Site Tours
Below you will find several site tours, time of tour and features of each tour. Thank you to all hosts for sharing your wonderful homes and special places! The tours are all free and open to the public. Please be respectful of the sites.
All tours are Friday, Sept. 29, before the start of the Convergence.
All these sites are great examples of "urban repair." Making creative use of what is available and taking care of more needs closer to home - food, energy, culture, economy. These places are a preview of a preferred future - more green, peaceful and resilient. We would love for people to be inspired by these places so they go home and start making their own preferred future and becoming engaged in your neighborhood and community.
Note, several sites have grey water projects - Kailash, Cully Grove and Marisha's house. These features will be explained during the tours at those places.
See furthest below for a text description of depaved sites in Portland. Impressive. There are links to fotos, explanations and addresses so you can visit these places on your own if you like. At least one depave site is Kailash Eco Village, one of the tour destinations on the schedule.
Links to other Convergence Info
Map to the Convergence from north and south
Convergence schedule including description of Saturday evening Plenary
Convergence website
See the map below for approximate locations of tour sites.
Below you will find several site tours, time of tour and features of each tour. Thank you to all hosts for sharing your wonderful homes and special places! The tours are all free and open to the public. Please be respectful of the sites.
All tours are Friday, Sept. 29, before the start of the Convergence.
All these sites are great examples of "urban repair." Making creative use of what is available and taking care of more needs closer to home - food, energy, culture, economy. These places are a preview of a preferred future - more green, peaceful and resilient. We would love for people to be inspired by these places so they go home and start making their own preferred future and becoming engaged in your neighborhood and community.
Note, several sites have grey water projects - Kailash, Cully Grove and Marisha's house. These features will be explained during the tours at those places.
See furthest below for a text description of depaved sites in Portland. Impressive. There are links to fotos, explanations and addresses so you can visit these places on your own if you like. At least one depave site is Kailash Eco Village, one of the tour destinations on the schedule.
Links to other Convergence Info
Map to the Convergence from north and south
Convergence schedule including description of Saturday evening Plenary
Convergence website
See the map below for approximate locations of tour sites.
Cully Grove Community http://www.orangesplot.net/cully-grove/ |
Alberta Street Area, |
Marisha Auerbach Home |
Tour 10 AM to Noon NE 48th and Going. Walking Cully Grove is a co-cooperatively governed community where a multi-generational group of friends lives simply, and where design, decision-making and day-to-day actions reflect shared values. The site includes 16 homes. |
11 AM - 2 PM NE Portland. Multiple locations. Walking Starting at Sabin School, 4013 NE 18th Ave, NE 17 & Mason and will visit the Sabin Community Orchard, Sabin Green Micro-infill housing, Ongoing Community, the Prismatic Pinwheel Intersection Painting and will end at Leaven Community, 5431 NE 20th Ave, Portland, OR 97211. |
Open House 10 - 3, Tour at noon 4816 SE 50th Ave |
Features Edible landscaping, community house, selected shared tools and resources, row houses and detached houses, common playground, shared bike shed, shared management and maintenance, various energy saving and water saving designs, various solar features. More from Cully Grove Granny’s Garden: Organic Fruit and vegetable garden for almost 40 years. 8000 gallons rainwater storage above ground from main house, 6000 gallons below ground for cottage. 2) Blueberry: Urban farming & permaculture education site / organic cohousing community of six homes. Shared meals, bulk food purchasing. Eleven-year-old food forest, year round fresh fruits and vegetables: Medicinal plants, seed saving, Pacific Northwest natives, indigenous foods, soil building; Ducks and chickens; Living roof; Rain water catchment, humanure, greywater reuse. Low energy use, bicycle transport, wood heat. 3) Cully Grove. 4 year old community, small greywater system, food forest, gardens... The tour may also include two nearby tiny home communities. |
Features Community orchard on public property. Sabin Green - Micro infill co housing - shared space, recycled materials, cob structure, solar design, design coordination with adjacent lot. GoatHaus - Collective living, mid block repair, Little Free Hut, edible landscaping, grey water, new projects ongoing, community gatherings and shared meals. Leaven Community - Renovated old church, Work space for eco/social justice non profits, place making, edible landscaping, retrofitted garage, natural building materials, porous fence with two neighbors. |
