This is the fifty-first issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
EARTH & US: Visioning a Green Asheville
Imagine an Asheville a few years from now, filled with community and school gardens overflowing with abundant vegetables, trees in neighborhoods and parks heavy with fruit. All food waste is composted or fed to worms, and children learn composting in schools. Big communal tables around the city draw people to spontaneously share food, meet new people, work through conflicts, and feast together!
Green, vegetated roofs have increased the sounds of songbirds on city streets, where bicyclists now predominate over cars. Quiet electric trams and biodiesel vans transport most people. Sharing the rooftops are solar hot water collectors, photovoltaic panels, and the occasional small wind turbine. Step inside a building to use the toilet, and it’s either a low-flush model using roof water, or a composting toilet. Town Mountain boasts several wind turbines. The air is pure, like the streams, which have been cleaned with the help of wetlands, raingardens, and living machines.
People in boats are using the French Broad River for transportation, hauling goods on small barges. In the river parks there are shrines to Oshun, and festivals honoring the water goddess are held there yearly. Creeks have been daylighted; graywater systems are used for watering gardens and a few aquaculture ponds raising fish. Abundant small businesses are thriving as residents buy and barter for more local and bioregional goods. Asheville is known for its green business community including green builders, farmers, and artist-recyclers. The population is diverse: grandmothers mingle with school children and young adults in the community gardens and greenways. Economic and ethnic diversity are in evidence, because there is guaranteed affordable housing. There are community rituals and circles of healing.
The city is a mosaic of ecovillages interspersed with more traditional buildings. The city government has passed many green building initiatives. All the old buildings have been retrofitted to be energy efficient; more and more buildings are made from clay and straw. Beautiful art made from trash is a sign of the ingenuity of the residents. Periodically, permaculturists hold design charettes for the whole city. In the parks, groups of people practice qi gong and tai chi. Herbal, holistic health care is universal and free. Methane for heating and cooking is harvested from the sewage treatment plant, and sewage is also used to grow algae for biodiesel. Nearby farms and forests are protected by land-trusts, and more trees are planted each year. Wilderness corridors link larger natural areas.
On September 25, these ideas and many others flowed from the over four hundred visionaries who gathered for an evening led by Starhawk, one of the most respected voices in modern Earth-based spirituality. A permaculture teacher and dedicated activist, Starhawk is the author of The Spiral Dance, The Fifth Sacred Thing, and The Earth Path. She was joined by Janell Kapoor, the youthful founder of Kleiwerks International, a nonprofit natural building company based in Asheville. The visioning process was enhanced by viewing slides of simple, beautiful earthen buildings Kapoor has helped to build around the world, including many constructed by the "Assembly of the Poor"—Thai villagers who had been displaced by a dam project.
Funds raised at the event will help Kleiwerks build a community center which will be a focal point for Asheville’s green community. It will include meeting space, permaculture gardens, hot tub, and demonstration natural buildings. Kapoor has also launched an "Ashevillage Building Convergence" project to be held in 2008, modeled on the Village Building Convergence of Portland’s City Repair project. In Portland, ten days each year are dedicated to building new amenities such as cob benches, living roofs, and "intersection repairs" to help slow traffic and build community. Along with the construction projects there is much learning, connection, and celebration. (To learn more, visit www.kleiwerks.org.)
How do we bring these visionary ideas into reality? The first step is to focus on what we want to create, to see it in vivid detail and experience the joyful feelings evoked by the images. The next step is to gather our allies and get to work!
I’m happy to report that the idea for getting a green, living roof onto the Asheville Civic Center is now emerging into realization! After Janell and I organized two meetings of folks interested in the project (including City Council member Robin Cape), plus a lot of research and networking, a presentation was made to the City Council. They voted in favor, and now requests for bids have gone out! The biggest selling points were: 1) Green roofs protect the roofing materials so they last 2-3 times as long; 2) They absorb 50% or more of stormwater, and delay the flow of the remainder, thus sparing the creeks and reducing flooding; 3) They save about 25% on air conditioning costs in the summer; 4) They give points toward LEED certification, thus decreasing taxes.
Less important to the City Council, but of great interest to folks like me, green roofs provide habitat for birds and pollinating insects; they reduce the "urban heat island effect" through evaporation, lowering the ambient air temperature and decreasing ozone and smog; and they purify the air, absorbing pollutants and giving off oxygen. Since air conditioning is one of the main drivers for building more power plants to meet the peak demands in summer, an abundance of green roofs could actually result in fewer coal- or nuclear-fired power plants being built!
To learn more about green roofs, I highly recommend www.greenroofs.com.
Cathy Holt
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there's a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the words 'each other,' have no meaning."
- Rumi
with the word "subscribe" in the subject. It is a free newsletter, and any donations are also welcome! Previous issues of Earth & Us may be found 