The Recovery of Delays, Permaculture on Living Soil
To begin with, the author questions the semantic category of «urban agriculture»: what indeed is common to all the multiple activities classified under this generic term? His approach is based on an exploration of the notion through several spaces compared on a global scale, to arrive at the local level with the observation of small plots worked in living soil by permaculturists with whom the author has been discussing for months. The first part outlines the first lines of the debate on what could be a corpus of references or common values, both on a planetary scale, that of “global disorder” (Coline Serreau, documentary, 2010), and on a micro-scale, that of “local solutions” ( ibid. ). In the second part, the author analyzes the subject of neglected urban spaces, invested or coveted by urban permaculturists, which intersect with the living spaces of the socially neglected. The author believes to see a possible return of the forest and the revival of edges and margins. In synthesis, he proposes the idea that urban agriculture could herald “a major anthropological break” favoring cultivation on living soil and the end of plowing. This reflective essay is based on exchanges with urban permaculturists who are particularly close to Masanobu Fukuoka’s disruptive thinking on “wild agriculture” and “living soil” work, as well as to that of alter-landscape architects and urban planners who have theorized about third places in the city. The author proposes another look at the socio-spatial margins in the city, especially the gardens of resistance at the intersection of the shadow of the forests and the raw, low light of the cleared land.