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Permaculture and Urban Eco-System Design
April 3, 2017 @ 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Free
Permaculture, a portmanteau of permanent and agriculture, is sometimes described as strategies for sustainable agriculture, with the twin goals of maximizing yield and maintaining optimum long-term ecological health. With increasing numbers of people living in cities, and urban agriculture the subject of perennially renewed interest, permaculture offers many strategies beyond urban gardening that can be applied to both the design of the urban ecosystem and the modern city-dweller lifestyle.
Through this broader lens, permaculture is a whole-systems approach to human society, probing the ecological and sociological connections between human behavior and our cultivation of natural resources. Far broader than mere sustainable agriculture, permaculture is a design methodology for the human-ecological condition, and is the best answer to the question “What next?” Permaculture has the potential to transform the future, but first we have to bring it mainstream. How do we scale permaculture to redesign the massive agricultural, food, and consumer culture systems for long-term health and sustainability? What is the way forward given the sociopolitical challenges we currently face? How can a focus on local actions collectively alter a global system? Our experts will be discussing these questions and more at our permaculture forum on April 3rd, 2017.
Moderator: Hillary Brown, FAIA, Professor of Architecture at the City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture, Program Director, City College’s Sustainability in the Urban Environment
Panelists: Andrew Faust, Permaculture and Bioregional Educator, Designer at Center for Bioregional Living; Ashley Muse, Senior Sustainability Manager, YR&G; Philip Silva, Co-founder and Co-director, TreeKIT; Associate Editor, The Nature of Cities; Ben Flanner, Founder, Brooklyn Grange; Monica Ibacache, Founder and Executive Director, Beyond Organic Design