The Oil Drum: Local

An excellent idea. (as if I even have to say this). But you'll probably need some ordinance passed, if only to get you cheaper rents. Where I live two of the four gardens are cited in city parks, the other two are on vacant land behind a public building and an older shopping center. Not the most idylic locations but it works.

Sorry, but that is an 'unlimited energy mindset'.  The Hubbert downslope will require radical new thoughts and social cooperative plans to avert violence.  What do you prefer: everyone shlepping fuel and water so they will be too exhausted to fight, or gunfights and machete attacks as we continue to march headlong into a rapid Dieoff?  How much overflowing sewage do you wish to wade through as the NYC infrastructure breaks down?  Google Zimbabwe to see our future.

Remember the fighting and thievery from the 1970s gas crunch?  I waited in line for 3 hours to fill my pickup truck, but some bastard, later that night, took a pipewrench to my locking gas cap, then siphoned my full tank of gas!  Entire big-rig gasoline tankers were hijacked at gunpoint.  This will be nothing compared to what lies ahead.  If the 600 ft underground NYC water supply tunnels collapse, how are you going to keep ten million people from dying of thirst?  It would make 9/11 seem like a picnic.

NYC could pass a law that no streetlamps, electric billboards and store signs are allowed anymore.  The sun sets, it does get dark--> get used to it.  Use a flashlight if you need to go out!  How much energy would that save?  Or do you prefer ever-increasing blackouts and rioting?  Read Richard Duncan's Olduvai Gorge theory on Dieoff.com.

Make elevators only stop at every fourth floor, issue special cards that allow a handicapped-only override.  Charge people some kind of fee to use an elevator--> overcoming gravity is very energy intensive--Have you climbed a rope lately?  Any new buildings in NYC should be required to be seven floors maximum.

Impose an punitive automobile congestion fee like London to greatly reduce traffic, which would allow more bicyclists to pedal in safety, and greatly reduce street maintenance and pollution.  Discourage tourism: why have people travel thousands of miles so they can crap in your drinking water, throwup in Times Square on the New Year's Celebration, then outbid you on imported restaurant food?

Require every window possible to have a hanging planter to grow some kind of food.  Make lights automatically turn off in vacant rooms.  Run clotheslines over streets again.  Tax food based on how many miles it has traveled: Alaskan King Crab, coffee or bananas, very expensive.  Fish from the Hudson River, vegetable and fruits from Central Park, cheap, as it would be heavily subsidized by the imports.

The average American burns their body weight in fossil fuels every four or five days, and a barrel of crude equals 25,000 manhours of hard physical labor.  Jay Hanson's Thermo-Gene Collision dictates that if we don't get a handle on powering down Thermo-plans to get ahead of the Hubbert Curve, then the Genetic tendency towards violence other posters threaten me with will be the order of the day everywhere.  The choice is up to us, if there is still time to get started.

Bob Shaw in Phx,AZ  Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
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Can you give me some information on how the community garden is going for you and what you still need to do?  There's vacant land in my suburb that I believe is city-owned.  I can't even figure this out for certain, because the county insists on me giving them an address to tell me who owns it, but there is no exact address for the oversized lot.  I grew up in a rural area with plat maps of the county, but no such thing where I live now.  If I can confirm that the city owns it, then what do I need to present to the city council?  The word Byzantine comes to mind whenever I start trying to navigate these local bureaucracies' BS.