The message of the seventeen-minute short documentary A Permaculture Path goes beyond what it shows. It implies sustainability, community, confronting climate change, and finding regenerative solutions to complex environmental challenges.
Many cities have already acknowledged the need for urban farming. It is not just about creating community gardens. It is about planning with a broad scope to grow food close to where people live and work.
Permaculture design is about creating edible ecosystems that include plants, forests, meadows, and animals. It looks at the whole, seeing what the connections are and how to make them work harmoniously. Importantly, it is about finding local solutions to global problems.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s approach to learning from nature led him to conceive, back in 1935, an agrarian alternative to a decentralized city. He named it Broadacre City. About twenty years later, in 1958, recognizing rapid population growth, he applied many of his principles to higher-density urbanization, stating that “city and country will be happily married.”
Ruth Meghiddo’s path through nature evolved influenced by Wright’s principles of Organic Architecture and later turned into permaculture design, after discovering the work and philosophy of Australian researcher, author, scientist, teacher, and biologist, Bill Mollison.
