[Sdpg] Lois Arkin - Transforming Inner-City Los Angeles

[sdpg-admin at arashi.com]

Hi  everyone
         I just came back from a visit to Ecovillage Los Angeles. One of 
the beautiful things I saw was the amazing gardens and fruit trees that 
cover the area and streets. You notice the children on the street and the 
friendliness of people who know and care about each other. This is not 
utopia it is ongoing living experiment that is still in it's learning 
stages, but it is remarkable that it has happened.
         The community since it acquired it first apartment building in 
1997 has bought another one and now has 48 units in the Village for rental 
under the management of the residents. Lois Arkin the founder of the non 
profit CRSP had a vision with other folks in 1983 that the city needed to 
rebuild a social fabric into each neighborhood thru transforming the way 
folks connected to their home , jobs and environment. She has lived in this 
neighborhood since the 1980's .
         So the idea of Ecovillage came alive. An Ecovillage is a dynamic 
community that interacts with it's surrounding neighborhood to create 
interconnecting businesses and jobs, more equable thoughtful use of 
resources and sharing.
         It allows the individual to socially interact,  grow and be cared 
for in his neighborhood. It involves changing the structures around you by 
involving the whole neighborhood in the vision of what their home would 
look like. Then slowly getting the levels of government and business to see 
that change can happen. But the first thing Lois saw was the need to build 
the community through social interaction into a group that could live in 
the village and learn the skill of interacting with each other.
         Read below an article written by Lois Arkin  in 1993  and see the 
beginnings of an Ecovillage that was just a seed. You can call Lois Larkin 
and join regular tours that take you around the neigborhood. Lois Arkin
Los Angeles Eco-Village 213/738-1254

ALSO NOTE SOUTH COAST PERMACULTURE GUILD EVENT ECOVILLAGE TALK, SLIDESHOW 
AND WORKSHOP

July 26 Thurs. 7 pm Crystal Waters Permaculture Ecovillage Australia Slide 
Show and Talk
Faulkner Gallery Main Library E Anapuma St Santa Barbara Ca
Morag Gamble and Evan Raymond Ecological Design (Permaculture) Teachers and 
consultants
with Sustainable Futures Australia
Crystal Waters Permaculture Village in Australia is one of the most
established and successful examples that exists to date. It has received a
prestigious United Nations World Habitat Award for its "pioneering work in
demonstrating new ways of low-impact sustainable living" and has been listed
in the top 40 of the UN’s Environmental Best Practices database. Crystal
Waters offers a model for their successful development.
For more Info contact
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network 805-962-2571 sbpcnet at silcom.com
Crystal Waters Slide Show also happening in Ojai Friday evening July 27 and 
LA Ecovillage, Los Angeles more details later

July 28 9-5 Ecovillage Design Course , Taft Gardens Ojai
Morag Gamble and Evan Raymond Ecological Design (Permaculture) Teachers and 
consultants
Cost for all day workshop $100

Ecovillage Design is a new and innovative field of design that is emerging 
to address our current environmental and social crises in a holistic, 
integrated and positive way, providing sustainable and long-term solutions.

International ecological design teachers and consultants, Morag Gamble and 
Evan Raymond, from Crystal Waters Permaculture Village, Australia

This workshop provides an opportunity to explore the integrated approach of 
planning and designing ecologically sustainable human settlements and 
presents an overview of the design principles used in successful projects 
around the world.

Ecovillages are designed with ecology in mind and encourage people who live 
in and visit them to develop an understanding of the interconnectedness of 
the natural world- to create beneficial relationships between the 
ecological, social, economic and spiritual aspects of their lives. The aim 
is to engage people fully with their head, heart and hands.

Many aspects of ecovillages will be explored during this workshop including:
· What is an ecovillage
· Ecovillage design considerations
· Design for sustainable land management
· Infrastructure development for ecological settlements
· Healthy houses and low impact buildings
· Ecological waste management strategies
· Developing a sense of community belonging
· Community Structures
· Right livelihood and strengthening the local economy

The workshop will include images and case studies of international 
ecovillages, demonstrating the diversity of ways in which ecovillage design 
principles can be applied to meet the needs of local communities and 
environments.
For more Info contact and to register for the course
Santa Barbara Permaculture Network 805-962-2571 sbpcnet at silcom.com




http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC35/Arkin.htm




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Transforming Inner-City Los Angeles




All the elements are present in this inner-city neighborhood for an 
eco-renaissance that, over time, could help heal the City of Angels




by Lois Arkin

One of the articles in <TOC35.htm>Designing A Sustainable Future (IC#35)
Spring 1993, Page 27
<../permiss.htm>Copyright (c)1993, 1996 by Context Institute | 
<../../cgi-bin/store/commerce.htm>To order this issue ...


