a residential development, then planting high-maintenance turf grass and non-native plants.

– Disregarding signals that the menu of housing options is inadequate for all segments of the population. For example, a bunch of students are renting a house in a gated golf-course community. The other residents are disturbed by their six or seven cars, coming and going at all hours, and their parties. Meanwhile it’s hard to imagine students, or any young single people, being happy in such a place. This situation (which is a real-life example) should be taken as a sign from the marketplace to add more student-friendly housing options.

– Removing housing that is considered “low-class” in the name of progress. Mobile-home parks, RV parks, Single Room Occupancy buildings all serve different demographics of residents, including many blue-collar workers, students, artists, single parents, and others who help make up a vibrant community. When we remove these dwelling options, we raise the barrier to accessible housing. The resulting drain of brains, elder wisdom, oldtimer perspective, creativity, and labor only serves to downgrade a community.

– Tearing down a building (or evicting everyone and then letting the building crumble) because of drugs or other illegal activity happening there. This is not progress; this is actually negative growth. And the drugs or whatever we were trying to solve, just move down the street.

– Removing benches, shade, and other amenities from parks to “solve” the problem of homeless people in the parks. Ditto cutting down shrubs and trees because homeless people camp there. This is not growth; this is backward movement because it downgrades public amenities for all of us.

– Only focusing on growing a limited slice of the economy such as tourism or office jobs. Not supporting local agriculture, for example. Failing to plan for a community’s local resiliency in general. Food supply, water supply, skills, social capital, entrepreneurial ecosystem.

– In the name of “progress,” imposing uniform standards for development (typically Anglo, middle-class, “bougie” standards) that end up squashing, tamping down, diluting, abolishing the distinct character and deep-rooted homegrown economic vitality of the various historic, ethnic, and cultural neighborhoods in a city. And reifying social norms that favor this tamping-down. Reifying meaning we act as if these social norms are REAL — inherent good sense or laws of physics, instead of simply social norms made up by a subset of humans. (This last bullet item merits more comment; will come back and add to this later, or maybe create a separate post for it.)

Can you think of any more examples of “dumb growth” to add to this list?

Every once in a while, I run across (or a friend shares with me – thank you Anne!) an article that is so drop-dead, spot-on, EXACTLY what I’ve been thinking, that I just have nothing to add, and I just have to share the link as-is, with just a short quote.

The case for making low-tech “dumb” cities instead of smart ones – by Amy Fleming, in The Guardian.

“There’s old, and then there’s old – and for urban landscapes increasingly vulnerable to floods, adverse weather, carbon overload, choking pollution and an unhealthy disconnect between humans and nature, there’s a strong case for looking beyond old technologies to ancient technologies.

“It is eminently possible to weave ancient knowledge of how to live symbiotically with nature into how we shape the cities of the future, before this wisdom is lost forever. We can rewild our urban landscapes, and apply low-tech ecological solutions to drainage, wastewater processing, flood survival, local agriculture and pollution that have worked for indigenous peoples for thousands of years, with no need for electronic sensors, computer servers or extra IT support.”

This to me is real smart growth! And speaking of smart growth, here’s a link to the Facebook Live recording of my “Green Daytona” radio show today. Topic is “Smart Growth: Can We Really Have It? If So, How?”

On its website, the St. John’s River Water Management District has a nice page about household water conservation. With a simple uncluttered design, the site has various articles about how everyday people can radically cut their household water use.

I’m looking forward to following the link about “How Everyday People Save Water.” “Water conservation can be beautiful, just take a look at Deborah Weave’s private oasis.”

Though obviously intended for Florida residents, the information is relevant to people just about anywhere.

Later on I will be expanding this post to include more material I’ve recently found about household water conservation.

The original post by this title, which I wrote back in September, offered tips for deciding when it’s time to leave a town or city and move somewhere else. Aside from things like “Do I expect this place to remain physically and economically inhabitable?”, most of it comes down to a balance between, “Am I able to make a difference in this place?” and “Do I mesh well enough with the prevailing culture to not burn myself out or end up isolated and lonely?”

