What is Urban Wilderness?
Urban Wilderness is a multi-platform project documenting how to build autonomous infrastructure while living in the city, working a job, and not having perfect conditions.
This is not about escaping to literal wilderness. It is not about going off-grid in a cabin somewhere. It is about carving out sovereignty in urban spaces. About building infrastructure you own, control, and can repair. About creating what I call an urban wilderness: autonomous systems inside the city, running parallel to the corporate ones, independent enough that when companies change terms or raise prices or shut down, you have options.
You do not have to sacrifice proximity to community for privacy, ownership, and autonomy. The future is not less human. It is more independent.
What You Will Find Here
Free Technical Guides – Step-by-step documentation on self-hosting, solar power, repair, sustainable living, and life optimization. All free. Forever. No paywall. No email signup required. Just knowledge.
Podcast: Dispatches from the Urban Wilderness – Audio logs documenting the journey. First person, intimate, honest. These exist between novel chapters like deleted scenes. Fiction that feels like reality. Reality that sounds like fiction.
Skills Library – An interactive database of practical skills with barter value. The kind that survive every economic disruption because they live in your hands and require you to show up in person. Skills your neighbor needs. Skills you can trade for things that matter.
Community – People building their own versions of this. Sharing modifications, improvements, failures. Making the guides better than I could make them alone.
Why “urbild”?
I bought the domain urbild.org because urbanwilderness.com was taken on every platform.
Then I looked up what “urbild” actually means. It is German for archetype or prototype. The original form of a thing.
I kept it because:
- It is urban + build
- It is short enough to type
- It accidentally means exactly what I am trying to do: build original forms, prototypes for autonomous infrastructure that other people can replicate and improve
The project is called Urban Wilderness. The domain is urbild.org. Same idea, different labels.
The Philosophy
Autonomy, not isolation. I am not trying to live alone in a bunker. I am trying to build systems that give me options when corporate systems fail or change terms I never agreed to.
Infrastructure, not products. Products break and get discontinued and change their business model. Infrastructure you build yourself can be maintained, repaired, replaced piece by piece. You own the system, not just access to it.
Documentation over gatekeeping. If I figure out how to do something useful, I document it publicly so the next person does not have to start from scratch. Knowledge shared is knowledge multiplied.
Good enough now over perfect someday. I build with the resources I have instead of waiting for ideal conditions that never arrive. Imperfect action beats perfect planning.
Honest about contradictions. I use tools from the systems I am trying to replace. I participate in structures I am trying to escape. Both things are true. I am not looking for purity. I am building direction.
The goal is not purity. The goal is direction. Am I moving toward more autonomy or less? More collective ownership or less? More honesty or less? That is the only metric that matters.
Why I Started This
I got tired of things changing without my input. Terms of service I never agreed to. Prices that increase because they can. Features that disappear. Services that shut down. Algorithms that decide what I see. Companies that know me better than I know myself because they log everything I search, click, watch, buy.
I wanted something that was mine. Not rented. Not subscribed to. Not dependent on a corporation’s quarterly earnings deciding whether my access continues.
So I started building it.
I bought a domain. Set up email on my own terms. Mounted a solar panel in my apartment window. Built a local AI that runs on hardware I own. Documented every step because if I could figure it out, other people could too.
That was a while ago. This is what it has become.
What I Am Learning
I am learning that independence is not an escape from difficulty. It is trading one set of problems for another set of problems.
The old problems: companies change terms and you have no recourse. Prices increase. Services shut down. Your data is sold. The algorithm decides what matters.
The new problems: things break and you fix them yourself. Customer service is exhausting. Parts availability matters. Technical knowledge is required. Time is the cost.
Both sets of problems are real. The difference is I chose these problems. And choosing your problems is not the same as having no problems, but it is different from having problems chosen for you.
What I Value
Directness over polish. I write the way I think. I do not smooth out the rough edges or perform certainty I do not feel. If I do not know something, I say that.
Process over outcomes. I document failures as thoroughly as successes because the process of troubleshooting is often more useful than the final working version.
Accessibility over perfection. I would rather publish an imperfect guide that helps someone today than wait six months to make it perfect.
Labor over scale. I am not trying to build an empire. I am trying to sustain work I care about at a scale that does not require me to become what I am trying to escape.
Autonomy over convenience. Convenience is a beautiful concept that has been weaponized by corporations to mean: we own everything and you rent access to it. I will take the friction of ownership over the ease of dependence.
