The age of petroleum is haltingly coming to an end. Some say it started in 2007, some say it will come in 15 years. But the end of cheap and plentiful oil will certainly arrive. What does that mean for city dwellers? Imagine no gasoline to truck in foods from Canadian farms or from across the border. No cheap plastic products shipped in from other countries. No fuel to get from one end of the city to the other, by car or transit. What if water stops running in our pipes and electricity gets rationed to a minimum, or is blacked out for good?
The inevitable future for urban citizens entails producing and preserving our own food, heating our homes with wood-burning stoves using renewable materials, and converting single family homes into multiple family dwellings as we empty apartment buildings and highrises. Building outhouses and composting toilets, making our own natural remedies, and reusing all materials and waste available, will be among the many skills we will need to become a resilient society.
This guide is a detailed, comprehensive manual for converting cities into self-reliant, sustainable communities. Here, instructions are for Toronto (Canada) but can be applied to any city with a temperate climate. Read on, and prepare yourselves with information and skills that are on the brink of extinction, as we ourselves may be, without adapting quickly, wisely, and sustainably.
Start reading from the beginning...
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NB: No information provided here is a replacement for professional advice. No individual can survive without being part of a community comprised of knowledgeable people making social connections with each other. The best information comes from education and experience.
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Wiki, anyone?
If anyone is interested in turning the content of this guide into a Wiki, or knows of one in existence that we can add to, please let me know! The more voices that contribute to a guide of this nature, the better the information.
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For links and reading recommendations,
see the REFERENCES section of this site.
