This year, Gaia University’s emerging Gaia Metro regional center and The City Repair Project , both of Portland, Oregon, USA, have collaborated to create a Village Building Design Course that provides a comprehensive overview of the designs and methods that empower citizens in urban settings to build community through ‘placemaking’. The course takes place in Portland May 28th – June 6th in conjunction with City Repair’s annual placemaking event, The Village Building Convergence .
For Gaia U associates enrolled in the Urban Village Building degree pathway, the course will be a required extension to the May orientation workshop. Associates who attend the course will continue their exploration of urban village building after the course, with advising support, through placemaking projects that they actualize in their own cities. For the general public, the course will be available as a standalone workshop.
Observe. Integrate. Design from patterns to details. Use edges. These are just a few permaculture principles that can be used to redesign elements of the urban environment in a way that is regenerative and life-supporting. With over half of the world’s population now living in urban settings, the need for human-scale urban design has never been more pressing.
What is the future of our cities? How can we re-vision the environments most impacted by population density, centralization, and social isolation? What elements of the built environment can be readily redesigned to address the social and environmental disconnect that prevent our cities from becoming places of true eco-social regeneration? The approach that City Repair has embraced for addressing these questions is called placemaking. Citizens identify what elements are lacking in their own neighborhood and, with the support of City Repair, figure out how they can work together to increase the aesthetic and functional value of their common spaces.
City Repair has been experimenting with placemaking projects for over a decade. Mark Lakeman, co-founder of City Repair, has long envisioned the development of multiple villages in urban centers. The placemaking movement he helped to initiate has revealed that creating habitat, public art and natural building in common spaces enlivens and connects people, especially in the context of the city where the vast urban grid separates citizens from each other and the natural world.
The Village Building Design Course is an exciting addition to the 10th annual Village Building Convergence. This ten-day event brings people together from across Portland – and across the country – to help small, organized groups transform neglected spaces into public places. The VBC offers community celebration in the form of work-parties, feasts, live music and inspiring speakers, as well as extensive opportunities for learning hands-on, design and visioning skills.
The course will cover the fundamental elements of urban permaculture design and offer an in-depth look at the ‘evolution’ of human settlements throughout history and the nature of the relationship between people and place. There will also be extensive discussion about effective strategies for connecting placemaking with other social change movements.
For more information about the Village Building Design Course, visit cityrepair.org/vbdc or contact vbdc@cityrepair.org.org.