Lois Arkin was a co-organizer of the first Los Angeles Eco-Cities 
Conference, co-founder of the Eco-Cities Council, founder and executive 
director of the 13-year-old Cooperative Resources and Services Project 
(CRSP) and co-editor of the books Sustainable Cities: Concepts and 
Strategies for Eco-City Development and Cooperative Housing Compendium.

She has been a primary inspiration and keeper of the vision for the Los 
Angeles Eco-Village project, which had been planned for an old landfill site.

Recently, the group decided to shift its focus to an inner-city 
neighborhood that has been home to CRSP and Lois for 13 years. The group is 
committed to maintaining the neighborhood's rich mix of cultures, income 
groups, family structures, and lifestyles.

In this article, Lois describes the emerging processes for retrofitting 
this diverse neighborhood for sustainability and a more active community life.

Last year's civil uprising in Los Angeles left sections of the city in 
ruins. The physical rebuilding has barely begun, and where it has, it 
tragically replicates the unsustainable design and patterns of life 
disrupted by the fire.

People continue to leave the city in droves - some because of the region's 
economic downturn, others because they are frightened and disillusioned.

But among those who are staying, a growing number are engaged in healing 
the city. From public housing tenants to block clubs to study groups within 
public agencies, people are organizing, dialoging, and learning. Their 
agendas are growing more and more consistent: empowerment for social, 
economic, and environmental justice.

The message is being heard in City Hall, where officials responsible for 
neighborhood planning and revising the city's General Plan are seeking out 
ways to engage the public in the planning process.

Projects and programs are springing up throughout the area addressing bits 
and pieces of the sustainability puzzle. Among them are graywater projects, 
energy and water conservation demonstrations, organic gardens, a 
community-supported agriculture movement, and an Eco-Home movement. There 
are also efforts to unpave L.A., restore the L.A. River, create urban 
forestry, and stop various freeways and street widenings. There are moves 
toward affordable and co-op housing and cohousing, green businesses and 
ecological economic development.

Now there is a single project that seeks to combine all these elements in a 
single sustainable neighborhood demonstration, the L.A. Eco-Village at 
Bimini-White House Place.

On the day before Christmas 1992, I was talking to Esfandiar Abbassi, the 
garden coordinator for our block, about recycling the 4-foot stack of 
cardboard that has been collecting from our daily trip to the supermarket 
to bring back produce clippings for composting. He commented that the city 
would pick up the cardboard for recycling and all we needed to do was bind 
it up in appropriate-sized piles.

I'd been collecting twine from newspapers and our newsletter stacks for 
several years, believing that some day there would be a use for it. It 
looked like this was it! So, out came the box of 1- to 2-foot lengths of 
nylon twine to be tied together. Soon Ming Gook, Dae Han, Johnnie, and 
James were gathered around Esfandiar curious about what he was doing and 
how they could help. These neighbor children, aged four to twelve, started 
making a game of tying the strings together. Meanwhile, Esfandiar talked 
with the children about gardening, composting, art, sports, Christmas, and 
his native Iran and listened to their thoughts and concerns while tying the 
strings.

In about an hour, the string was strung around poles across the street, 
down the block - maybe 1,500 feet of it. Four-year old James insisted on 
rolling it all up on a stick when we were through, and a fine job he did of 
it, too.

Later, Esfandiar was out on the street playing touch football with the kids 
while I practiced tennis on the sidewalk with 10-year-old Johnnie. Mary 
Maverick, who works with the composting and organic gardening project, came 
by bearing a box of her wonderful ginger cookies for all.

The night before, several members of our Eco-Village Planning group joined 
me for Christmas caroling. In the 13 years I'd lived on this block, never 
had there been caroling. As the five of us caroled, we met many new folks 
in our two-block neighborhood and gathered information on their skills for 
the local community currency system we're helping to organize.

