Vegetating Skyscrapers; Urban Density with Dense Greenery

I have shared most of these links in previous posts but I wanted to collect them into one post, which I hope will serve as a resource to help us citizens in my city/bioregion prevent the construction of yet another generic, ugly condominium tower on the beachfront. Or or push for truly eco-friendly design of any new building. Maybe we can motivate elected leaders and developers to really care about beauty and ecosystems; we need to help them understand that those things are compatible with making money.

If we let developers build along the coast at all anymore, we need buildings like the ones being shown in these videos, but with sea grapes, saw palmetto, & other vegetation native to our bioregion. This would actually help PROTECT neighborhoods while providing beauty, heat mitigation, and of course housing.

Also if we build on the beach, I say the developers/owners need to keep/make a public access path so the condo doesn’t serve as a hostile barrier to beach access.

60 Condos, 150 Trees, + Wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX7cSZSp5ac&t=9s Forest condominium in Italy — you have to see this! Video by Kirsten Dirksen (she’s known for her many many videos about tiny homes and other dwellings, and communities, that are integrated beautifully with nature).

Vertical forest in Milan: https://www.stefanoboeriarchitetti.net/en/project/vertical-forest/ So pretty, and those numbers of trees are amazing! “The Vertical Forest is the prototype building for a new format of architectural biodiversity which focuses not only on human beings but also on the relationship between humans and other living species. The first example, built in Milan in the Porta Nuova area, consists of two towers that are respectively 80 and 112 metres high, housing a total of 800 trees (480 first and second stage trees, 300 smaller ones, 15,000 perennials and/or ground covering plants and 5,000 shrubs, providing an amount of vegetation equivalent to 30,000 square metres of woodland and undergrowth, concentrated on 3,000 square metres of urban surface. The project is also a device for limiting the sprawl of cities brought about through a quest for greenery (each tower is equivalent to about 50,000 square metres of single-family houses).”

The Nature of Cities: Passive cooling & vegetation on skyscrapers & other tall buildings was a major topic at TNOC — The Nature of Cities virtual conference, which I attended back in 2021. https://tnoc-festival.com/wp/#about We saw so many great examples!!

Steep “Hugelkultur” beds can produce for decades without watering or fertilizing: Nicely illustrated article from returntonow.net, about how to turn logs and other yard “waste” into spectacular tall berms that can be used to grow veggies etc. while also building healthy soil and mitigating drought-flood extremes.

In Defense of TikTok

This post is in response to a Facebook meme posted by a fellow Boomer/progressive/white woman. And several other fellow Boomer comments in response.

Boomer Meme: “I don’t know how to use TikTok, but I can write in cursive, do long division, and tell time on clocks with hands … so there’s that.”

Comments were listing stuff like … And drive a stick shift, navigate by the stars, make a fire … Change a flat tire, make change, use the Dewey decimal card file (if there are any left) …

Nothing wrong with listing old skills and feeling a bit of nostalgia; it was the smug condescending tone of the meme and comments that I took issue with.

This kind of attitude I wish we would just stop ourselves from voicing (this is a composite of things I commonly hear fellow Boomers say): “I took xyz in middle school. And learned xyz in elementary. What happened? Students too lazy? … I am proof of teaching a teenager how much money, responsibility, accountability it takes to live. … I was never taught, but learned quickly after college & working for companies … what ROI means.”

I cringe so hard when we Boomers talk about how “we learned the value of hard work” blah blah blah — as if it hadn’t been a million times easier back then for us to get jobs and pay our bills and have plenty left over. Oh, and by “learning the value of ROI” — actually what we did was learn the immensely pragmatic and convenient value of selling our souls to big government and big corporations just to get a fat pension and health insurance or whatever. Gag.

(NOTE! There’s nothing wrong with wanting old-age security, health care etc. Those are basic human rights. But too many of us Boomers went about securing these things only for ourselves, instead of putting our power & energy into dismantling the whole sick system that commodifies people’s basic needs. We threw less-fortunate segments of the population under the bus, and we took for ourselves and ran with it off into the sunset. Now a lot of retired Boomers I know are living jetset lifestyles while the younger generations are having to work miserable jobs at inhumane hours and scrabble for every crumb just to keep a roof over their head, never mind pensions or dental plans and all those rosy things of the past.)

