Rutley Ventures Ltd.

One of the most consistently vexing patterns (to me), both social and structural, is the grid. Specifically, the city planning grid that’s been stamped onto our landscape to lay our roads and lots. The story of where the grid comes from, why it’s bad, and why it’s good outgrow it has been told already, and told better than I can.
What I’m doing here is explaining how we can dissolve the grid over time, lot by lot, block by block. Or maybe more accurately, I’ve giving a description of how it would play out, rather than a how-to. Keep in mind that I have no knowledge of or concern about legalities and technicalities, and that the solutions to those puzzles would present themselves when appropriate.

1: The Block

This is a nice, respectable residential block. All the lots are politely aligned along the grid, single family dwellings, a few sliced up into rental suites, an apartment block on the end. All the buildings are politely aligned on the grid staying politely within their lots guarded politely by fences (which, as we all know,make good neighbours). Nobody talks to each other, nobody knows anyone’s name, and inhabitants are more recognizable by their cars than their faces. Everyone is quietly miserable, or at very least struggling vaguely with a feeling that something’s not quite right.

2: Sprouts

And then someone decides to do something about it. John and Wendy love their old Victorian house, but the property value is going nuts, and the property taxes are going nuts with it. They’re also looking for ways to tread more lightly on the earth,reduce their energy consumption, and turn their neighbourhood into a community.

Simultaneously, young people in the community, without the means to buy a half-million dollar Craftsman, and without the inclination to heat the thing if they could, are looking for ways not only to have a home, but to own it. Many of them have simple desires, simple tastes, and modest (Hobbit-scaled) aspirations. They don’t need a big house, but they want lots of community.

Fortunately, John and Wendy lived on a block that at least tried to do the community thing, and as such had met young people in those circumstances. Two young men in particular we ready to make it happen, and John and Wendy decided to agree.

They formed a housing co-op. Each occupant would own their own home, and the land would be owned communally, and laid out for communal use. The new houses would be low-footprint (300-500 square feet), two or three storeys high. In this case, they chose to build with ultra-low-impact materials (cob, straw insulation, recycled/recovered materials where possible) and ultra-low-consumption design (passive solar heating, wood/buffalo chip hearth for cooking and heating, composting toilet, rainwater collection, a few solar panels) - partly because it reduces their reliance on utilities, partly because it’s a good thing to do.

There is now one lot, on a block of 12, owned communally in a co-housing structure. The sprouts are growing, but the grid still stands.

Thus concludes Part 1 of Dissolving the Grid. More to come….