Features Site regeneration 6 years old on a suburban lot Annual and perennial food production; rabbits, ducks, worms; photvoltaic; 1400 ft2 green roof;soil building; greenhouse, trellisses, biodigester, water catchment, humanure, small plant nursery & CSA. Medicinal herbs and products, seed saving. Low energy use and efficiency. No refrigerator, instead much canning, fermentation, food preservation. Various on site income streams. Bike use, low carbon lifestyle. |
Kailash Eco Village http://www.kailashecovillage.org/ |
Columbia Eco Village http://columbiaecovillage.org/ |
Depaving http://depave.org/ |
Tour 2 - 4. 4311 SE 37th. Walking Kailash Ecovillage is a sustainably focused community located on a two-acre site in inner SE Portland, Oregon. Kailash Ecovillage is a community committed to providing a sustainable, beautiful, and safe living environment for individual residents as well as the greater community. |
Tour 12 Noon - 2 PM 4647 NE Killingsworth Street, We are an urban cohousing community in the Cully neighborhood of northeast Portland, Oregon, cultivating supportive relationships with each other, our community, and the Earth. We actively engage and participate with the surrounding neighborhood, city, and region, in education and work that nurtures and sustains our common society and environment. |
Self Guided Tour, See Map and info below. |
Features Repurposed apartment complex. 1.75 acres. 34 housing units, 58 residents. Solar features, rain gardens, art, depave, passivhaus, humanure, community kitchen and garden waste composting, vegan gardens, community garden, emergency preparedness, community room, solar shower & swale, community orchard/berry patch/vinyard, wildlife designs, street side intersection repair, bike parking for 98 bikes, community well, microforestry, bees, car sharing with 3 cars, herb gardens |
we need some site features here |
Grey water Tour There are grey water projects at Cully Grove, Kailash and Marisha's house |
Depave
Note, human solutions on this map is incorrect, its east of I 205.
This is a description of several places in Portland that have been freed of pavement. Locations, websites and fotos are all included for each site. This is very impressive. You can visit these places on your own. You can also take virtual tours of the sites as well. Thanks Ted for putting this all together!
The Official Depave ‘Free Your Soil’ Portland, OR Tour
Friday September 29, 2017, 2-5p
In coordination with the NW Permaculture Convergence
Small, scrappy, irreverent, and focused: Depave is a unique nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, that promotes the transformation of pavement-plagued spaces into verdant, vibrant community assets. We engage diverse communities and reconnect them to urban nature through cutting-edge landscape interventions. We work with public and private schools, communities of faith, and community-based organizations to replace lifeless, neglected pavement with gardens, playgrounds, raingardens and more.
Once reclaimed and transformed, these spaces provide a multitude of community benefits: reducing stormwater runoff, mitigating the urban heat island effect, supporting access to nature and environmental education for underserved populations, reducing crime, rebuilding community connections, and creating new spaces for urban agriculture.
Depave started in 2007 when Arif Khan and friends starting tearing out pavement in their backyards. In 2008, we launched our first public event at Fargo Forest Gardens as part of an international car-free cities conference. Each year since Depave has implemented 4-7 projects, spread across the Portland metro region. In 2017, our tenth year of public depave events, we completed our 50th site.
If you’ve never attended a Depave event, you’re really missing out! But in lieu of that, we’ve put together a tour of some of our favorite past sites. To learn about our latest work and efforts, check in with us at www.depave.org or https://www.facebook.com/depave/
This tour is self-directed and you can complete some or all of it in any order. No host or guide will interpret what you see (except at Kailash), and the sites are open for you to wander through. For perspective, we provide links to photos of the transformation of each site so you can get a sense of the before and after. Please note that some of these stops are cross-listed on other NW Permaculture Convergence 2017 tours. The stops are listed in a south-to-north direction, to facilitate movement to Clark Co Fairgrounds on the afternoon of Fri Sep 29, 2017.
Tour stops:
Kailash EcoVillage is a sustainably focused, affordable rental-based co-housing community on a two-acres in inner SE Portland. Two community depaves have been conducted at the site, the first in 2009 of the garden space between the street and main building and the second in 2015 of a smaller garden space on the south side of the building. Parking areas were depaved to create a vibrant food garden and seasonal creek/riparian area fed by the building roof runoff. Ole Ersson will be on site giving tours of the whole community on Fri afternoon from 2-5p.