We marched for civil rights, went to Woodstock … then once the 80s hit, we turned into venal bourgeouis yuppies with bland lucrative desk jobs that fattened the vested interests. Jobs that were cushy in exchange for us suppressing our moral beliefs and going amnesiac about the evils of consumerism. (And yet we still don’t hesitate to play the “Woodstock activist cred” card when that comes up. It’s all really quite retch-worthy.)

Back to the TikTok meme comments … As I said above — Nothing wrong with listing old skills; it’s the smug condescending tone that I feel is just so wrong. Like, who do we Boomers think we are?? I totally see why the phrase “OK Boomer” exists!

So, in response to the aforementioned meme and comments, I wrote a comment advocating for TikTok:

Using TikTok is no harder than using Facebook. (And yes, I’m “old” and, same as you guys, I know how to do all the “old” stuff that people are listing in this post here.)

And, all that said — there are some really good reasons to get on TikTok, particularly if you are a fellow white Boomer who considers themself progressive.

TikTok is filled with learning and education. Like no other platform I know of. The trick is you have to proactively curate your feed.

<I removed this spicy paragraph from the version of this post that I posted as a comment on Facebook.> What TikTok isn’t, is dominated by us old white people. Our job on TikTok instead is to listen, learn, open ourselves to growth, and amplify marginalized voices. We don’t get to be bossy, smug, and condescending to young people or anyone else, as we have so often gotten away doing with in pretty much all the other channels of social media and life.<end spicy paragraph>

Anyone who wants to try TikTok, I will be happy to give you a tutorial and show you how to curate your feed. Also, my TikTok profile page is filled with great activist content that I’ve shared over the months.

<Added just now for this blog post>Here is my TikTok profile page for anyone who wants to check out TikTok (I think it’ll let you look at people’s pages without setting up an account, though I could be wrong about that). The URL is https://www.tiktok.com/@jennynazak?_t=8XjWVMIFIoV&_r=1 <end of added paragraph>

Fellow Boomers, if you can use Facebook and Snapchat with your grandkids and email and all that stuff … You can use TikTok. And there are lots of reasons to, if you care about being the change we want to see in the world.

<end of my Facebook comment>

More thoughts:

About Boomer grandparents vs Depression Generation grandparents: My Depression/WWII-generation grandparents taught us things. They taught us knitting, sewing, carpentry, fishing, cooking. They taught us the value of thrift, and we learned it joyfully by spending time in their houses (which were unassuming, were filled with sweet simple knicknacks, AND THE HOUSES WERE FULLY PAID-FOR as opposed to being mortgaged to the hilt for fancy 100K additions and back-to-back luxury cruises and such).

I realize not everyone’s grandparents were as loving, thrifty, happy, versed in cool skills, and overall wonderful as mine. And I realize that not all Boomer grandparents are Wall Street following, carbon spewing jetsetters, and consumer cucks (and this is the just the soi-disant “ecosocial progressive” subset I’m talking about here; not even including the conservative plutocrats who are surely even more of all that). But I do see a generational difference between Depression/WWII grandparents and Boomer grandparents, and am venturing to paint with a broad brush what I have seen and felt for a long time but have only recently begun to be able to put words to. Boomers, we need to be transmitting sound, adaptive skills and values to the younger generations. We’re not going to fix the planet by acting like a bunch of big self-indulgent babies. Our generation aspired to be revolutionaries at one point. Now it seems like we won’t even stand up to our HOAs, let alone stand up to creeping fascism. We need to step it up and not leave the younger generations with such a huge mess.

About deeper feelings underlying what seems to be the smug condescending tone of us Boomers in like every public space: What’s coming across as smug and condescending is surely at least in part motivated by fear. Fear of one’s personal future; fear for the planet’s future. Elderly existential dread at maybe starting to wake up to the realization that we old white people are not the center of things, and that we need to take a seat. (Not that we don’t have a helping role to play — just that we need to be humble enough to listen and take direction.)? When I think of fear and pain and regret as underlying motivators for Boomer smugness, bossiness, and condescension, I can feel understanding and compassion for my fellow Boomers. However, this does NOT let us off the hook! We have a role to play in the revolution even if it’s just sweeping floors and making coffee as opposed to being the “star player” we always seem to get away with casting ourselves as. We always wanted a revolution, right? Well, one is happening right now, and we DO get to be part of it as long as we understand what’s up. We just don’t get to be overbearing dicks anymore.

