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This is the first article I’ve written for PermacultureNews.Org, and I’d like to share some Urban Permaculture experiences from Córdoba, Argentina.

One of the most exciting things about Permaculture design principles is that they invite us to improve our environment no matter where we live. However, up until now, the predominant image of Permaculture in Argentina (possibly in many places) is “the countryside”. When I completed my PDC in a semi-rural location here in Argentina, one of the course instructors told us on our first day that we are all part of an “urban exodus”, a movement of city people back to the land. This was, in my view, a bad message for the first day of the course. Most of the course participants were city dwellers, and if the instructor had asked, he would have found that moving out of (or escaping from) the city was not a priority that everyone shared.

In the year-and-a-half since I earned my PDC, I’ve been designing and collaborating on Permaculture projects in the most urban of environments: balconies, rooftops, sidewalks, abandoned lots, you name it. I also have a twice-monthly workshop called “Permacultura para Deptos” (Permaculture for Apartments), where we work in real houses and flats in the middle of the city of Córdoba, the second-largest city in Argentina.

In all of the classes we do an introduction to the history and principles of Permaculture, and then we get to work on site analysis and practical design ideas for apartment-scale food production, composting and other projects. Using plants for creating privacy screens, improving air quality, and providing protection from the heat are also common design goals in these situations.

The photos below are from two design sessions in a second-story apartment inhabited by two sisters.