Our land purchase in October launched us into a frenzy of planning and permacultural design. We brought in a permaculturist for a week of intense meetings and land walks, some with local conservation officials. With new permaculture terms and skills we attacked such difficult problems of which land to leave for wildlife and natural ecosystems, and where to locate town center.
Jillian Hovey, a permaculturist from Toronto, Canada (who we know from the ecovillage network), came to DR for a week last October. She has extensive experience in permaculture and ecological design, including experience on the village scale, plus understanding of the ecovillage concept. With Jillian we spent significant time creating a base map (an enlargement of our topographic map), and various overlays we drew on tracing paper. Once we'd created maps of vegetation, wild life corridors, existing fences and buildings, CRP fields, and soil types, we really discovered how useful tracing paper can be! Then after taking numerous land walks with Jillian helping us focus on different design parameters, we started mapping out our personal visions of DR on overlays and presenting them to each other. Despite our busy planning schedule, we tried to reserve some time to educate ourselves about basic permaculture concepts and techniques so we could continue to use them even after Jillian left.
In addition we brought out people from the Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Missouri Department of Conservation to help us learn about our local ecology and the government programs we are eligible for. We have found these government officials, including a wildlife biologist, soil scientist, forester, surveyor, and a natural history ecologist, to be incredibly helpful and even excited about our project. We were able to designate a significant portion of our land as a wildlife area where human impact will be minimized and native ecosystems reestablished (see Aaron's article on page 3 for more on our tree planting and prairie restoration).
Our attention then turned to questions of where human habitation, and specifically town center, would occur on our land. We spent much time with Jillian and more since discussing our visions for a DR town center and what influences our different perspectives. We struggle with the difficulties of defining a clear vision that works for us, and for new people that still allows for organic growth and flexibility. Some of us have been greatly influenced by Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language, a book which describes interrelated patterns for human architecture (from doorknobs to cities). We have spent some time trying to define patterns of what we would like to see at DR with the goal of incorporating these patterns into a land use plan.
Currently our thoughts of town center have focused on the southeast corner of our property near the existing buildings and zone of highest human impact (see map). Placement might seem like a simple decision to make but it is influenced by so many general design parameters it ends up being quite difficult. But we must make a decision soon as it affects where we start to focus our building energy for the upcoming season. We are currently debating such questions as:
- Should businesses be located near the existing buildings and Woehrle road for easy access from non-resident consumers?
- How should businesses be integrated into the DR residential areas?
- Should town center be more central on our land to allow us to spread out evenly around the center (instead of town center being off-center)?
- Will most people want to live near town center or in more secluded outlying areas?
- How much private autonomy will people have over outdoor space around their homes and businesses?
- How densely clustered will development be?
- How will we integrate the needs of individuals and families with those of larger DR sub-communities?
- Where shall "noxious" activities (like noisy or smelly activities) be conducted so as not to offend residents (or neighbors)?
- How do we share resources such as pastures, orchard space, and agricultural land?
- How do we make DR friendly to children and those of all ages and abilities?
Detail of southeast corner of property. Full map above.
So at this point, the process continues with the town as yet uncentered and many parts of our land use plan not fully defined. But in many ways we have made tremendous progress and have found significant commonality in our visions. And we continue to learn much about our land and each other as we delve deeper into this ecovillage design process. Hopefully by sharing what we learn from this process we can help others turn their communities into ecovillages.
Intentional Community Bookstore
Detail of southeast corner of property.