Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Book Review: Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew, with illustrations by Juan Martinez, Toolbox for Sustainable City Living: A Do-It-Ourselves Guide and DIY crafts

While this book has an amazing amount of information and how-to instructions, it is still a primer — something the authors remind their audience of often in their narrative. There are extensive resources and notes at the end which offer more in-depth information for people to consult on some of the more difficult concepts discussed within.


Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew co-founded the Rhizome Collective, a non-profit organization that existed for 11 years in Austin, Texas and which is currently reorganizing. Juan Martinez’s art is amazing; see more at the Beehive Design Collective. Together, words and illustrations effectively outline how urban dwellers can make use of limited funds and resources to create sustainable, autonomous communities in the face of world economic and ecological collapse. Organized into five broad sections, Food, Water, Waste, Energy, and Bioremediation, this DIY manual outlines the basics of food production, water collection and purification, dealing with waste, and many, many, many, many other key skills humanity will need in the years ahead, since we just can’t seem to break our fossil fuel addiction collectively. The authors also take great pains to define and identify how gentrification is threatening the health and vibrancy of cities due to displacement of people of color and low-income residents, and caution readers against buying into such terms as “smart growth” and “new urbanism”, the equivalents to “all natural” and “green”, frequently bandied about in environmental green washing.



“Recently, gentrifiers have attempted to recast gentrification as having a positive social influence, or to assert its inevitability….An awareness of and resistance to gentrification is critical to autonomous urban communities.” [p. 212]



Get it here or, even better, at your favorite local indy bookseller!






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