Hello from Inhabit. For this month’s edition of Territories, we’ve got a great new interview for you.
Hacking the Suburbs
David Holmgren in Conversation with Partisan Gardens
The latest episode of Partisan Gardens features a conversation with David Holmgren, author of the recent RetroSuburbia and co-author, with Bill Mollison, of Permaculture One—the landmark 1978 book which launched the international permaculture movement. In this wide-ranging and fascinating discussion, Holmgren calls for a bold and improvisational approach to the problem of the suburbs. Rejecting a mythical blank-slate, he invites us to see the rich possibilities in retrofitting suburban space, opening it up to distributed, small-scale food production and new autonomous forms of life.
Redevelopment of local culture is more likely to be some hybrid of past and new things, reflecting the local contexts. This is one of the difficulties people have coming from our shared modernity: they assume, because of what has been our experience for a few generations, that there's one big solution that spreads everywhere. But once you're working with nature, once you're working with living systems, everywhere is different.
Just out from Autonomedia: the second book from Liaisons, on the theme of revolutionary horizons. This collection is a must-read for us. Here's their blurb:
Liaisons is an international editorial collective that gathers experiences from struggles around the world. For our second book, Horizons, we asked comrades whether it’s still possible to envision revolution today, and to what extent classical notions of revolution might need to be rethought. Our inquiry received a variety of responses: while some emphasize the absence of revolutionary horizons or search for lessons among the experiments and failures of the past, others suggest revolution might be re-conceived as the gradual growth of a revolutionary force and the accumulation of “partial victories.” With ten texts from France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sudan, and the US, Horizons is a planetary attempt to rethink and renew the revolutionary tradition in the twenty-first century.
“There are futures that preserve the status quo and ones that challenge it by building truly different worlds.” Chiara Di Leone on climate change and scenario planning.
“The founding of the United States was a great ecological and social catastrophe from its very beginning.” Modibo Kadalie on freedom in maroon communities.
“Any real pursuit of autonomy begins with recognition of this deeper heteronomy: our dependence on those around us and those who came before.” Liaisons on earthbound worlds.
“The places we love, the places that are most successful and most alive, have a wholeness about them that is lacking in too many contemporary environments.” Michael Mehaffy on the legacy of Christopher Alexander.
“Our greatest challenge is to learn to collaborate and participate with the living rather than dominate it.” Isabelle Fremeaux & Jay Jordan on autonomous forestry in the ZAD.
“Tech companies have always overstated the benefits their technologies grant us and understated how much they serve their own ends of power and profit.” Paris Marx on the metaverse.
“There’s nothing inherent in the technology that makes it resistant to being assimilated by the ruling financial order.” Sarah Resnick on crypto-culture.
“People who have denied an urgent problem begin to self-radicalize, not because of activists or public education, but because the problem has caught up with them personally.” Cory Doctorow on peak indifference.
“Not only does armed insurrection invite the worst repression, but even where it succeeds it always runs the risk of civil war.” Ill Will on the recent revolt in Kazakhstan.
“Fear is not communist, it arouses the mistrust of all towards all and prepares the way for reaction.” Serge Quadruppani & Jérôme Floch on covid, conspiracy, and crowds.
In the coming months, we’ve got new essays, interviews, and more headed your way.
You’re on Path B,
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