Oh another rule of thumb too: flowering and fruiting are the most energy intensive life stage of a plant, so an indoor garden should focus on plants that are used for their vegetative parts. That's why herbs are so nice. We don't generally use herbs for their reproductive parts, but simply for their vegetative parts. Light levels required for reproductive parts like flowers, fruits, nuts, and seeds won't likely be adequately achieved with simulated light conditions. Mint, cilantro, basil, oregano, parsley, chives, rosemary. Those are the ticket for an indoor gardener.

Permaculture is really a fascinating concept, but I'm not being corny when I say permaculture at scale is not possible without communism. But in a home landscape, permaculture is actually very battle tested and feasible. There's a few ways you can garden in the city: container plants, community gardens, and guerilla gardening. I don't really recommend guerilla gardening. It's kind of a waste of time and the risk isn't worth the reward. I had container plantings in all my apartments. You can get LED grow lights for pretty cheap these days. They are energy efficient and LEDs can customize the light wavelengths for optimal growth and morphology, so your plants don't get leggy. Indoor light levels are not the best for many plants though. As light passes through a window, the actual quantum light particles are quartered as a rule of thumb. So full light through a window is not really full light even if it's a south facing window. So you'll want to stick with low light requiring plants. Basil does very well inside and requires low light for example. I'd recommend herb gardening in containers indoors. In the summer, it is great to move your containers outside onto a south or west facing balcony if possible too. Productive plants (like herbs or minor food crops, not houseplants) should always be situated in a south or west facing window when possible, but they might still need more light, so be prepared to drop some money on LEDs.

Community gardening is great too, but is more labor intensive. However, you can apply permaculture principles like intercropping in a plot. I always recommend trying the 3 sisters (corn, beans, squash) planting as an intro to principles of ecological design and intercropping. The best part about indoor gardening though is you don't have to go outside lmao, but community gardens are a great way to build relationships, solidarity, and friendship.

One thing people don't consider is the need for food preservation techniques either. I'm partial to fermentation but canning and jamming are fine too. You'll get a lot more food out of a simple garden plot than it's even possible to feasibly eat. So preservation is key.

Two books I'll highly recommend for a home gardener are "Gaia's Garden" a great permaculture book. Probably not as applicable for urban gardening though. And "the Art of Fermentation" a super interesting book about preservation and the science and cultural background it has.