WARREN DRAPER FIRST started writing in order to document his experiences of the credit crunch for The Idler and has been a regular contributor ever since. This is the final part of a six part series he has written concerning his ideas to create a utopian town he has dubbed Morristown.

 Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends, Lewis Mumford.

WOULD THAT I were a man of means, with time and money to build my dreams! I would found my Morristown this very day. Alas this is beyond me, but this does not mean that I am without hope. What if we were to start from where we are rather than where we’d like to be? What if we wanted to build Morristown right here, right now, by retrofitting the towns we already inhabit?

There may well be a housing crisis in the UK, but the real problem is not that there is a lack of homes (there are an estimated 870,000 empty homes in the UK and enough empty commercial property to create 420,000 new residential dwellings), but rather a lack of homeliness. I’m not being twee here. As the Crap Towns phenomenon has shown, towns aren’t crap because of people, they’re crap because they no longer cater for everyday human needs. Our High Streets, which were once socially vibrant epicentres of life, may well be crumbling reminders of the dominance of consumerism, but like Durutti before us we should have no fear of ruins. In true permaculturalist style we should learn to see that the problem is the solution and welcome neglect for the fantastic opportunity it presents the entrepreneurial idler… idlepreneur, if you will.

Empty retail units are just begging to become workshops, studios, urban micro-farms, micro-breweries, seed exchanges, Pay As You Feel Cafes, open culture libraries, prototyping kiosks and even shops… selling artisan and locally produced products of course. With empty units costing landlords money there are some great deals to be had for venture idlists. We should seize the opportunity to create distributist network of idlepreneurs. Independent business gets far more support locally nowadays, but what if this were backed up by an online support network of idle shoppers? The Open Food Network has open source software which could readily be adapted for a national BUY IDLE! Campaign. An online network could also self-regulate, guaranteeing that members offered a certain level of quality and service would create a trusted Idler Guild.

Whether traded locally or via the internet, or even given freely through Incredible Edible or Pay As You Feel schemes, food should be central to the idle regeneration of our towns. What if each patch of worthless waste-ground were to become a food garden? What if we all took a leaf out of Ron Finley‘s book…

“I live in a food desert, South Central, Los Angeles, home of the drive-thru and the drive-by. Funny thing is, the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys. People are dying from curable diseases … I got tired of seeing this happening. … So I figured that the problem is the solution. Food is the problem and food is the solution.

“I planted a food forest in front of my house … But you have to maintain it. … So me and my group, LA Green Grounds, we got together and we started planting my food forest – fruit trees, you know, the whole nine, vegetables … And the garden, it was beautiful.

“See, I’m an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. I grow my art … You’d be surprised what the soil could do if you let it be your canvas. You just couldn’t imagine how amazing a sunflower is and how it affects people.

“To change the community, you have to change the composition of the soil. We are the soil. You’d be surprised how kids are affected by this. Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do… Plus you get strawberries.”

At the height of the WWII ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign allotments provided around 10% of the UK’s fresh food while making up less than 1% of the available arable land… and that’s without factoring in permaculture and hydroponic farming techniques. Food provides a very stable (or should that be staple…) foundation for building a sustainable and self-reliant local economy. One exciting project I heard about recently involves retrofitting Victorian terrace houses (the UK’s most widespread and successful form of popular housing) with Courtyard garden greenhouse and garden roof spaces. Sheffield based Ark Design Management’s ‘TAO-N House’ concept (taonhouse.co.uk) not only offers growing space, it improves the thermal performance of the house so that build costs can be off-set by long-term energy savings.

Just imagine. Long green terraces which provide the essentials of life – food, warmth, shelter, revenue – built upon the long-neglected infrastructure of existing towns. It is small wonder that the idea originated in Sheffield, a town where every street is haunted by the ghost of industry. Where hundreds of beautiful, engineer-built, Victorian factories stand empty, just waiting for a brave inventive mind to wake them from their slumber. Morris would have been disgusted by the fear and ignorance which leads to inaction in the face of such opportunity.

So what are we waiting for? Isn’t it time to turn your town into a Morristown? If you truly want it then you can have it… right here, right now… rising from the ruins of Crap Towns everywhere!

ENDS

Warren Draper is a writer, artist and photographer based in Doncaster. He is co-founder of the Doncopolitan magazine (doncopolitan.com) and is a keen Anglarchist. He can be reached via Twitter at @TheLuddicLife