Y Cantrefi Newydd
The New Hundreds
I’ve mentioned Cantrefi Newydd1 before and find it an appropriate term to use, here in Cymru, when talking about low impact communities, mainly because of the historical parallels. Before I dive in, a note on the illustrations; I always intended to draw what I envisioned of future communities, their occupants and their environments but when I was struck down with Multiple Sclerosis, ironically, my drawing hand was most affected, rendering a controlled line impossible to maintain. Since then I have worked hard to redevelop that earlier skill and hope at some point to be able to produce work that conveys something of my inner vision. Till then, my illustrations here are rather abstract and relate to the meta-fiction Konsk, which is yet to see the light of day…Ok, they don’t have much to do with Cantrefi Newydd but at least they break up the text a bit.
In 1989 when I attended my first Permaculture Design course, something clicked and I just got it. Me and Lyn had wanted a piece of land to manage and live on since the mid 1970s and permaculture design made a sense that David Seymour's Self Sufficiency had not. However, even in those early days, it was obvious to me that what we wanted to do would be a lot easier if we had neighbours to work together with. We made a number of attempts to acquire land or property with groups but these came to nothing so in the end we jumped in and bought a patch ourselves. As time went on and I found myself working, more often than not, by myself, this lack of neighbours and the help and support we could have exchanged, became even more obvious and limiting.
While it is possible to demonstrate many aspects of permaculture design on an individual property, the very individuality and inherent isolation in some ways simply replicates the current western mindset, just in a more sustainable way. I believe that it is only when we are able to truly integrate many properties and families within the same local landscape that we will be able to really explore the full possibilities of living lightly on the Earth. So for the last forty years I have wanted to be involved in the creation of new communities that now, living in Cymru, I would call Cantrefi Newydd.
So far my involvement in building actual new communities has been largely peripheral, through being recognised by Simon Fairlie2 as an early example of Low Impact Development and through that, being noticed by Y Cynulliad, the Welsh Assembly who, through the Countryside Council for Wales, conducted a study of our holding3. This in turn led to our involvement as expert witnesses in the creation of the One Planet Development planning guidance, which, in theory at least allows for individuals and groups in Cymru, practical, though, in my opinion, often unnecessarily tedious routes towards building their own low impact homes.
However, with regards to Cantrefi Newydd, Eco-Villages, Green Communities, Low Impact Settlements or whatever we might choose to call them, I have only been able to provide advice and support, such as a presentation of permaculture design for the Low Impact Village, Lammas, in Pembrokeshire but am yet to have the chance to be involved at the design stage. At my age, now a pensioner, it may be that this chance will not arise for me and perhaps writing here will be my way of offering ideas and influencing future designers of the Cantrefi Newydd.
In this piece I will look at some basic facts, based on my experience, which I believe make the appearance of Cantrefi Newydd in the future inevitable and what needs to be included to make these experiments genuinely useful. What follows will perhaps seem contentious to some so please feel free to post your challenges in the comments area and I will attempt to address them!
To begin with, here's Carl Sagan talking about exactly this subject, way back in 19734
"We should be encouraging social, economic and political experiment on a massive scale in all countries. Instead, the opposite seems to be occurring....
"We should not be surprised if experimental communities fail. Only a small fraction of mutations succeed. But the advantage social mutations have over biological mutations is that individuals learn; the participants in unsuccessful communal experiments are able to assess the reasons for failure and can participate in later experiments that attempt to avoid the consequences of initial failure.
"There should not only be popular approval for such experiments but also official government support for them. Volunteers for such experiments in utopia- facing long odds for the benefit of humanity as a whole - will, I hope, be thought of as men and women of exemplary courage. They are cutting edge of the future."
Fine words form half a century ago (!) and a great shame that more was not made of them at the time. I have mentioned here before the need for new communities to adhere to a basic set of ethics related to the Big Three, namely, the Environment, the Community and the Individual, which could at least limit the amount of damage that might be caused, by accident or intent, within each aspect. I have also argued that each community should be different, by varying the emphasis on the ethics and/or introducing additional constraints or imperatives, thus producing a diversity of communities, as with the evolution of any organism. In this diversity, locality will be extremely significant.
A further requirement and one that is absolutely essential, is the assessment of communities as to their viability- we must ask the hard questions such as is this village genuinely sustainable? Does the community operate as an integrated whole or is it just a collection of individuals doing their own things? And, are the individuals, including the children, content, feel they have a place in a new society, live fulfilling lives involved in life-long learning? And more.
The easy sharing and exchange of good practice between communities and simple methods of measuring the success or otherwise of each and every community would help us here. Again, measurement against the Big Three provides a simple but effective approach and I have touched on this previously. Opportunities for individuals to express their opinions and experiences of living in each and every community would be vital to these assessments.
Being honest in such assessments will be absolutely essential. It is all to easy to ignore or hide failings in the pursuit of a higher goal...I have been involved in several organisations, including the Permaculture Association, where the opportunity to learn lessons has been missed in order to preserve the illusion of unity, indeed, I have at times colluded in preserving such illusions myself- it is very tempting to do so but never works! Far better, as Sylvia Eagle5 would say, to expose everything to the air, like making good compost, and keep turning the heap till all that was once noxious is broken down into valuable nutrients.