On that note, I want to bring this post back around to TikTok. My invitation and challenge to you, should you choose to accept it, is to get on TikTok, visit my profile page, and start following the Black people, indigenous people, and other people of color whose richly educational videos I have shared on my page. In particular, start with Portia Noir, White Woman Whisperer, Desiree B Stephens, and Royal Star Defiant. And my further invitation and challenge is that you follow these educators for at least 30 days without commenting at all. Just listen! (Actually, Portia Noir has stated this as a boundary for us white people on her page. Just listen, no commenting. I think I may actually have observed this for 60 days rather than 30, but I wasn’t keeping count. And let me tell you, it’s a profound and necessary experience. It gets us out of the lifelong habit of centering ourselves. And the growth and learning that’s available to us as a result is phenomenal. Prepare to be humbled, prepare to be exhilarated and have your mind blown … and prepare to walk your talk more that you ever thought possible.)

And a side note, about Twitter (since a lot of my fellow white progressive people are quitting Twitter because of the Trumpian Muskian changes): I’m still on Twitter but am taking a page from my TikTok approach: Have begun to more proactively curate my Twitter feed to follow Black people, indigenous people, and other people of color; as well as those of my fellow white people who are genuinely progressive and are on a path of antiracism work / decolonization work.

• One more thing: Boomers, if you’re flying to go see your grandkids four or five or ten times a year, I hate to break the news to you but you’d be benefiting your grandkids more by taking a no-fly pledge. Move to where your grandkids live if you like seeing them that much. Or if you don’t want to move to where they are, help their parents, your grown kids, move to where you are and get set up in business. And then you’ll be there to help their parents with childcare and things around the house. Use some of that fat retirement money to buy your grown kids a commercial building they can make a living off of. Or you could buy them a house. You might be thinking you don’t want to jeopardize your retirement security. But that IS a way to help secure your old-age security. If your investment is tied in with theirs, that’s more power and energy invested together. Immigrant communities in the USA and elsewhere have prospered by applying this principle.

Smartphones

I just now saw a short film called “Behind the Screens.” It’s on Waterbear. (If you don’t have a Waterbear account yet I really really recommend it. It’s like Netflix for ecosocial activists, and it’s free.) Go here to watch the film (I expect you’ll be prompted to set up an account, which as I said is free.)

“Behind the Screens takes view­ers on an immer­sive jour­ney into the peo­ple, places and mate­ri­als behind our every­day obses­sion with the mobile phone. A vis­cer­al doc­u­men­tary that expos­es the com­plex, resource-inten­sive pro­duc­tion process of the device that frames so much of mod­ern-day conversation.”

It’s not that we can’t have smartphones. (Myself, I bought my first iphone in 2009, and a smartphone has become my most important work tool as well as indispensable device for personal everyday use.)

But, a lot of phones get replaced far more often than needed. And there are phones sitting in drawers unused when they could be recycled.

A lot of smartphone shops (at least for iphone, in my experience) will take phones back for reuse, recycling of materials. Also a lot of places sell refurbished phones. The first two iphones I owned were refurbs.

I am now on my fourth phone, which I bought last month after my previous one just got too old, no longer upgradeable to be compatible with apps I need, keyboard started going totally haywire, etc.

This one I actually purchased new. I’m hoping to get years of use from it.

But if I hadn’t just bought a new phone, I’d be seriously looking into something called a Fairphone.

The Fairphone organization is mentioned in “Behind the Screens.” Here is Fairphone’s website. It really looks quite impressive what they’re doing. Raising the bar for the smartphone industry.

The Fairphone 4 runs a version of Android, so there should be no worry about finding apps and that kind of thing. The phone is designed to be easy for users to replace the battery or display just by unscrewing with a standard screwdriver. (“iFixit score: 10 out of 10. The Fairphone 4 has been awarded a perfect score for repairable design.”)

Also the phone comes with a 5-year warranty. Definitely check out the website even if you’re not due for a new phone yet. And do share the Fairphone website and “Behind the Screens” link with people you know; let’s get the word out widely!

OKAY. Now here’s the bad news. Which I only found out after typing this whole entire post. The Fairphone is only sold in Europe. That’s a shame. I thought it sounded too good to be true. Never mind — share this post anyway, and share the Fairphone page and info anyway! Let’s start raising the public’s expectations for the smartphone industry.

And please watch “Behind the Screens”!

