The urban homesteading movement

Urban Homesteading is a phrase that’s more common in the United States than in Britain, but we’re beginning to hear it more frequently. It’s become shorthand for a huge grassroots movement of people across the world who strive to live more sustainably, usually by growing and preserving as much of their own food as possible, while living in towns or cities.

urban a. of, living or situated in, a city or town

homestead n. a house with outbuildings; farm

definitions: the Concise Oxford Dictionary

Over the past few days a huge debate has blown up in the urban homesteading community because the Dervaes Family, who have previously been seen as great examples of this way of life have, in the US, trademarked the terms Urban Homestead and Urban Homesteading and have begun measures against others who use them. These measures appear to include shutting down the Facebook pages of the Denver Urban Homesteading group and the Oakland-based Institute of Urban Homesteading.

Now I’ve been wondering whether to wade into this discussion here. Members of the Wholesome Food Association may consider that everyone has the right to trademark whatever terms they can get away with. To play devil’s advocate, the main Dervaes website URL includes the phrase urban homesteading, and they have been closely associated with the movement.

Of course the Dervaes family have, and should have, every right to protect their original writing, photographs etc. from plagiarism. But they didn’t invent the phrase urban homesteading, which has long since become part of everyday linguistic currency. Nor are they, by far, the movement’s only visible examples.

I just think it’s a huge shame that, at a time when more than ever we need to live as sustainably as possible, the Dervaes’s actions have resulted in a lot of unrest, inconvenience and, potentially, loss of income for people who are trying to explore planet-friendly and frugal ways of living.

If you’re on Facebook, you can find out more information on the page protesting the trademarking of these terms: click here. And Treehugger have just published a good article about the issue here.

Image by David Owen, used under Creative Commons licence