WHOLE-SYSTEMS ORGANIZING

These seemingly unrelated events are typical of the seeds needed to grow a 
sustainable urban neighborhood or eco-village out of a damaged central city 
area. Spontaneous encounters and working together build trust and a sense 
of community. When neighbors see people of good will having fun on the 
streets, they are more likely to join in, expanding a healthy sense of play 
and good neighborliness. This helps neighborhood residents recapture hope, 
reclaim the streets from automobiles and crime, and move into cycles of 
empowerment. This is whole-systems or cyclic thinking, as distinct from the 
linear approach characteristic of unsustainable practices.

In cyclic or whole-systems thinking, everything is related. There are many 
reasons for doing something. For example, Dianne and I take a walk down the 
block together not only to chat with each other and get our exercise, but 
to share the synergy of our joyous togetherness with anyone who happens to 
be in our path, look for recyclable "trash" for the garden and other 
projects, and more easily include neighbors in spontaneous conversations 
that one of us alone might otherwise be somewhat shy about.

A whole-systems approach to sustainable neighborhood planning and 
development is interactive and collaborative. This kind of planning 
recognizes the value of spontaneity and chaos as essential to innovation 
and creativity. It is sensitive and respectful of the pace at which people 
can learn, plan, "own," and incorporate the changes.

A neighborhood is sustainable when its economic, social, and physical 
systems are sustainable. The emphasis is always on the people and how they 
can take care of themselves and their environment in healthy ways that do 
not jeopardize the ability of future generations to do the same. This is 
the stuff, then, from whence eco-villages are made - a critical mass of 
people within a small geographic area who are regularly thinking and acting 
in whole-systems ways.

ACTING LOCALLY

The Los Angeles Eco-Village is one place where these ideas are rapidly 
coming together. Three miles west of downtown Los Angeles, at the north end 
of last year's civil uprisings, this two-block mixed-use neighborhood is 
home to approximately 500 people in a dozen somewhat run-down but 
architecturally significant buildings. Although the neighborhood has been 
home to CRSP and to me for the past 13 years, until recently we thought of 
ourselves as transitioning out of the neighborhood. We had planned to 
create the eco-village on an 11-acre city-owned landfill site and its 
adjacent neighborhoods about seven miles northeast of the current location.

Our decision to stay and work on retrofitting the neighborhood we've called 
home for so long evolved out of our commitment to participate in the 
healing of our city. Our neighborhood had been the site of four major 
fires; my home, the CRSP office, and several of our wonderful old buildings 
had been threatened with fire during the uprisings. How, we asked, could we 
most effectively introduce whole-systems planning to heal and provide a 
model of sustainability in neighborhoods that have already been built up?

At the same time, some of us were seriously rethinking our position 
concerning urban development and open space issues. Contrary to popular 
myth, our city is underdeveloped and, almost uniformly, inappropriately 
developed. Our commercial corridors, with endless miles of single-story 
development and ugly strip malls, could be transformed into beautiful 
three- to five-story compact mixed-use areas interspersed with open space 
along tree-lined sidewalks with bicycle, pedestrian, and mass 
transit-friendly streets.

There should be incentives and mandates to help owners of large tracts of 
open space transfer their development rights for use in underdeveloped 
urban areas. Open spaces should no longer be developed, but rather 
protected and restored so they can once again become part of the planet's 
life support system.

So you can see, our hearts were no longer set on creating yet another new - 
sexy maybe, but nonetheless unnecessary - development!

Meantime, Esfandiar had started composting and gardening in our backyard, 
and Dianne Herring, a second-year graduate landscape architecture student 
and co-coordinator of Eco-Village, was thinking that the old landfill would 
make a great site for community supported agriculture.

It all added up! Twenty-five members of the Eco-Village Advisory and 
Planning Group unanimously and enthusiastically agreed that we could have 
the greatest impact where it was needed most - by retrofitting our own 
neighborhood for sustainability.

AN ECO-VILLAGE VISION

Our own neighborhood already has many of the elements we hoped to develop 
in an eco-village. It's an established mixed-use neighborhood with good 
access to public transportation and job opportunities. Social, ethnic, and 
income groups are diverse and in balanced proportions with many Asian, 
Latino, Anglo, and African-American residents. The 500 people in our 
neighborhood is a small enough number to ensure that we can all get to know 
one another and build trust, and each feel we can influence the direction 
of the community.