Finally, a few tips I’ve gleaned over the years:

• Many phone stores sell refurbished phones that will cost you much less than buying a new one, while still being able to last for years.

• The greenest phone is the one we already have; replace your phone as infrequently as you can get by with.

• If you are fortunate enough to have a good repair shop near you, use them! I’ve been surprised over the years at what’s repairable.

• When you go to get a new phone, turn in your old phone; the shop can recycle its materials, use it for parts etc. Plus you know just as well as I do thst it’s a drag having a cluttered drawer full of old phones, chargers, and other related electronic bits. It’s just depressing plus it’s a waste of space in your home. Take any old phones and related stuff that you are not actively using, and turn them in to the shops or recycling centers.

• Always buy a screen protector and protective case with your phone!! The extra expense will more than pay for itself by saving you expenses of screen breakage, time lost taking the phone to have its screen repaired/replaced, and so on.

Further Exploration

• You might enjoy “Upgrade Renegade,” a post I started in February 2022 when my old phone’s screen cracked on a weekend and I ended up putting off dealing with it, just taped it with a wide piece of clear packing tape. It turned into quite the case study in DIY repair, dogged commitment to postponing purchase, and the shaming that can come from even “eco”-minded people in response to a person resisting the “proper, de rigeur” consumer behavior.

Please help me boost green awareness by sharing this blog!

Hey all! I get a lot of repeat questions about composting.* This blog post from back in 2020 was one way I have attempted to pre-answer people’s questions to avoid reinventing the wheel etc.

http://www.jennynazak.com/2020/07/20/compost-basics/ Compost Basics

I always assume that everyone who is interested in this stuff has seen my posts, but it is becoming apparent that my posts do not always reach everyone who is seeking the info.

*(The same goes for other topics related to sustainability — natural building, solar cooking, the whole electric car thing, etc. Chances are, if you have a question about an eco topic, I have made a post about it. So I strongly encourage you to check out my blog. And yes it includes a search field!! Please share my blog with anyone who you think might be interested! You will be saving me a lot of question-answering labor, as well as helping good-hearted, green-minded people get the answers they need.
And you’ll be helping your neighborhood, community, city, county etc. too: The more that we share FAQ-type info about eco topics, the closer we get to having the critical mass of support for public municipal composting, public transportation, and so on in each city or region.
NOTE: I don’t make any money by you visiting this blog. (Not that there is anything wrong with bloggers making money from their blogs, mind you!) I make money through consulting, teaching, landscaping, housecleaning/decluttering, odd-jobs, sales of my books and artworks etc. My blog is a free resource. Additionally, I actively set out to make my blog a booster-channel for small businesses, grassroots organizations, other writers/educators, etc.)

To be clear: I love that you guys care about this stuff and ask questions! I just could use a bit of help so I can maximize the effectiveness of my efforts, and avoid unnecessary repeating of efforts.

Further Exploration:

• “Climate change on pace to radically alter life on Earth“: Timely article that ran today in my local paper. Good basic intro article to share with the people you know who ask questions about climate change. What are the causes, what are the effects of climate change that we are experiencing, is cold weather evidence that climate change isn’t real, etc.

Time-traveler from 2027 reports on how we solved our flooding issues (extended version)

Thoughts from a permaculture perspective, on how we solve our perennial flooding. This is a micro presentation i had planned on making during citizen comment time at a Daytona Beach City Commission meeting in mid-November but decided to hold off, as so many citizens were there needing to share their harrowing experiences from the flooding and start to discuss solutions.

I’m posting my comments here now in written form instead, to spark discussion about creative solutions and working with nature rather than against her. And about how we will come together to care for each other. Daytona Beach is one city!!! We stand together!! (This sentiment applies to Volusia County countywide too of course.)

Good evening, fellow citizens of the year 2022. This is future Jenny Nazak visiting you from the year 2027.

Please pardon my appearance; the holographic time-transmission technology is still a bit wonky. I must say I like that I turned out green though!

After the deadly storms and flooding of 2022, we as a city knew we had to figure out some real solutions.

As one element of the solutions, we finally faced the fact that the beachside is a barrier island of shifting sands, and needs to be as natural as possible.

We faced up to the science, that seawalls are not only extremely expensive and unable to protect oceanfront properties, but are actually worsening the erosion of our sandy beaches. We decided to build no more seawalls, and instead use living shoreline techniques, which are much more effective and much less expensive.

