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Ecotopia: The Novel That Predicted Portland
Scott Timberg, New York Times
SOMETIMES a book, or an idea, can be obscure and widely influential at the same time. That’s the case with “Ecotopia,” a 1970s cult novel, originally self-published by its author, Ernest Callenbach, that has seeped into the American groundwater without becoming well known.

The novel, now being rediscovered, speaks to our ecological present: in the flush of a financial crisis, the Pacific Northwest secedes from the United States, and its citizens establish a sustainable economy, a cross between Scandinavian socialism and Northern California back-to-the-landism, with the custom — years before the environmental writer Michael Pollan began his campaign — to eat local.

White bicycles sit in public places, to be borrowed at will. A creek runs down Market Street in San Francisco. Strange receptacles called “recycle bins” sit on trains, along with “hanging ferns and small plants.” A female president, more Hillary Clinton than Sarah Palin, rules this nation, from Northern California up through Oregon and Washington.

... In the ’70s, the book, with a blurb from Ralph Nader, was a hit, selling 400,000 or so copies in the United States, and more worldwide. But by the raging ’80s, the novel, along with the Whole Earth Catalog, seemed like a good candidate for a ’70s time capsule — a dusty curio without much lasting impact.

Yet today, “Ecotopia” is increasingly assigned in college courses on the environment, sociology and urban planning, and its cult following has begun to reach an unlikely readership: Mr. Callenbach, who lives in Berkeley, Calif., and calls himself a “fringe, ’60s person,” has been finding himself invited to speak at many small religious colleges. This month, the book’s publisher, Bantam, is reissuing it.
(12 December 2008)

A Yankee Model for Sustainability
Christopher Ryan, AICP; APA's Planning Magazine
With typical New England resolve, citizens in two towns in Massachusetts's Nashoba Valley have used a grassroots activist approach to local sustainability that should be inspirational to planning professionals. Both Harvard and Groton offer an intriguing model for relocalization.

Harvard is a small, pastoral town 30 miles west of Boston — an exurb with farms, orchards, and the Fruitlands Museum — the site of Bronson Alcott's 19th century utopian experiment in communal living. It seems a logical setting for relocalization efforts. That's what occurred to residents Sydney and Bill Blackwell in the summer of 2005, when they formed the Harvard Local to focus on issues of climate change, peak oil, and energy scarcity. Today, the group has more than 160 members who participate in action committees involved with projects centering on energy, local foods, community garden, and schools.

Through its energy subcommittee (now a municipal energy committee), the Harvard Local initiated home energy audit drives to sign up residents for renewable energy programs offered by the area's electric utilities. The group also conducted community forums on energy and green building, sponsored a film series on peak oil and climate change, and initiated an energy audit of the schools, the town's largest public energy consumer.

In early 2007, the local foods committee began a community garden on one-third of an acre that is shared by 19 residents. Its first harvest occurred this autumn. An important facet of the project was partnering with other local groups, including the Garden Club, the Harvard Conservation Trust, the Conservation Commission, local food producers, and the farmers market.

About 18 months after the Harvard Local got started, residents of nearby Groton became interested in the same issues. Like its neighbor, Groton is a picturesque New England community with small farms and a charming character but, unlike Harvard, Groton has a less defined town center. ...

Christopher Ryan is the director of planning and development in Ayer, Massachusetts.
Resources
(December 2008)
Many related articles in the December issue of PLANNING.

Christopher adds:
Also noteworthy in December 2008 PLANNING Magazine is Daniel Lerch's feature article on Post Carbon Cities.

Green gifts are made locally to last
Kelly Zito, San Francisco Chronicle
Location, location, location.

The No. 1 rule for buying real estate (OK, maybe not in this market) also tops the list for buying green gifts this holiday season.

Take that lovely robe of organic cotton made by folks who receive a fair wage. It would make a great "sustainable" holiday gift for your husband or niece. But if it comes to the Bay Area from some far-flung locale, the transportation costs probably squeeze the eco-friendly right out of it.

"It could be the greenest product in the world, but if it came here from China, it doesn't really matter," said Robyn Griggs Lawrence, editor in chief of Natural Home magazine.

"When it comes to buying things, you have to weigh what the important issues are to you."

Buying goods locally isn't new, of course. Waves of community-supported agriculture have crested many times over the years. And any small store that has tried to compete with the Wal-Marts of the world urges its consumers to spend money within the community.
(14 December 2008)

Bright Neighbor uses online barter system to build community
Eric Bartels, Portland Tribune
Randy White may be a radical, but he can still speak the language of business.

A former corporate software expert, he represents the considerable brainpower behind a new “community relocalization computer application,” boardroom argot if ever it existed.

On the other hand, the new tool, known colloquially as Bright Neighbor, may become a crucial delivery vehicle for the sustainability mandate to reduce, reuse and recycle in Portland.

And that makes White awfully green.

“Out of one side of our mouths, we talk about the need to conserve, but out of the other side we talk about growing the economy,” he says. “They are opposed to one another. We need to find a way to traverse that very fine line.”

What the 32-year-old White proposes with Bright Neighbor, a sort of MySpace for permaculturists, is that communities can be created and strengthened by sharing resources in a systematic way.

If neighbors share a ride, money saved on fuel stays in the pocket of someone other than Big Oil.

If somebody buys or trades for produce grown in a backyard, local dollars don’t enrich a corporate operation in California.
(12 December 2008)
More at original. Randy White is a Portland peak oil activist and an Energy Bulletin contributor.

Randy writes:
So far, Portland is successfully using Bright Neighbor to share resources. The problem, however, is that sharing resources doesn't help earn money to pay the mortgage. The question is now "How can newly laid-off people make money in this economy"? This is where learning new job skills comes in.