A major feature planned for the L.A. Eco-Village during the coming decade 
is the acquisition of existing apartment buildings for conversion to 
permanently affordable, cooperative ownership for the community's very low- 
to moderate-income current and future residents. Some of the buildings will 
lend themselves nicely to cohousing and other collaborative housing 
arrangements. We are also promoting changes in city law that will protect 
neighborhoods such as ours from gentrification. Without such a policy, 
increasing a neighborhood's sustainability will also increase the value of 
real estate, driving out the very people who improved the neighborhood.

Our other plans for economic systems include a credit union, socially 
responsible investment opportunities for neighbors and others, and 
non-polluting livelihood opportunities through a community-owned 
neighborhood Eco-Business Incubator. A Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) 
and community revolving loan fund are already established.

We also hope to restore the Bimini Baths, a hot mineral springs 2,000 feet 
below the surface of our neighborhood. To our surprise, the industrial 
building we had targeted for the restoration became available this year, 
and we're working with other economic development groups on acquiring the 
building for community ownership. Bimini means "sacred site of healing," a 
perfect match for what Eco-Village stands for.

We also plan extensive "street calming" to slow the traffic, including the 
unpaving of some traffic lanes for open-space community uses. The 
intersection of the two four-lane streets in our neighborhood will be 
transformed into a plaza. A three-day-a-week flea market, organized by a 
local El Salvadoran family, an Earth Day organic fruit tree planting at the 
four corners of the intersection, and Saturday morning brunches (sometimes 
right out into the middle of the intersection with our handmade "Thank you 
for slowing down" signs) have already begun to set the tone for a plaza. 
Monthly neighborhood potlucks have begun in front of the buildings 
surrounding the proposed plaza, and outdoor videos and films on a variety 
of sustainability topics are scheduled for hot summer evenings over the 
next few months.

Organic urban agriculture, an orchard, and community composting have 
already begun within the neighborhood; rooftop and vertical gardens will be 
added as viable. Planned water conservation and biological gray water 
reclamation could cut our water use by 85 percent. Retrofits for energy 
efficiency can reduce our conventional energy requirements by about 75 
percent. We're also talking about implementing waste-to-resource systems, 
retrofitting adjacent commercial strips to mixed-use residential and 
commercial, retrofitting buildings with non-toxic regional and recycled 
building materials, and operating community-owned non-polluting vehicle pools.

CRSP is already functioning as a community transformation center; neighbors 
are dropping in to get information on a variety of interests and needs. 
Bi-weekly dialogue groups bring speakers to the neighborhood to facilitate 
dialogue on sustainability issues in Spanish, Korean, and Vietnamese. There 
is a monthly newsletter, a tree steward group of a dozen children, ages 
four to twelve, weekly open-houses, and monthly community meetings. The 
current emphasis on community organizing is helping to build friendships, 
trust, and leadership skills among neighborhood residents.

On another front, we have developed input for inclusion in the City's 
Community Plan, General Plan, and Housing Element regarding eco-village 
concepts.

"ECO-VILLAGE IS A STATE OF MIND!"

We are a neighborhood in the process of transcending the accident of our 
residential choice to become an intentional community. Others are starting 
to move here because eco-village energy is starting to concentrate in 
exciting ways.

Recently, Dianne Herring, co-coordinator of the L.A. Eco-Village, 
enthusiastically said at an eco-village dialogue group, "Eco-Village is a 
state of mind. You think and you play around and you talk about and work on 
all these systems, and eventually other people start doing it with you. And 
soon, it just jumps out at you and you are thinking in Eco-Village systems 
about everything!"

An alignment is taking place as we realize we have to begin transformation 
where we are. When we have the skills and knowledge to heal ourselves, our 
neighborhoods, our cities, our planet, we have the public responsibility to 
do so. There is no more time for narcissistic waiting and searching "for 
the place where I can live happily ever after."

We believe our city, our bioregion, and the world at large desperately need 
inner-city models of sustainable neighborhoods. We, too, have a longing for 
community and meaningful work in the context of the pain of our city, and 
the pain that it has brought to the planet through its giant media machine. 
We are elated to be doing something about it!

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