General Area

First, examine the area around your target population center. Look in areas that can be accessed from that population center within two (or at most three) hours. Here is a composite ArcGIS map using United States/New York-specific data (you will have to change some of the layers to match your locale). General considerations are:

• Avoid floodplains, low coastal areas, and valley bottoms that could be overcome in flood events. Parcels may have some area that is within a floodplain, but you will want most of it (especially your buildable area(s) to be non-flooding. Considering the state of the global climate, you may want to evaluate on the scale of 500-year floodplains.
• Avoid proximity to Superfund sites or other sites of hazardous waste disposal.
• Avoid densely-developed areas, as the amount of runoff contamination from them is likely high.

Look on a real estate search website for listings over 30(?) acres, and below your maximum spending limit. You can include land with homes on it if your budget is sufficient. An existing home is a convenience in that you will have a base of operations immediately. Though it is a disadvantage in that it will be built with conventional materials and architecture, so will be much less appropriate for retreats and eventually will be very out of place in the village.

Preliminary Parcel Evaluation

Note that this entire page could use help from people with deeper training in permaculture and experience in land evaluation. The contents are the author’s best knowledge from experience, but nothing is guaranteed to be correct.

Make a spreadsheet to track the parcels you evaluate. Following is a sample spreadsheet that the originating author used to track properties. It is not great, but at least gives an instrument to track and compare parcels. It depends heavily on the “Usability” number in the first column, which is made up by the person entering the data. Usability is intended to represent a summary of all of the below factors, combined into a score of 1-10. The grey columns are calculated based on other entered data. The data is sorted by the “score” column, which gives a very rough estimate of the overall suitability of a parcel. The values in the calculated “cost” column should be changed to match your budget expectations.

Factors to look for are:

• Pollutants. Avoid parcels that are downhill, downstream, or downwind from noxious neighbors such as a junkyard, high-pesticide/fertilizer farm, golf course, factory, parking lot, or other places that produce contamination.
• Nuisance neighbors. Look at how many parcels adjoin the selected parcel, and look at satellite maps to see what you can learn about those neighbors. If, for example, a parcel is surrounded by numerous neighbors who live in extravagantly luxurious homes with large manicured lawns, you might want to consider the potential differences you may run into with those neighbors.
• Varied topography. Ideally the parcel will include both the top and the bottom of a hill, with buildable area midway down the hill. At a minimum, it should have some variability in the topography, not just a flat area.
• Water. Ideally the parcel would have a stream that runs down from above the area where gardens would go to beneath that area. If so, check upstream contaminant sources as noted above. If there is a pond on the property, think of what contaminants may be able to accumulate there from uphill. If there is a swampy area, look at its proximity to the buildable area and think of possible ramifications (namely mosquitos).
• Buildability. The end-goal is for perhaps twelve large buildings (assuming most buildings are large cohousing structures that can comfortably hold around fifteen people each, giving families private domiciles with kitchenettes, but centered around a large communal kitchen and living room). A suitable parcel will have an area that is relatively flat and can hold all these buildings, as well as large gardens, greenhouses, a large chicken coop, and probably a large barn. (Note that at first, there will only need to be one building; but you are planning in advance for a decade or two later.)
• Accessibility. The buildable area will need to be accessible by residents and guests, including those who are not able to walk well. In most localities, it will also need to be accessible to emergency service vehicles, and so a regulation-adhering driveway will need to be built from the road to the buildable area. Eventually you will need a civil engineer to assess this for you, but in a preliminary evaluation, just ensure that you won’t need an enormous driveway (which can be both highly destructive and quite expensive) nor one which has to climb a very steep grade (which can be very expensive and/or simply not allowed by law).
• Quietude. Look for sources of noise pollution (such as freeways) and light pollution that would disturb the experience of nature.

Viewing a Parcel

At first you will probably want to visit the parcel alone or with a realtor. Sometime before closing the deal, you will need to have a civil engineer look at it as well as someone with significant permaculture expertise.

Set aside a lot of time to look at a parcel… this is a place where your community will be forming, and you should get to know it well.

Evaluate all the factors in the above section, now from an in-person perspective. As examples… listen for noise pollution, look at what the neighbors are like, see if a stream is year-round or only seasonal, walk the area you think your village would form and imagine living there, walk the length of what you think the driveway would be and see if it seems feasible.

Also look at the resident flora and see how healthy and how old the trees are, if any invasive species are a significant threat, and if the flora looks like it has sufficient access to water.

Look for water sources you can only see in person. Indications of springs can be seen by seeing patches where water-loving plants are prolific.

Expert Evaluation

At some point before closing on a parcel of land, you will need to conduct proper due diligence. Some notable things you will want to do are…

Hire a permaculture designer (if your own skills are not up to the task) to give their opinion on most of the above factors, and to see if they think a viable and affordable permaculture design could be done there with the end-goal of the eco-village residing there.

Hire a civil engineer to evaluate the parameters of the driveway, the sewage handling system, and the water supply.

Eventually you will probably want to hire a real estate attorney to evaluate the current zoning law and to advise you on how to proceed with your plans, at least through the early phases. (Additional detail on zoning appears in the Prerequisites section.)

Note that these three influence each other. For example, your permaculture designer’s ideal sewage-handling technique may be very different from what a civil engineer will normally specify. And the real estate attorney may inform of what can and cannot be done by right (and through zoning variance) in terms of civil engineering.

Return to: Business Plan: Prerequisites