Regen village....

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http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/this-new-neighborhood-will-grow-its-own-food-power-itself-and-handle-its-own-waste/

ReGen Village
http://www.regenvillages.com/

UN report
http://unctad.org/en/PublicationsLibrary/ditcted2012d3_en.pdf

This New Neighborhood Will Grow Its Own Food, Power Itself, and Handle Its Own Waste

ReGen Village, outside of Amsterdam, doesn't need a grid or food systems. It's a model for a future, fully closed-loop settlement.

Fish waste will fertilize an aquaculture system that produces fruit and vegetables for the homes.
By Adele Peters / fastcoexist.com

If you live inside one of the houses in a new neighborhood being built in an Amsterdam suburb, your dining room might be next to an indoor vegetable garden. Outside, you'll have another seasonal garden. And down the street, almost everything you eat will be grown in high-tech vertical farms.

The neighborhood will be the first ReGen Village, a new type of community designed to be fully self-sufficient, growing its own food, making its own energy, and handling its own waste in a closed loop.

Any household waste that can be composted will feed livestock or soldier flies. The soldier flies will feed fish, and fish waste will fertilize an aquaculture system that produces fruit and vegetables for the homes. Seasonal gardens will be fertilized by waste from the livestock.

By using the most advanced methods for growing food?a combination of aeroponics, aquaponics, permaculture, food forests, and high-yield organic farming?the neighborhood will grow many times more food than a traditional farm of the same size, with fewer resources. Aquaponics, for example, can produce 10 times as much produce on the same amount of land, with 90% less water.

"We anticipate literally tons of abundant organic food every year?from vegetables, fruit, nuts, legumes, fish, eggs, chicken, small animal dairy and protein?that can continually grow and yield in the vertical garden systems all year long as supplement to the seasonal gardens and farming adjacent," says James Ehrlich, CEO of ReGen Villages, the California-based developer, which will also manage the neighborhood-slash-farm. The company partnered with Effekt, a Danish architecture firm, on the design.

The community will also produce its own energy, using a mixture of geothermal, solar, solar thermal, wind, and biomass. "We're looking at some very interesting technologies for small-footprint biomass that can take surrounding farm waste and turn that into a consistent energy source in a way that can power these communities in northern Europe even in the dead of winter," Ehrlich says. A smart grid will distribute power efficiently, sending it to a carport to charge shared electric cars as needed.

A biogas plant will turn any non-compostable household waste into power and water. A water storage system will collect rainwater and graywater and redistribute it to seasonal gardens and the aquaponic system.

It's the first of a network of similar communities that ReGen plans to build around the world.

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