About Urban Village Designs
I’m Drake James, and I founded Urban Village Designs in 2020 as a small, for-benefit ecological landscaping company. Over the years though, I realized the deeper need wasn’t simply installing sustainable landscapes—the real need revealed itself to be helping people understand and work with the living systems shaping our land, communities, and organizations.
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My work has evolved to meet that need.
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Today, Urban Village Designs focuses on helping people see and strengthen the relationships that allow living systems to thrive. Through regenerative design, consulting, and experiential education, I work alongside land stewards, communities, and organizations to recognize patterns within their systems and develop ways of working that nurture holistic health, diversity, and resilience.
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Two primary living laboratories ground my practice:
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The UVD home landscape, where long-term care and observation guide ongoing learning.
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Yamane-Bose Food Forest, an educational and community-centered project of the Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust where I serve as a Food Forest Manager.
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Additionally, I continue to stay regularly engaged with community members in their landscapes and organizations throughout the Portland Metro area.
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These spaces create opportunities to learn directly from living systems—through stewardship, shared work, and attention to the rhythms that shape healthy land and community.
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Urban Village Designs invites people to engage with this work through collaborative design and consulting, Living Lab experiences, and regular workshops.
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Together, let's nurture the living systems on your land, in your communities and organizations to increase an abundant and resilient future for everyone.
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We have never worked with a company exhibiting the diligence, integrity and communication skills of UVD, and we’ve worked with many, in several states. They were transparent and up-front about costs and timelines, and the likelihood of divergence (and its potential cost/benefit) from those things. In sum, they are the very definition of professionalism. Personally, I’ve never met more likable, personable, trustworthy people - we gave them free rein of our property, inside and out. Last, but not least, we felt like their pricing was fair and reasonable. Anyone in need of a highly professional, reasonable, talented landscape company with a focus on creating beneficial habitat for birds and pollinators could do no better than to utilize this dynamic young company. They're a class act in every sense of the word.
-Chris H.
