Postmodern Designer Villages

This note is useful for developed as well as progressive developing countries

How to take farm lands to town and generate sustainable green employment

and create shelters for the homeless, unaccompanied minors, employment for the unemployed and a resort for the aged too.

A Postmodern designer Village

Several developed and even some of the developing economies are undergoing a change, leading to a loss in manufacturing jobs and employment opportunities. It has been proposed that some new jobs in future could come from a return to land and undertaking modern agricultural activities on it. Certainly a rural setting does offer a much healthier and greener environment compared to traffic and concrete filled modern cities. However in the traditional rural setting other difficulties arise that can make life and living difficult especially for those who have not been used to that from childhood.

Traditional rural agricultural areas are primarily of two types. One consists of farms scattered over the land that contain homes for the farmer. In such a landscape social interaction between farm dwellers is reduced or difficult simply because homes are scattered and far from each other. Delivery of modern services to such farms such as communication, water, electricity, roads etc. is also difficult or expensive. Communicating with commercial areas or services such as a school is a task. In some areas there may be security issues too. In fact to enhance security, a second type of rural configuration also exists widely in the world. In this second setting, homes are in a crowded village cluster whereas farms are situated at a distant in surrounding areas. This latter configuration, although more secure for  villagers, makes managing a farm more difficult. Considering these issues a new type of configuration named AM villages is now proposed.

Central Area

Consider a village area of 3 x 1.25 square miles (approximately two thousand acres) surrounded by a forest as shown in the top figure. The area is divided into two strip farm area and a central village area separated by a road of 100 to 200 feet width. Strip farms essentially consist of farms in thin strips that are two hundred feet wide and half a mile deep. More details of such farms have been described elsewhere. On such farms construction is permitted on the first 200 feet depth adjacent to the road. Thus an area of 200 feet by 200 feet is available for constructing a home, barns, chicken coup or whatever the owner desires. Setting up motel, apartments for rent or shops is also permitted in the area; the remaining farm is used exclusively for farming. With this configuration a farmer ends up with a home in a town like setting with other homes and commercial areas nearby and a farm of about ten acres in his backyard. The area shown in the schematic layout has two regions to the north and south reserved as the commons. Some of this too can be divided into more strip farms, however, that is is a decision best left for the future after seeing how the proposed village develops and what future needs emerge in the community.

Characteristics of AM Strip farms:

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1. They consist of agricultural holdings in narrow strips that are two hundred feet wide and about half a mile deep yielding lots of approximately ten acres that are not optimum for food grain production but ideal for modern intensive farming.
2. Non agricultural activity and construction is permitted up to a depth of two hundred feet from an approach road that is between 100 to 200 feet wide. No other construction is permitted on the remaining lot.

http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2011/10/more-on-million-jobs-am-farms.html

The configuration is also eminently suitable for public transportation on a single route through the village in a clockwise direction around the central roads, as it is for delivery of services such as electricity and water. Such public transportation because it is on a fixed single route can easily be a tram car or mono rail that is solar electricity driven. The present design is shown as a rectangle with a half mile into 1.25 mile common grassland on either side. However the design can be modified easily for curved configurations too.The present configuration will lead to hundred strip farms and depending upon the activities of the village a population of around 5000 to 10,000 depending upon activity. It may be noted that a half mile buffer zone away from the forest offers some protection against forest fires that is becoming an issue in some areas with climate changes taking place on the globe. For an example of how Farmer Joe utilizes his strip farm see:
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2014/09/the-farm-that-joe-lived-on.html

This note merely presents the broad concept and actual implementation would require detailed plans. For example the center quarter mile wide and two mile long non-agricultural strip can be divided by forty east-west fifty feet wide streets set two hundred feet apart and in parts a north west street. Some areas would be reserved for commercial activities and some for institutional ones but a majority would lead through residential lots some of which may be an ideal choice for retirement homes for the elderly or for artists and others. The sale of such lots would pay for setting up the infrastructure of such a village. Similarly the commons shown as a grass land needs detailed planning. Depending upon the lay of the land it would need to contain some lakes and ponds as well as water supply stations for the village.

