Plans have been in the works for several years now to develop the world’s first “eco-city,” Dongtan, on Chongming Island in China. On paper the place sounds like an urban permaculture paradise: eco-parks, rainwater capturing and purifying, clean energy generation from organic waste, world-class leisure facilities, organic food production… the works.

But there may be something for us big dreamers to learn from what has happened so far with the project – which is absolutely nothing.

The original plan was to have 50,000 inhabitants moved in by 2010. Now well through ’13, the site has yet to be touched. Nothing has happened. Contracts and permits are expiring while the myriad details are tied up in the bureaucratic process.

So while this is a fascinating thing to keep an eye on, we should keep in mind one of the basic principals of permaculture: to use small and slow solutions. Big things that work well evolve from small things that work well. When we try to go too big too fast, energy ends being wasted and the whole thing falls apart.

That appears to be what is happening at Dongtan, and they haven’t even begun to build yet. My guess is that if they ever do, the problem will only intensify. We’ll see.

Bringing the concept down to a personal scale, our energies are best spent developing our own immediate surroundings before we go off trying to save the world building eco-kingdoms. Even on a small piece of property, energy should first be focused on what is known in permaculture as zone 1 – the area right around the house. Once that is developed we can expand outward into the other zones.

It’s similar to how organisms are formed in nature – starting with a single cell and multiplying outward. Each cell is both a system of its own and part of a larger system (which is part of a larger system and so on to a potentially infinite degree). More complex organisms evolve only once the simpler organisms preceding them have achieved a sufficient level of development and efficiency.

The end result: resilience.

By starting small and slow we can maintain a high level of efficiency, using resources wisely at every level of the process. We can create sustainable lifestyles that reduce waste and eliminate debt-traps that attempt to lure us into something more than we need.

It will be interesting to see what happens at Dongtan. If they go on to prove me wrong, more power to them. But there’s no escaping that vital truth of nature – efficiency survives, inefficiency fails.

TVP