We also decided to have no more new building construction or new paved parking lots east of the A1A. (We were able to use federal grants to buy out those property owners and rewild the dunes.)

We built new housing on higher ground, and relocated residents out of the mainland’s flood-prone areas and away from the beachfront.

We have been able to add a considerable amount of infill housing on the beachside — just not on the oceanfront anymore.

But a lot of the housing didn’t need to be built, because it already existed, in the form of people’s vacation homes that sat empty most of the year. Thanks to an effort led by a grassroots coalition called Fill the Empty Houses, we were able to encourage the mostly-absentee owners of these houses to either move here permanently as year-round residents, or sell these properties, which were then freed up for purchase by year-round residents. City-initiated incentives have greatly helped residents go from being renters to being homeowners.

I myself still live on the beachside, at 501 Harvey Avenue. But my former single-family house on the corner of Harvey and Oleander, one block south of Main Street, has been built up into a 3-story multifamily residence, where several former residents of Midtown flood-prone areas now live with me and co-own along with me. I love it even more now.

The five households besides mine who live in my building are able to get by with just two shared cars, thanks to the creative transportation reforms of 2023.

Anyone is always welcome to come visit our vertical food gardens, shade trellises, native-plant rooftop, and rainwater cool-tubs at 501 Harvey, but then again our whole city is blanketed with those kinds of things now. The linear, rainwater-fed swimming pools and fishing ponds running along Nova Road, and along Lincoln Avenue by the university, are the most outstanding example.

Meanwhile, the formerly city-owned empty lot next to my building now has a new starter house on it, occupied by a young family who also relocated from a flood-prone area of Midtown.

The city sold off all the empty lots it had owned on the beachside at low prices to encourage people to build homes and small apartment buildings on them. The infill development on high-and-dry beachside lots has in turn encouraged many new businesses on Main Street, Seabreeze, and East ISB. The city no longer needs to spend any money marketing the beach to tourists. Residents create a vibrant year-round economy, and beach tourists are just icing on the cake. The money saved on expensive marketing has been channeled into the flood-proofing of Midtown.

Additionally, we stopped using high-maintenance nonnative landscaping on public land on the beachside, and instead allowed the natural dune vegetation to take over. We also finally realized that fallen leaves are best left on the ground to nourish the trees and make the ground more able to absorb stormwater.

Although the grasscutting contractors were worried about job security at first, they soon grew to love their new roles as cultivators and nurturers of trees and plants. They also enjoy their continuing education classes in permaculture and forestry.

Of course we still have some lawnmowing companies to maintain ballfields and such. But those types of grassy areas have been largely switched over to recycled artificial turf, since it saves so much money while reducing consumption of fossil fuels.

Although private property owners were not legally compelled to follow suit in the rewilding, many of them did when they saw the beauty of the natural dune landscape and how much money and maintenance they could save.

In addition to saving millions more dollars and untold hours of labor, and eliminating the use of irrigation and chemicals, this decision paid off by transforming our beachside into a uniquely beautiful landscape. It is visually obvious, as soon as you cross the bridge, “You are at the beach!”

These decisions instantly freed up tens of millions of dollars and countless labor hours, which were then redirected to address the chronic flooding and other major issues affecting residents of Midtown, the historic and cultural heartbeat of our city.

Furthermore, the freed-up funds (together with EPA green infrastructure grants and other funding), were used to create WaterWorld Daytona, a comprehensive stormwater stewardship program that encompasses wetland parks, food forest gardens, networked rainwater cisterns, fishing ponds, several miles of linear swimming pools, and thousands of nature-based business opportunities in Midtown and citywide.

WaterWorld has created many jobs and a huge network of local restaurants, local food trucks, herbalists, and local growers and foragers of edible plants. Our hats, baskets, and artworks — woven by local residents from locally harvested grasses and palm fronds — have become a signature item. We even have a local cottage industry of furniture artisans. WaterWorld has spawned no small number of technology jobs as well, from software to robotics, computer graphics and irrigation control and an array of app development, to name a few.

Our city has become a hot destination for tourists and a cool paradise for residents. The mosaic of eco parks, kayak canals, and semitropical food gardens on the mainland are often showcased in travel magazines and TV shows.

Amazingly, not a single building in our city has flooded since the storms of 2022.

The rewilding of beachside has been good for redevelopment on the beachside too! Main Street now has every storefront filled with year-round businesses, with apartments on all the upper floors. There are some new buildings but a surprising amount of redevelopment was accomplished by repurposing old buildings.

