Scott Kellogg and Stacy Pettigrew, members of Austin, Texas’ Rhizome Collective, visit the Jamaica Plain Forum to discuss their newly released South End Press book “Sustainable City Living.”

When people envision food production or toxic cleanups, the last setting most likely imagine is Boston. But with more than half the world’s population now residing—and struggling to survive—in cities, we can no longer afford to think of sustainability as something that applies only to forests and fields. We need sustainable living right where so many of us are: in urban neighborhoods. But how do we do it?

That’s where the “Toolbox for Sustainable City Living” by the Rhizome Collective comes in. Seven years ago, the Rhizome Collective transformed an abandoned Austin, Texas, warehouse into a sustainability training center. Here, with their first book, two of Rhizome’s founders provide step-by-step instructions for city dwellers—those who have never foraged or gardened along with those who have done dumpster-diving and CSAs—with directions for producing our own food, collecting water, managing waste, reclaiming land, and generating energy.

Stacy Pettigrew and Scott Kellogg are part of the Rhizome Collective, an educational and activist organization based in Austin, Texas. Its members recently received a $200,000 grant from the EPA to clean up a 10-acre dump, which they are turning into an ecological justice park. The bioremediation techniques they developed are being used to remove toxins deposited by the waters of Hurricane Katrina.