It is arguable whether existing farms which, through amalgamation, have grown ever larger over the last century or so, can be adequately managed by a single person or family, even given the extensive availability of oil. To fully manifest the enormous productive potential of landscapes it will be necessary to have considerably more people involved in land-based activities; Power in Community, the film dealing with Cuba's transition to a non oil based agriculture after the break up of the Soviet Union, notes an increase from below 5% of the population being involved in food production to 24%. Similarly, the implementation and management of strategies for carbon sequestration, production of low carbon materials etc. will require more labour, ideally located within easy walking distance of their places of work.
Equally contentious is the fact that gardening small pieces of land with simple, hand tools is far more efficient and productive than conventional agriculture. Thus, the bulk of the food needed to feed the world in the future will likely be grown in gardens, market gardens and smallholdings, rather than on farms. It is worth pointing out that since the development of agriculture some five or six thousand years ago, most of the world's food has been produced in this way and its is only very recently that this has changed at all; nearly half of the world's food is still grown by small producers. That is, gardening as agriculture6 and a major cultural change is required to realise the significance of this single, simple statement. Basically, given an ethical framework to restrain but not cripple activity and ecological principles to guide actions, the more informed people we can get on the land, the more productive it will become.
Clearly such thinking is radical and contentious but given the fact that the current consumer-capitalist system is becoming unaffordable for a sizeable proportion of the population, it seems highly likely that if/when the situation becomes desperate a large scale reoccupation of the countryside will take place anyway, as it will be the only way of gaining access to environmental resources (water, food, fuel etc.)7. If this is to be the case it would seem rational to plan for it now rather than just to let it happen.
There are various historical precedents for this, the most obvious being that, again, given our long history, it is only very recently that the western world has become urbanised (that is, more people living in urban areas than the countryside). To give a very local (to me) example, the population of the Parish of Trawsfynydd has remained relatively stable over the last century. However, at present 80% of the population live within the town itself whereas 100 years ago, 80% lived in the countryside.8
Similarly, during the great depression in the 1930s when land prices collapsed, land in the Dolgellau area was made available to people who wished to set up smallholdings, pretty much as occurred in Cuba, the advantage being that in Cuba the state owned most of the land anyway and so could give it away without causing too much backlash from landowners.
Given the need for a greater rural workforce and the need to encourage people to adopt low energy lifestyles, it may be that the offer of land and homes in rural settings is the ideal inducement. Its here that governments could play a significant role, much as Carl Sagan suggested, half a century ago. It would be essential that this was done in an organised way, something like as outlined above, to avoid obvious environmental mistakes.
Next time, using the low impact, low carbon, self reliant, interconnected communities of the Cymric past as models, I will look at the ways we might design the Cantrefi Newydd such as to encourage the greater integration of the community, rather than just providing cheap dwellings for greener capitalists.
Many thanks for reading- as always, please feel free to leave comments and many, many thanks to those of you who have-please keep them coming. Hwyl!
the following definition and description of Y Cantrefi Newydd is from The Great Escape Part Two;
A few words about a cantref (plural cantrefi, the single “f” in Cymraeg always like an English “v”) may be useful. The original meaning is something like one hundred (cant) spear holders (tref), that is, one hundred freemen of the blood or family, so basically a hundred holdings. The Celts didn't like to live on top of each other in villages, preferring to be scattered over an area with their own hunting, gathering and food growing areas. The meaning of tref has changed considerably since and is now found in cartref (home), pentref (village) and simply tref or town, to name but a few. A cantref is then a hundred or so hearths and if we think some homes would house couples and kids, then we have roughly the Dunbar number of folk, [about 150] the minimum size for a viable community, and rather than spear holder, we could think of youthful eco-warriors who aspire to be gardeners!
Simon Fairlie, Low Impact Development; Planning and People in a Sustainable Countryside. Jon Carpenter Publishing 1996
Simon's book seems to be out of print but he is heavily involved with The Land Magazine, an extremely good read for anyone interested in low impact development and land issues;
Carl Sagan The Cosmic Connection (New York/Doubleday-Anchor press, 1973) p.38
Sylvia was one of the key individuals who nourished permaculture design in the UK in the very early days. A poet, performer, artist, mediator, she often acted almost unconsciously, taking on a shaman-like role and transforming conflicts. An amazing person who deserves much greater recognition.
See my piece The Marvel of Allotment Gardening and David Holmgren’s Garden Agriculture for example.
Peter Kropotkin, the Russian aristocrat turned anarchist, thought that new villages self organising along anarchist lines, would spontaneously arise. To Kropotkin, the village communities provided excellent models for human society. See Peter Kropotkin. The State: It’s Historic Role. 1896 Section III
Similarly, the Andalusian anarchists of the pueblos provided valuable experiments in self-organising, alternative communities before they were repeatedly suppressed by right wing, nationalist forces. See Temma Kaplan; Anarchists of Andalusia 1868-1903 Princeton University Press 1977.
Personal communication, from Gerallt Jones, Abergeirw, who obtained the figures from parish records and censuses.