We thought the new building restrictions would kill the beachside hotels and condos, but creative eco-friendly developers and renovation experts have risen to the occasion. And it turns out that tourists love the plain natural beach and will come here just to spend time enjoying the sea breeze and the sound of the waves.

Adding to the beauty was our switch to dark-sky-friendly amber lighting. The dark-sky-friendly lighting proved so popular on the beachside that it’s now citywide. We all love to see the stars at night.

As part of the flooding fixes, our transportation menu has evolved to be more sustainable too. We added a citywide car-sharing program, a beach trolley, pedicabs all over the beachside and mainland (each pedicabber is an independent operator who owns their vehicle thanks to various purchase assistance and incentive programs), and multiple small river-crossing boat operators. For thrill-seekers, there are even ziplines going across the river.

Of course it helps the cause of pedestrians and cyclists that after the deadly storms of 2022, we finally mustered the political will to prioritize trees and native plants. It keeps the streets a lot more cool and shady as well as quieter.

All of this has created numerous year-round jobs for people from teens to elders, while also getting more residents excited to be outdoors. Also, we were able to attract bicycle shops to every part of town, and bicycles are now an extremely popular form of transport.

Our population is so fit and happy, and our built environment is so integrated with nature, that anyone visiting Daytona Beach 2027 could be forgiven for thinking they’ve landed on the movie set of Avatar or Black Panther.

Midtown is now thriving with residents, businesses, and tourists year-round. Back in the old days some people thought businesses didn’t want to be in Midtown, but instead now it’s so popular we have had to take steps to prevent gentrification, so that not one single resident is pushed out.

And the elaborate flowering shade-trellises along Lincoln, MLK, and other wide streets have won national awards for urban heat-island mitigation, food production, and wildlife biodiversity. And we have restored our oak canopy on the beachside and the mainland alike.

We finally found the sweet spot where flood control and drought mitigation meets beautification.

Nature has become a prominent feature of our city even while the various core downtown areas have become more vibrant. From Seabreeze to Main St., to Beach St., Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune Avenue to Martin Luther King, Ridgewood and ISB, all now have every storefront occupied year round, with shops on the first floor and apartments or hotels on the upper floors.

Another thing we did in our city was stop producing sewage. How? By switching from flush toilets to waterless toilets that convert human waste into dry compost. These toilets have been in widespread use by the RV-dwelling and boating population for a long time. After the colleges got together and did a pilot project, it was so successful that dry toilets soon came into widespread use. They are handled by the same companies that do septic tanks, portapotties and so on, so it was not a hard transition.

We also made innovations in governance: After the scandal-ridden and divisive elections of 2022, we came to realize we needed to find another way to choose our leaders and be in community together. Our new, unique system of governance was created by humbly studying the best practices from indigenous peoples around the world. It sidesteps the harshness and resource waste of competitive elections, and instead brings each and every person into their ideal role that really suits their heart and talents while maximizing each person’s contribution to the community. Our reforms helped us work more effectively as a team to address the flooding, as well as homelessness and other crises.

All the young people want to remain here after graduating from our universities, trade schools, and other educational institutions because we offer such a beautiful healthy environment and so many creative opportunities.

Historically in our city, water has often divided us and sometimes destroyed lives. Now, our beautiful world of water connects us and brings us new life.

Dear friends, Mother Nature is NOT our enemy. She has been trying for a long time to send us humans a wakeup call to change our ways of violence against her, but we humans kept on abusing her, fighting her, disrespecting her — until her natural reactions grew more and more intense. I’m so glad we finally saw that and started mending our ways.

The time-travel technology only allows me to visit you for three minutes. But I’ll be back to check on you. And of course 2022 Jenny Nazak will be here to keep pestering you to tap into the power of nature, and work with nature rather than fighting her.