Recently I’ve been facing the “When To Stay, When To Go” thing with some organizations I belong to, so I thought I would write a Part 2 post for that.

Some observations, in no particular order:

– Even an organization that takes a strong stance on something (for example, a church that has care of the environment as one of its tenets) can have members that either don’t really care about that thing, or else their way of caring looks very different from mine.

– A person who does more work for an organization generally has a better chance of exerting a strong influence. For example, the person willing to shop and cook for the neighborhood-watch dinner will likely get to have more of a say in the menu, and also in the setup and cleanup process, including (for example) whether the group uses single-use plastic or stainless utensils, than a person who does little or no work. So, if I’m dead-set against the use of disposable utensils and napkins, I’ll have a better chance of making a difference if I’m contributing labor or money (not just voicing my opinion).

– If I silently quit a position and/or an organization without talking to anyone about what’s bothering me, I might well be losing out on an opportunity to make things better. I might be abandoning a non-vocal faction of people within the organization who share my concerns and priorities. For example, maybe there are other people in my neighborhood group besides me who would love to spend less time looking to government to solve our problems (harping on code enforcement; griping about our city leaders; etc.), and more time coming up with grassroots actions such as setting up a land trust to buy vacant, absentee-owned homes and free them up for occupancy by local residents.

– Longevity counts for something. If an organization has been around for 30 years, and my stepping down would become the last straw, leading to its demise, I as a caring citizen would want to resist the temptation to resign in a huff.

– One person’s opinion can sometimes seem to color the whole tone of the organization. This can make it feel hopeless to try to make a difference. But the opinion of one person, no matter how strong or high-up he or she might be, is not the whole organization. I have often been pleasantly surprised when I took time to ask various people how they felt. The compost thing at my church is one example. I thought for sure everyone was dead-set against it, but it turned out many are in favor and we just need to tweak the system to appease the folks who are concerned about bugs and germs, and the ones who just think the compost barrel is ugly. (Maybe we can paint some flowers on the barrel or something.)

– Sometimes your goals and values change, and you’re no longer a fit for an organization even if it’s a fundamentally sound organization with a worthy mission.

– Organizations made up of people who genuinely like and respect each other, and convey this in their interactions with one another, are far more effective than the other kind. One, they operate more smoothly. Two, more people are likely to be attracted to join them.

– Breakups (be they with organizations or with people) often seem to happen unnecessarily, or at least prematurely. And the usual cause seems to be that someone chose to walk away rather than take the opportunity to try and work things out.

– That said, life is short. There are only so many hours in the day, and we have only so much energy and patience. If you find yourself woefully identifying with phrases like “tilting at windmills” and “spinning your wheels,” it might just be time to leave.

I’ll keep adding to this list as things occur to me. If you think of anything I should add, send it my way. And I hope you find Part 1 (linked above) useful.

And, I dug up some additional reading on this subject for us:

When you know it is the right time to leave an organization (medium.com)

How to Leave an Organization when You Are the Leader (chron.com)

Can This Dysfunctional Organization Be Saved? (AskAManager.org)

True Tales of Dysfunctional Boards (Joan Garry blog); and from the same blog, I Will Never Join Another Board. Never.

“A place for everything, and everything in its place.” That old saying and rule of thumb makes great sense to me, and has always been my go-to approach for how I keep my stuff. I’m pretty ruthless about it.

Now, do I always implement this perfectly without fail? Noooo ….. Such as the sinking feeling I get when I’m walking to the little bucket in the garage where the scissors I use for trimming plants (“chopping and dropping” prolific vegetation, trimming back the prolific, fast-growing coastal dune grasses to use them as mulch to nourish my veggies and fruit trees – it struck me that I am a hay farmer! and love that these beautiful grasses grow back almost overnight) — anyway, when I’m walking to the garage to the designated spot to get those scissors and I start to get a sinking feeling because I know in the back of my mind that I’ve not followed my protocol of putting the scissors back in their spot, and they are now somewhere they don’t belong, and I know not where …

So no, I do not always implement my own preferred approach without fail. However, it works so well that I am pretty good about sticking to it.

