The Permaculture City

This eagerly awaited book from West Coast permaculture expert Hemenway, author of the classic Gaia’s Garden, pushes permaculture design beyond its usual realm of homesteading and gardening, applying it to the complex systems that make up contemporary urban life. Other permaculturalists are also exploring these ideas, but Hemenway’s intelligent, down-to-earth analyses, astute systems thinking, and clear organization offer a particularly comprehensive, open-ended, and sophisticated yet understandable overview to readers who want to discover, evaluate, utilize, and integrate the untapped resources abundant in any city or town. Hemenway focuses on the philosophical, “whetting appetites” and providing toolkits rather than in-depth instruction, with the goal of teaching readers “to become adept at a whole-systems approach to living in and finding solutions in cities, towns, and suburbs.” Referencing livable-city innovators such as Jane Jacobs and human-scale design thinkers such as Christopher Alexander, Hemenway shows how permaculture concepts can be stretched and rethought in an urban setting to include not just one’s house, garden, and yard but also neighbors, parks, and city agencies.