Further Exploration:

This page from The Nature of Cities makes a wonderful “backup” to substantiate my musings about natural flood control. A few excerpts: “In the 1970s, the Austrian artist Hundertwasser began to promote the idea of forested roofs. He teamed up with the architect Krawina in 1979 determined to make his progressive ideas a reality, however he was disappointed by the architect’s initial insistence on level floors and straight lines (Hundertwasser liked neither level floors nor straight lines). By 1984 however, the Hundertwasser House was built, with undulating floors and 250 trees and bushes upon it. It has 53 apartments, 4 offices, 16 private terraces, 3 communal terraces and a café. Other vegetated buildings by Hundertwasser followed, including housing complexes, an incineration plant and finally, a toilet in New Zealand. His 12-storey Walspirale in Germany is topped by a beech, lime and maple forest. These projects are of special interest because the vegetation is often more akin to a lightly-managed natural forest than a conventional roof garden. Despite the success of some of these pioneering projects, the rise in popularity of lightweight green roofs in Europe and North America and the podium gardens of the high-rise cities of the Far East, the practice of establishing trees on taller buildings remains a curiosity and is still unusual. But that may be changing. The Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) of Milan, Italy is causing a stir in architectural circles and more and more property developers are asking if they can have trees on their buildings too. Bosco Verticale consists of two residential towers in the former industrial district of Porta Nuova, designed by Stefano Boeri with support from the horticulturalist Laura Gatti. One tower is 26 storeys high and the other 18, and between them they support more than 900 trees. The buildings were opened in 2014 and in 2015 and before long the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat selected the project as the overall Best Tall Building Worldwide. … What is remarkable about these buildings is that they are festooned with trees and shrubs. These are not buildings with conventional lightweight green roofs or green walls, but structures with substantial vegetation fully integrated into the building fabric. They have been designed with vegetation in mind from the beginning. Planting that was often said to be impossible or impractical a few years ago is now working. It is a delight for those fortunate enough to live in these leafy towers, with high-rise bird song and some extra relief from the summer heat, however it will be more important as a signpost to others, now free to imagine, plan, design and build other sylvan buildings. The real urban jungle is much more of a possibility. … Rainwater intercepted by the growing medium of green roofs or rainwater harvested for irrigation does not go into the downspouts to flood streets or overwhelm drains. The Sponge City is the concept whereby water is held in the built environment. This reduces the likelihood of flooding and provides water for plants and evaporative cooling. Vegetating buildings, including tall buildings, has to be part of the whole for the Sponge City to work.” (From “Vegetating Tall Buildings,” by Gary Grant, London, 2019.)

Bosco Verticale (Vertical Forest) of Milan: Pretty pictures!! “The Vertical Forest is the prototype building for a new format of architectural biodiversity which focuses not only on human beings but also on the relationship between humans and other living species. The first example, built in Milan in the Porta Nuova area, consists of two towers that are respectively 80 and 112 metres high, housing a total of 800 trees (480 first and second stage trees, 300 smaller ones, 15,000 perennials and/or ground covering plants and 5,000 shrubs, providing an amount of vegetation equivalent to 30,000 square metres of woodland and undergrowth, concentrated on 3,000 square metres of urban surface.The project is also a device for limiting the sprawl of cities brought about through a quest for greenery (each tower is equivalent to about 50,000 square metres of single-family houses).”

Night and Winter

… Are times that nature rests. We should take a page from that book, and let ourselves rest and let nature rest also.

Night: Turn off lights indoors and out to the greatest extent possible; unplug as many electric things as possible. Sleep. Rest. If awake, you might enjoy sitting by a candle and watching the shadows on the wall and just not thinking about much of anything — I know I very much enjoy that on occasion!

Winter: Just go out into the woods or field or backyard or courtyard and enjoy the quiet, smell the smell of brown twigs and grasses, fallen leaves. (Maybe you’ll get to like the soft brown quiet enough that you can let nature go at her own pace in the green times too.)

This post was prompted by the dismal whine of someone running a leafblower — such a grim, relentless, soulless sound of unnecessary work “that must be done,” for hours on end — even in a place where nature is so gently and suggestively bedding herself down with fallen leaves, brown grass-stalks, cold nights.

Nature is suggesting “Take a break!” I love to hear it. I love to take her suggestion!

PS. This advice works well in hot blistering sunny climates too. It’s just another flavor of Mother Nature cajoling us to please let her rest, and get some rest ourselves!

Permaculture Financial Freedom Chat Sunday 11/27/22 1pm US EST

We are having another one of our informal chat / Q&A sessions we are doing as part of our book release (Financial Resilience Economic Empowerment — book about permaculture-inspired finances; building your right livelihood; ethical investing; carving your path to creative & occupational freedom). It’s tomorrow at 1pm US EST.

Go here to see details and to RSVP. We are looking forward to having lots of you with us for this lively discussion! Last time was a lot of fun with deep chewy topics.