Publications

Food Not Lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community, by H.C. Flores, Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2006.

The City Repair Project’s Placemaking Guidebook, the City Repair Project, 2006. Website: www.cityrepair.org.

The Simple Act of Planting a Tree: Healing Your Neighborhood, Your City, and Your World, by TreePeople with Andy and Katie Lipkis, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 1990. Also online: www.treepeople.org/simpleact/. Chapter 5, “Taking It to the Streets,” has many great tips on galvanizing the public and getting the word out on an organized movement, be it tree planting, water harvesting, or the like.

The Great Neighborhood Book: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Placemaking, by Jay Walljasper. New Society Publishers, 2007. A wonderful manual for building vibrant community one practical step at a time.

The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, by Riane Eisler. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007.

“Basins of Relations: Restoring a Watershed State of Being,” by Brock Dolman. Permaculture Activist, no. 47, Summer 2002, pp. 8-12.

Online

www.onthecommons.org. A web portal and blog that explores activism on behalf of the commons in all its variety. Commons include our water, solar access, national forests, public spaces, libraries, internet, and beyond.

www.neighbor-space.org. This organization helps community groups protect and secure their community garden or park from potential development, and works in concert with many private and public partners to preserve and expand community managed open space in Chicago.