See photos and info at http://www.kailashecovillage.org/depave/ and http://depave.org/kailash-ecovillage/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6014984282966492929
Calvary Lutheran Church serves two congregations and a child daycare. Before portions of the parking lot were depaved, traffic would cut through the parking area between SE Woodstock and Martins streets and stormwater runoff from the parking lot would regularly flood an adjacent portion of SE Woodstock Blvd. Targeted pavement removal eliminated the connection to Martin St, created space for raingardens to intercept and infiltrate the runoff, and spawned a diverse assemblage of native trees and shrubs. A mural on an adjacent property wall was an additional project element that helped round out our ‘love bomb’ for this community.
See photos and info at http://ourhappyblock.blogspot.com/ and http://depave.org/our-happy-block/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6025736841872363953
The Human Solutions Family Center is a low-barrier shelter for families experiencing homelessness. In July 2016, Depave helped rip out 4,000 sf of pavement to create a food garden, raingarden, and nature play area for kids (located to the east of the building). This was not the first homeless shelter we have worked at. In 2009, Depave completed a similar project with JOIN.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/humansolutions/ and https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO1V-EMm9LOKK-qcSdkG8g9ByCB7fTTLVCQap5O4h7n3B_-BS1NSOiETszADZlD0Q?key=SGJ1TTI1NjNkTS0xRVl3UkRvOUpSWkd1aV93T3Nn and
http://andiepetkus.zenfolio.com/p138020583
In 2009, we teamed up with Chad Honl and Friends of Portland Community Gardens to implement phase 2 of a two-year effort at Vestal Elementary (a Title 1 school), which is the largest-ever community-driven depaving in the City: 30,000 sf of pavement removed! Vestal incorporates a community food garden, soccer pitch, and native Northwest naturescaping elements – a true mixed-use greenspace.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/vestal-elementary/, http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/08/volunteers_depave_portland_sch.html, and
https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6015002893520498273
Our first public event way back in 2008! As part of the international Car-Free Cities Conference, 147 volunteers (from four continents) liberated 2,500 sf of pavement, and turned it into a food forest with a decorative downspout, a crazy wild raingarden, and more. At the depaving, stilt-walking frogs made an appearance, and there was lots of laughter, music, celebration, pizza, donuts, and more.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/fargo-forest-garden/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/5992019099252786817?authkey=CID-zO39nojC7wE
And don’t miss the video : https://vimeo.com/193740580
Like some of our efforts, this project took many years to come together. But in 2011, Depave helped transform a 5,500 sf parking lot and adjacent street planting strip into an amazing outdoor performance and gathering space, complete with native landscaping, terraced lawn, and numerous artistic elements.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/disjecta/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6019340306334377185
Note, human solutions on this map is incorrect, its east of I 205.
This is a description of several places in Portland that have been freed of pavement. Locations, websites and fotos are all included for each site. This is very impressive. You can visit these places on your own. You can also take virtual tours of the sites as well. Thanks Ted for putting this all together!
The Official Depave ‘Free Your Soil’ Portland, OR Tour
Friday September 29, 2017, 2-5p
In coordination with the NW Permaculture Convergence
Small, scrappy, irreverent, and focused: Depave is a unique nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon, that promotes the transformation of pavement-plagued spaces into verdant, vibrant community assets. We engage diverse communities and reconnect them to urban nature through cutting-edge landscape interventions. We work with public and private schools, communities of faith, and community-based organizations to replace lifeless, neglected pavement with gardens, playgrounds, raingardens and more.
Once reclaimed and transformed, these spaces provide a multitude of community benefits: reducing stormwater runoff, mitigating the urban heat island effect, supporting access to nature and environmental education for underserved populations, reducing crime, rebuilding community connections, and creating new spaces for urban agriculture.
Depave started in 2007 when Arif Khan and friends starting tearing out pavement in their backyards. In 2008, we launched our first public event at Fargo Forest Gardens as part of an international car-free cities conference. Each year since Depave has implemented 4-7 projects, spread across the Portland metro region. In 2017, our tenth year of public depave events, we completed our 50th site.