This morning, I thought of a new twist on “a place for everything.” How about two places for my scissors. One in their main spot in the bucket in the garage, and one at the other end of the house, on the windowsill inside the front door. This little entryway room, which I call the “porch-ette,” is a place where I spend a lot of time. Being on the south side of the house, it’s where I gravitate in wintertime. And, a lot of the plants that I use scissors to trim are located right outside the front door. It’s sometimes handy to have the scissors in here rather than in the garage, so I can grab them at a moment’s notice and just walk out the front door and do some trimming.

Then I get the best of both worlds: I don’t have to walk to the other end of the house every time I need the scissors, yet the scissors can always be found in one of two predictable spots.

I just started this experiment this morning. We’ll see how it goes! “Two places for everything, and everything in one of two places.”

Note that I didn’t say “everything in two places.” That would be in the realm of science fiction or quantum physics or something, which is beyond the scope of this blog. 😉

My objective with this blog, with my book Deep Green, and with my low-footprint lifestyle, is to help spark a widespread, enduring craze for low-footprint living. Not just a flash-in-the-pan fad, but an enduring passion. And one that is widespread across geographic regions, segments of society.

In my mission, I rely heavily on social media, primarily Facebook and Twitter. Social media have been a great asset to the low-footprint-living movement, as they have to the permaculture design movement and other ecologically oriented movements.

The other day on Facebook, I came across a widely shared post that linked an article about how the late rapper and activist Nipsey Hussle inspired a book club for black men. The Facebook post showed his reading list. (Here is his reading list via Goodreads.com .)

The list is wide-ranging and anyone would do well to embark on it. One of the books that caught my eye was Contagious: Why Things Catch On, by Jonah Berger. That book is now tops on my reading list. I plan to order it and read it in the next three days and will get back to you with a post about it.

For now, a few links for you — may they support you in whatever you are setting out to popularize, be it low-footprint living, homeschooling, the greening of your city, or something else wonderful.

Nipsey Hussle Book Club Creates a Space for Black Men (L.A. Times): The rap star was a bookworm, and black men are finding inspiration in his reading list. (Here is his reading list via Goodreads.com .)

“What makes things popular? Word of mouth is 10 times as effective as traditional advertising, but why do people talk about and share certain things rather than others? Why do some products catch on, some ideas diffuse, and some online content go viral?” (from jonahberger.com, regarding his book Contagious: Why Things Catch On)

“In Contagious, Berger reveals the secret science behind word-of-mouth and social transmission. … Contagious provides specific, actionable techniques for helping information spread—for designing messages, advertisements, and content that people will share.” (from Amazon listing of Jonah Berger’s book Contagious: Why Things Catch On)

Jonah Berger on YouTube: 6 Reasons Things Go Viral (he has numerous other videos as well, including what looks like a 40-minute TED talk or TED-like talk)

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.” ~ Elie Wiesel

“What, exactly, does a survivable future look and feel like? And why have we so far proved unwilling to adapt our lifestyles and demand the policies that are needed to achieve it? … An ambitious new project in Sweden is … developing an unexpected tool that could enable the public to grasp the practical steps that would lead to more sustainable societies: storytelling. Telling tales might seem an odd priority in a fast-transforming climate but … [Chief Storyteller Per] Grankvist insisted that such an approach was vital, for the simple reason that facts alone are not something people engage with.” (Gratitude to grist.org for reproducing this exhilarating CityLab story as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.)

The “storytelling” initiative in Sweden is such a wonderful synchronicity for me. Over the past year or so, I have felt intuitively drawn to invest a considerable amount of love and energy in writing a fiction story (a novel) that revolves around themes of permaculture, low-footprint living, resilience (personal, social, ecological). The story has a strong comic element which I did not initially set out to create, but which lends a nice balance to the seriousness of the themes. The rough draft is finished and I plan to self-publish the novel later this year. Stay tuned for announcements!