Can't Beat the Grid? Green It

by Bruce Schimmel

My spousal unit recently returned from Oregon, from a retreat called Breitenbush, where she attempted to connect her body with her mind by becoming, well, disconnected.

The mountain resort, whose amenities include yoga, sumptuous veggie fare and massages around the clock, is proud of not offering certain contemporary essentials, like cell service, television or Internet.

Thus disconnected, Breitenbush boasts that they are "off the grid."

Breitenbush is one of the few places in America that could make such a claim. They apparently have an endless supply of what we all need most: energy. The hot springs that flow through the resort's bubbling tubs, also turn the village's tiny turbines to generate a few precious kilowatts.

With both our economic and environmental ecologies in the balance, the prospect of departing this vale of tears for some better place on the far side of the rainbow is appealing. Still, even for an isolated enclave like Breitenbush, the dream of disconnecting from the grid entirely is but a fantasy.

To get to Breitenbush, you must still drive through the mountains, leaving a track of carbon wide enough to make Big Foot blush. The community still imports food. And according to our credit card bill, Breitenbush has yet to evolve into bartering. So, grid-bound — like the rest of us — they remain.

Still, the goal of going it alone, from Thoreau on, is ingrained in the American soul. And while there's no actual exit from a shrinking planet, it's good to put some distance from a world that's far too much with us.

So, for that, I was grateful for Paul Levy's recent analysis of Philadelphia's singular strengths, in which he suggests that this city may be sheltered, somewhat, from the storm.

Levy is the grand pooh-bah of the Center City District, and in his current newsletter, he offers an optimistic note as a counterpoint to the chorus of woe around us.

While the nation as a whole shed 2.9 million jobs last year — down some 2.1 percent — Philadelphia lost less than 1 percent. Last year, our home prices declined only 10.1 percent. Meanwhile Boston went down 12.8 percent, Chicago dropped 13.7 percent, L.A. fell 32.2 percent and Phoenix plummeted 40.6 percent.

Of course, if you don't have much to begin with, you don't have a lot to lose.

That said, Philadelphia still has riches beyond even Levy's rosy reckoning. We have abundant water, a temperate climate and lots of usable land — the same riches that attracted William Penn.

Bringing nature back to the city, says urban innovator Jaime Lerner, should be foremost in our planning. But until recently, Philadelphia's Redevelopment Authority mostly packaged parcels for gentrifying developers. I guess it took a recession to make those pests disappear.

With some 40,000 vacant properties now attracting trash and crime, the RDA wants to turn them to seed. Literally.

The RDA wants to loan land to farmers. It's called, "Farmadelphia," an idea that emerged a couple years ago from a locally sponsored competition called "Urban Voids: Grounds for Change."

But until Terry Gillen recently took the reins of the RDA, urban farming had remained mostly underground — with the notable exceptions of Mill Creek Farm in West Philly and Greensgrow in Fishtown. It's now time to propagate their success.

There are technical challenges, sure. Many lots are brownfields and unfit to plant in. But as Greensgrow has shown, you can grow above ground in a greenhouse — and turn a profit.

William Penn chose this fertile land between the rivers, hoping we could grow our own. In today's global economy, no place — not Philadelphia, not even Breitenbush — can leave the grid and go it alone. No city, like no man, is an island. But we would be fools not to recognize the riches right in front us, and begin again to tend to our own harvest.

(bruce@schimmel.com)