If you’ve never attended a Depave event, you’re really missing out! But in lieu of that, we’ve put together a tour of some of our favorite past sites. To learn about our latest work and efforts, check in with us at www.depave.org or https://www.facebook.com/depave/
This tour is self-directed and you can complete some or all of it in any order. No host or guide will interpret what you see (except at Kailash), and the sites are open for you to wander through. For perspective, we provide links to photos of the transformation of each site so you can get a sense of the before and after. Please note that some of these stops are cross-listed on other NW Permaculture Convergence 2017 tours. The stops are listed in a south-to-north direction, to facilitate movement to Clark Co Fairgrounds on the afternoon of Fri Sep 29, 2017.
Tour stops:
- Kailash EcoVillage, hosted by Ole Ersson
Kailash EcoVillage is a sustainably focused, affordable rental-based co-housing community on a two-acres in inner SE Portland. Two community depaves have been conducted at the site, the first in 2009 of the garden space between the street and main building and the second in 2015 of a smaller garden space on the south side of the building. Parking areas were depaved to create a vibrant food garden and seasonal creek/riparian area fed by the building roof runoff. Ole Ersson will be on site giving tours of the whole community on Fri afternoon from 2-5p.
See photos and info at http://www.kailashecovillage.org/depave/ and http://depave.org/kailash-ecovillage/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6014984282966492929
- Our Happy Block at Calvary Lutheran Church
Calvary Lutheran Church serves two congregations and a child daycare. Before portions of the parking lot were depaved, traffic would cut through the parking area between SE Woodstock and Martins streets and stormwater runoff from the parking lot would regularly flood an adjacent portion of SE Woodstock Blvd. Targeted pavement removal eliminated the connection to Martin St, created space for raingardens to intercept and infiltrate the runoff, and spawned a diverse assemblage of native trees and shrubs. A mural on an adjacent property wall was an additional project element that helped round out our ‘love bomb’ for this community.
See photos and info at http://ourhappyblock.blogspot.com/ and http://depave.org/our-happy-block/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6025736841872363953
- Human Solutions http://humansolutions.org/
The Human Solutions Family Center is a low-barrier shelter for families experiencing homelessness. In July 2016, Depave helped rip out 4,000 sf of pavement to create a food garden, raingarden, and nature play area for kids (located to the east of the building). This was not the first homeless shelter we have worked at. In 2009, Depave completed a similar project with JOIN.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/humansolutions/ and https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipO1V-EMm9LOKK-qcSdkG8g9ByCB7fTTLVCQap5O4h7n3B_-BS1NSOiETszADZlD0Q?key=SGJ1TTI1NjNkTS0xRVl3UkRvOUpSWkd1aV93T3Nn and
http://andiepetkus.zenfolio.com/p138020583
- Vestal Elementary
In 2009, we teamed up with Chad Honl and Friends of Portland Community Gardens to implement phase 2 of a two-year effort at Vestal Elementary (a Title 1 school), which is the largest-ever community-driven depaving in the City: 30,000 sf of pavement removed! Vestal incorporates a community food garden, soccer pitch, and native Northwest naturescaping elements – a true mixed-use greenspace.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/vestal-elementary/, http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/08/volunteers_depave_portland_sch.html, and
https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6015002893520498273
- Fargo Forest Garden
Our first public event way back in 2008! As part of the international Car-Free Cities Conference, 147 volunteers (from four continents) liberated 2,500 sf of pavement, and turned it into a food forest with a decorative downspout, a crazy wild raingarden, and more. At the depaving, stilt-walking frogs made an appearance, and there was lots of laughter, music, celebration, pizza, donuts, and more.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/fargo-forest-garden/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/5992019099252786817?authkey=CID-zO39nojC7wE
And don’t miss the video : https://vimeo.com/193740580
- Disjecta https://www.disjecta.org/
Like some of our efforts, this project took many years to come together. But in 2011, Depave helped transform a 5,500 sf parking lot and adjacent street planting strip into an amazing outdoor performance and gathering space, complete with native landscaping, terraced lawn, and numerous artistic elements.
See photos and info at http://depave.org/disjecta/ and https://plus.google.com/photos/117738396818511311125/album/6019340306334377185