Schematic of AM Village around a central square area

Such a village is an ideal choice for setting up adjacent to a five hundred to thousand acre university campus, software development hub, food processing industry such as milk products, dehydrated vegetables etc. The agricultural produce of the village would then get consumed locally and reduce transmission losses. A group of such villages may also be set up as a cluster of several such separated by narrow wooded areas around a central town/ commercial hub. However, it would be best to set up a single village first as a pilot project in any part of the world where they are considered. This author will gladly supply any more details that have not been included in the brief note, to any interested party. The use of Solar PV combined with some wind energy and  a small agricultural waste co-generation plant linked together in a local grid can make such a habitation energy independent too. For countries with winter heating needs such as in Canada, such compact communities are an ideal choice for setting up co-generation power plants.

Picnic or Fish in the Lake at the commons

Several other configurations of the village are possible as for example as shown in the schematic of second figure where the strip farms are arranged around a one square mile central area. This latter configuration would be more convenient for walking or cycling but less for public transportation. it also has a larger central area. This configuration also indicates how odd shaped areas can be planned - extract a central square area and set strip farms areas around it with commons in the corners. The essential element of all configurations is the division of agricultural land in strip farms that need not all be of precisely the same size. Such configurations literally take farm lands to town.

Implementation:  One possible way to implement such a proposal would involve the following seven steps:

1. Locate the 2000 Acre area where the AM village has to be set up
2. Develop plans and blue prints on paper
3. Set up a small office at the location of the first farm nearest to the connecting road (to be shifted later to village hall)
4. Construct corner pillar of farm lots and connecting road to farms
5. Allocate farms by bidding or any other process and assist farmers initially in launching operations
6. Construct residential area roads, a few at a time as residential lots are sold in central area
7. Complete the entire blue print when farmers have started producing (around two years from initial allocation) and at least 100 residential homes are occupied. Then sell remaining residential and commercial lots to recover costs.

Would you like to be one of the lucky 1500 families that lives in the first such village? If so, lobby your legislator to get the project initiated and/or share this post

It is hoped that countries facing an unemployment rate of over five percent such as USA and having surplus land that may be converted to irrigated agricultural land would consider this proposal seriously and at least set up three or four such villages in different parts of the country without losing time as a pilot study. It would provide them jobs over the short term and a possible blueprint for a sustainable future for their countries, while helping to make the planet a better place for all.

This author will gladly supply more details of this postmodern village if contacted through a comment in this blog. This blogger has found some of his other ideas making positive contributions in the past through information on the net or citations in scientific journals ( for example here) but credit for it was not always given. In the very least it is hoped that those who use the idea in its present or modified form would give credit to this blog and blogger, so that he continues to remain inspired to make similar humble and small attempts at making our planet a better place for all. 

UPDATE JULY 2014

Since this article was written a new crisis  has come to the attention of the author. A large number of unaccompanied children are fleeing violence from Central American countries and landing up on the American southern border. Some fifty thousand have arrived with prospects of more. While these children are in urgent need of help, communities where it is proposed to shelter them are afraid of their lives being disrupted in major ways because of the influx. This is completely understandable from the point of view of an average citizen whose life has taken a turn for the worse ever since the financial downturn of 2008. The need of the hour is to come up with completely new and innovative plans to shelter these children while creating quality jobs for others. In this regard the present postmodern village offers a solution. If one reserved fifty acres of this village for a refugee camp for 1000 to 5000 children, a refugee camp that can be set up on an urgent basis as a tented colony and then developed over the next few years as a residential boarding school, the need of these children would be met. The remaining 1950 acres can then be developed as a village of this note simultaneously over a five year period. Both the village and the refugee camp would offer logistical support to each other and both combined would eventually create numerous jobs on the farms, village and school. Fifty such villages set up in different parts of the country would shelter 250,000 children refugee minors and  create a hundred thousand sustainable green jobs ( 50 x 2, 000).

Such Villages are also an ideal setting for setting up beside a HISA center that are innovative postmodern shelters for the homeless, because the farms would provide part time work to able bodied residents of the center. HISA centers are described here 
http://someitemshave.blogspot.in/2013/01/designing-shelters-for-homeless_13.html

As an example of the type of farming activity in a postmodern village see here 

UPDATE 2016

While the present design is based on 10 acre farms another new compact design for a village with 100, 2.5 acre farms is here:
http://steamcenter.blogspot.in/2016/04/design-for-compact-postmodern-village.html

On how existing villages in the least developed parts of the world can be redeveloped explained through the medium of fiction : http://www.amazon.com/Mystic-And-Blossoms-Ashok-Malhotra/dp/1411648579

Farm image from: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Four_acres_under_cultivation.jpg    This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
Lake image from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Image_Lake.jpg  This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license