Two fun websites, Food for thought. Wild Asparagus.
I'd like to share two nice websites. The first is part of a long train of thought I've been following for some time. A recent post included a pdf of an essay from a book I'm reading, which brings up some of these issues. The first site is a good resource for one particular tool. The second site is just a nice piece on urban farming, and includes a lot more information besides that. It's a survival guide for a post-carbon world.

Community and place. Property ownership. Profit. "Not-for-profit". Land. Debt. Food. These are a few ways to describe the things I've been thinking about lately. My day job is with a nonprofit community developer in Riverside. These past few months I've been able to learn a lot about property ownership as a tool for neighborhood revitalization and the slew of organizations that exist in this country to take advantage of federal funding programs for just that. My affection for the job has waxed and waned as I've learned more and more. I love my co-workers and I believe in them. On the other hand I see only problems with the funding sources and the funding intentions. There are a few ways to look at this situation. We are basically a "less bad" developer, and a "less bad" realtor than the conventional sort. We keep costs low, we're not seeking profit, we are building to green standards and pushing to do ever more in that regard. But we are also a gentrification engine. RADO, like the other organizations that exist to take advantage of housing subsidy dollars, works within the conventional mortgage system and real estate market. The stated goal of a group like us in a distressed area is to raise appraised values so that for-profit developers can make a buck. Then they roll in and voila! economic development occurs. Or something like that.

We do nothing revolutionary or even progressive. We are not set up to. We work within the same problematic system that every other realtor and speculator does. We have a few tools at our disposal to avoid speculation, but that's it.

A different model appeals to me quite strongly: the community land trust (CLT). CLTs and other progressive economic models are the focus of this website. This one is an example of a CLT in action, and has some detailed information about how the math works out.

CLTs are not an entirely different solution, but they are a step in a compelling direction. Under this model an organization (the trust) owns the land in a region, and buyers only own improvements to it (i.e. you own your house, not the earth it sits on). In various ways, this makes it possible to avoid treating the land itself as a commodity. CLTs still incentivize investment by allowing owners to keep the equity they build up over time. In the Rondo CLT, for example, anyone who sells their home gets 25% of the increase of its property value. Later I'll post a pdf of another essay I read about this model. It captures some of the more interesting progressive reasons why trusts work.

The Post-Oil Survival Guide for City Dwelling is pretty much self-explanatory. Definitely worth a look. It would be fun to make a Jacksonville-specific survival guide.

I'm working on a map of public fruit around town, which I could definitely use help with. Mostly mulberries at the moment, although I did find a wild asparagus patch on 2nd Street!  ¶ 1:58 PM