Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

saopaulosecreto.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 129 posts

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#111

Post by toast0 »

specialist wrote: post #67
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #51

Folks might also be interested in San Fransisco's own "Tenderloin National Forest" https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tenderloin-national-fore... Is there some abandoned parking lot in your town? Get some friends together with pick axes for a depaving party. Or, for something a bit less dedicated, craft some seed bombs (mix dirt and clay together into small cookie balls with native seeds in them) and throw them into…

I volunteer at greencitypartnership.org, leading a crew restoring a large park. I've been wondering how we might build a community of urban forest hackers. To share tips and info, how to deal with vandals, help each other make yard signs, how to transport water over trail, etc. I would love to know better ways for breaking up a parking lot. I opened up 4 separate spaces for tree planters. I started with pickaxe and p…

> And I'm sure someone somewhere has some labor saving hacks for tackling Himalayan blackberry.

Goats. It's not labor eliminating, you've got to set up and maintain temporary fencing, and you've got to remove plants that dangerous for goats to eat, and you need to take care of the goats generally. But, they can really help get things under control.

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#113

Post by gamblor956 »

rayiner wrote: post #72

Ugh, graffiti is really a crime against the built environment: https://offloadmedia.feverup.com/saopaulosecreto.com/wp-cont... . I've never been, but I remember they had a big push some years ago to ban outdoor advertising to reduce "visual pollution." Sao Paulo looks so clean and beautiful from Google Street View--it makes the ugliness of the graffiti really stand out. I can't comprehend the nasty mind that decides…

If you understand skate culture, you would know that graffiti is not only a valued part of a skate park that gives each park its own unique identity, but is also a valuable tool for identifying trick locations, features, and edges during runs.

If you look closely at the photo, you'll notice that each feature, and each salient edge within a feature, has very different graffiti on it.

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#114

Post by gamblor956 »

rayiner wrote: post #107
embedding-shape wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lots of people like the clean, subdued aesthetic And lots of people feels like it's a oppressive aesthetic. Not sure I've ever heard the concrete jungles of a city called "clean and subdued aesthetic", so cheers for this new perspective! The very same counter-culture that likes to color things, is also partly about breaking the rules, so here we are :)

> And lots of people feels like it's an oppressive aesthetic. And when they’re in charge they can decorate however they want. They don’t get to impose their aesthetic preferences on public spaces without consent. > Not sure I've ever heard the concrete jungles of a city called "clean and subdued aesthetic" “Clean City” is literally the name of São Paulo’s anti-visual pollution law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cidad…

They don’t get to impose their aesthetic preferences on public spaces without consent.

That's literally what you're trying to do. Demand that skate parks remain static and unchanged, even though the actual users of the skate parks prefer otherwise.

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#115

Post by RGamma »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #104
RGamma wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precivilisational lifestyles can only carry a small fraction of our current population. To a significant degree we're locked into this, and have been for thousands of years.

Hence the desire to tear it down.

The longings for simpler days are definitely still with us. They explain a lot of social dysfunction. E.g. see Terence McKenna.

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#116

Post by nmandapa »

mirmor23 wrote: post #55

Amazing guy. I like the part where he was not deterred by the (stereotypical human garbage) business guy that kept destroying the plants so his hoarding of the land didn't get in the way. Humboldt redwoods state park, and 'avenue of the giants' wouldn't exist if not for the tireless efforts of environmentalists.

True, amazing places to visit and pass onto the future generations. Particularly like them right after the rainfall, great spots to checkout.

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#117

Post by pm90 »

thelastgallon wrote: post #10

There are a few one man army like this. Dashrath Manjhi is best known for carving a 110-metre-long (360 ft), 9.1-metre-wide (30 ft), and 7.7-metre-deep (25 ft) path through a ridge of hills using only a hammer and a chisel, because his wife fell and died from injuries due to the ridge blocking easy access to a nearby hospital on time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi

I … feel like this isn’t a feel good story? This man put 22 years of his life into something that could be done is less than a week with explosives/modern machinery?

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#118

Post by schnevets »

colechristensen wrote: post #94
khalic wrote: post #36

It feels great to see this kind of story. We're all suffering from this (false) idea that we can't do anything, things are too bad, somebody else has done it before, or somebody else will do it. The fact is, humanity is pulled forward by people like this, who find their goal and don't let it go. We need this right now, we're stepping into a pretty dark century, we're probably going to lose millions or billions of peo…

Go plant an oak tree. Not in theory, not a big plan for a monumental effort, just plant an oak tree. They survive for many lives of men and are a cornerstone for feeding the entire ecosystem. If you can't plant one where you're supposed to, plant one where you're not. It takes an afternoon not a lifetime.

Half of my property is woods and there are multiple fallen oaks that are slowly returning to the ground, but the canopy remains exposed. I'm constantly torn between letting "nature take its course" or speeding things up with a chainsaw and carefully sapling.

I have also considered walnuts or fruit-bearing trees and slowly converting my land to something more akin to a food forest.

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#119

Post by AtlasBarfed »

tim-projects wrote: post #30

I often speak to people online who look at society and want to tear it down and start again. I've never understood that attitude. Growth out of decay takes work, but it takes considerably less work than accelerated decay and then trying to start again when there is nothing fertile left to build on. I like this article because it demonstrates that there is always fertile land and opportunities where people are not loo…

Mars has lots of open land

Of course with libertarians, it's never about the purity of thought, just the convenience to their pocketbook

Re: São Paulo resident transforms degraded area into urban forest

#120

Post by ErroneousBosh »

embedding-shape wrote: post #54
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #51

Folks might also be interested in San Fransisco's own "Tenderloin National Forest" https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/tenderloin-national-fore... Is there some abandoned parking lot in your town? Get some friends together with pick axes for a depaving party. Or, for something a bit less dedicated, craft some seed bombs (mix dirt and clay together into small cookie balls with native seeds in them) and throw them into…

> Or, for something a bit less dedicated, craft some seed bombs (mix dirt and clay together into small cookie balls with native seeds in them) and throw them into the abandoned area This is a lot of fun (albeit illegal in many places) to spruce up somewhat dead-looking villages and towns. Traveling with a passenger that holds a sack of seeds out the window is another way :) Do make sure you're actually using seeds of…

> Traveling with a passenger that holds a sack of seeds out the window is another way :)

I read this earlier and forgot about it until I was driving home, looking at self-seeded wheat and rapeseed along the side of the road blown from odd nooks and crannies on grain trucks.

And then, I've had a *brilliant* idea! - seed drills use a springy nozzle to direct seeds towards the ground and a big PTO-driven fan to blast air down to fire the seeds out, right?

You're driving a car, which emits quite a lot of air from its exhaust pipe, somewhat deoxygenated, to be fair, quite warm and damp though which is good.

Make an exhaust tip that blows a jet of air out, and mount a seed hopper in the boot that feeds wildflower seeds into a kind of venturi so Bernoulli's principle sucks them down and out of the nozzle, spraying them along the verges with enough force to get them well away from the road edge.

I bet that'd work. If it's dry tomorrow, I'll get the welder out and let you know how it goes.

Post reply on HN