One of my great dreams is to plant a food forest. Gifts for those who search, blessings for those in need, hidden for a time to come? Yes. This dream is not a Here dream, but what might I do to bloom where I have been planted?

I live in SoCal, in one of the many largish seaside suburbs. My town has trailed behind its kin in gentrification, but is anxious to catch up. But we are all beholden to the state of California and its push to increase dense housing. This has led to a city plan that is best read while drinking heavily.

Will my house still be here in 50 years, and what might I try to leave for those who come after me?

If the city plan goes to plan, my house (or another house) will still be here. Probably my house will have been completely rebuilt by then, possibly as a two-or-three-story over a garage. It won’t be THIS house. They’ll encourage (possibly with legal prods) me not to use most of my hillside and alter my fence for the ease of coyote commuters (who manage just fine as is). Parking on my street will be illegal, but simply because I live in a house, the property values will have continued to skyrocket, and this will be a moderately bougie area. (Starter homes for the truly rich, family homes for peons like professors, chiropractors, and dentists). In this case, it will be useful to plant native (or native-adjacent) water-wise plants that bear fruit hidden in the “wildlife corridor”.

If the pattern of radical gentrification happens and even the slightest twist occurs, my entire block could be made into apartment buildings/condos over garages. The city would not be opposed to this future – there was a previous city plan that involved apartments a quarter of the way up the block. In this case the food forest will probably be ripped down when the apartments go up and replaced by whatever is popular that week in public works.

Those sound like the most likely possibilities – or they do until you look a bit more closely into how CA is radically increasing the number of places to live. You see, the rule is that the additional spaces should be 1) on a transit line 2) in a spot currently not zoned for housing 3) with shared retail space … and if you do those three things, they are throwing code exceptions like confetti.

• Areas that formerly topped out at 3 stories, and usually had one? Pshaw. Seven is fine. Earthquakes? What are those?
• Flood zones? Not a problem. Go right ahead.
• You need to put in more spots, and you don’t have the room? Feel free to ignore the angle of light into the rooms, the amount of landscaping required by law, the width of passages required by law. Reasons that they made those rules? Psssh.
• Adequate parking? No. You’re all going to take public transit, because that’s totally a thing in SoCal.
• Easy access in and out of the housing? What? No. We don’t need to worry about that.
• You would like to live over the main transit station. Noise is not a problem for you, and you don’t care about privacy.

That sounds like a recipe for ghettoization. My city has been making such an effort to drag itself out of its sketchy past… but all of that? All of that sounds like a one-way ticket right back to problem-land. This drags us right back to the past, but with three times the population and little increase in infrastructure.

In that case, what of my home? Oh, it will still be here, and probably as a two/three story house over a parking garage. But there will be metal grates on the windows. As for the food forest? Well, natives and near-natives, irregularly watered according to the drought status – and lots of thorn bushes at the fenceline. It won’t be a place where the rich kids buy starter homes, that’s for sure.

Hidden medicinals, hidden treats, blessings for the animals. Those fit into most of the futures. In no universe is this land able to support human life on the scale that exists now. It never was. There are native foods, of course, but few that will grow on waterless hillsides. Artifice supports SoCal, without aqueducts all returns to scrub.

California cares little for this. She has never been soft. There is precious little nurture here, only glory for those who rise to the top. To them she offers beauty and riches. If everyone else dies, what of it? This is the nature of the land. How far will she let people build before she stretches and watches consequences tumble down? Will I be here to see it, or my grandchildren? I rather hope not – but for anyone’s grandchildren, I’ll do my best.