Contact
Email: contact@urbild.org
I read every message but I cannot promise fast responses. I am building this after hours. If you have found an error in a guide, please send it. If you have built something using these resources, I want to see it. If you have a question, I will answer it if I can or point you to someone who knows better.
HOW THIS WORKS
All Core Knowledge is Free
Every guide on this site is free and stays free forever. Every skill in the library. Every resource comparison table. All of it.
No paywall. No email signup gate. No “enter your information to download the PDF.” Just documentation, publicly available, for anyone who needs it.
This is not a business strategy. This is a principle.
Knowledge hoarded is power concentrated. Knowledge shared is infrastructure. I am building infrastructure.
Some Content Has Early Access
New diary chapters go to Patreon supporters before they go public. Podcast episodes go to Patreon supporters early. Bonus content, extended guides, community calls are for paying members.
Everything else eventually becomes free. You are not paying for exclusive access. You are paying to support the work and get things earlier.
If you cannot afford to support, that is fine. Wait. It is the same content.
Revenue Model: Knowledge is Free, Labor is Not
I need to eat. I need to pay rent. This work takes time. Time has a cost.
Here is how this sustains itself:
Patreon – Supporters get early access to content and direct input on what gets built next.
Consulting – I build operational systems for other people’s businesses. This funds the time to build this.
Workshops – Virtual workshops on self-hosting, solar setup, exit planning. Recorded and released free after a few months.
Why Patreon (and Why I Hate It)
Patreon takes a cut of every dollar. It is a corporation. It can change its terms whenever it wants. If it goes under, this income stream disappears.
I use it anyway because:
- It works and people understand how to use it
- Building payment infrastructure myself takes time I do not have while working full-time
- The fee is the cost of not building a payment system from scratch
- I am documenting how to replace it
Eventually, I will build or adopt a self-hosted patronage system. I will document that process. I will migrate when it makes sense. Until then, I use the tool that exists.
This is what I mean by honest about contradictions. I am building toward independence while using corporate infrastructure. Both true. The goal is direction, not purity.
How to Support This Work
If you have money:
- Join the Patreon
- Attend a workshop
If you do not have money:
- Use the guides and tell someone else about them
- Submit improvements or corrections
- Translate a guide into another language
- Share your build in the community showcase
- Contribute a skill to the library
If you build a business using these resources:
- Consider giving back to the commons
- Voluntary revenue share (honor system)
- No obligation, no tracking, just trust
Both are valuable. Money sustains the work. Community improves it.
ETHICS & VALUES
What We Do Not Do
No tracking or analytics. I do not know who you are, where you are from, or what you click on. I do not want to know. Your privacy is not my business model.
No ads. I will not sell your attention to the highest bidder.
No selling your data. There is no data to sell because I do not collect it.
No corporate sponsorships that compromise recommendations. I will only recommend tools I use myself. If a company pays me to recommend something, I will disclose that transparently and I will drop them immediately if they stop being worth recommending.
What We Do
Right to repair. I document how to fix things. I support legislation that makes repair legal. I buy from companies that make their products repairable. I avoid companies that glue things shut.
Environmental sustainability. Green hosting. Repair over replace. Secondhand first. Minimal packaging. Long-term thinking over short-term convenience.
Open source when possible. Code, designs, and documentation are Creative Commons licensed unless there is a good reason otherwise. You can fork this, improve it, redistribute it. Just credit the source.
Honest about compromises. I use tools I am also trying to replace. I work within systems I am trying to escape. I document all of it because pretending to be pure helps no one.
Community accountability. If I drift from these values, call me out. The community gets to tell me when I am full of it.
The Contradictions I Sit With
I am trying to build infrastructure for collective autonomy while using platforms that could shut me down tomorrow.
I am advocating for independence while working at a company.
I am building local alternatives while employed in the industry I am documenting alternatives to.
I could wait until I have a perfect, self-hosted, decentralized system before launching. But that is years away and people need this documentation now.
So I use the tools that exist while documenting how to replace them. I am transparent about every compromise. I keep all knowledge free. I show my work.
If that makes me a hypocrite, fine. I am a hypocrite who is building the alternative while surviving under the current system.
The goal is not purity. The goal is direction.
Am I moving toward more autonomy or less? More collective ownership or less? More honesty or less?
That is the only metric that matters.