Bill Mollison (born 1928 in Tasmania, Australia) is a researcher, author, scientist, teacher and naturalist, and one of the foremost advocates for permaculture, or permanent agriculture. Following is a documentary on Mollison and his ideas.
Sustainability
Copehangen’s Sustainability Vision: Carbon Neutral, Climate-Adapted
Global warming poses a real threat to cities but planners in the Danish capital are taking visionary steps to ensure its resilience – and success – as far ahead as 2100. The city approved a plan for carbon neutrality, while a 10-person team focuses on how the city will adapt to a changing climate.
Communal Utopia: The Farm in Rural Tennessee
Once the largest hippie commune in the US, the Farm persists as an intentional community in rural Tennessee, based on principles of nonviolence and respect for the Earth. It now advocates permaculture, sustainable and renewable energy, a vegetarian diet, and midwifery.
Songdo, South Korea: Utopian City of Big Data and Urban “Sustainability”
The idea of the “utopian” community began in 1516 with Sir Thomas More’s fictional perfected society to present-day attempts to build the most sustainable urban ecosystem. With the case of Songdo International Business District, South Korea, we begin a series of case studies in the success and failure of utopian experiments in living sustainably.
LA River: An Urban Ecosystem Makeover in Transition
After seven years of study, federal officials have recommended a $453-million plan that would restore an 11-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River but leave much of its banks steep and hard to reach. Advocates will continue to press for a more ambitious alternative that would bring more people to the river, improving parks and recreation as well as ecosystems.
Japan: “Office Farming” Greens Tokyo’s Urban Jungle
Sophie Feng writes on one answer to disaster-prone Tokyo’s interest in food health and security. Corporate Ecology is mixed with the move toward Agricultural Urbanism, greening the sterile downtown office world for workers and visitors.
Detroit Future: Landscape Urbanism, Antidote to Industrial Blight
For the last 40 years, Detroiters have fled the once-majestic downtown core for the bucolic image of sprawling suburbia. Now an urban revival in the name of “Detroit Future City,” complete with forests, parks, farms and waterways, is planned to overcome the financial mismanagement and industrial blight that have plagued the city for far too long.