214 comments on Transit Oriented Development
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214 comments on Transit Oriented Development
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You build 64 blocks of city in the middle of a cornfield near a city in the suburbs, and use it as a bus terminal location.
You have 64,000 people who will support bus transport all over the suburban area, drawing in all the people that work in the suburban area and need a place to live.
This is not because of peak oil, but because of the financial effects of avoiding all the costs of owning a car. That's insurance, depreciation, repair, time wasted driving, etc. Also, that's all the people that can't drive cars because of minor physical disability, the kind of minor disability that does not prevent them from working.
This is not because of peak gas, either, though the high density development does reduce heating power requirements in the winter. It also isn't because of the lower cost of building apartment buildings instead of houses because the square foot cost is about the same. Elevators are expensive, and so are steel beam frames for apartment buildings.
If you want to deal with peak oil, build a synfuel plant.
Smart growth is an oxymoron. We’d be better off if we spent our energy finding ways to slow the growth rate. We can not have exponential growth in a finite world. That said, let us hope that most of these are not in the middle of some corn field but rather in the center of some trashed out urban ruin. The future for the untold masses will be in a more confined setting. Unless we bring back some industry I am not exactly sure what they will do for employment except wait on each other for low wages. It is a touch difficult imagining a future where thousands of citizens and their Amish (with computers)-like living standard flourish in a confined setting.
It's only hard because you're stuck in the American pioneer-farmer mindset. There are hardly any farmers left in the US, and nobody really wants to be a farmer, but everyone loves to play farmer, which is what the suburbs are all about.
Dense cities have existed since the beginnings of civilization. "It is a touch difficult imagining a future where thousands of citizens and their Amish (with computers)-like living standards flourish in a confined setting."
Oh really? How about Athens, or Babylon, or Bahgdad, or Vienna or Hangzhou? "Flourishing in a confined setting" is what people have been doing for five thousand years.
I think no new farmers are coming around due to the high startup costs there is no way that somebody can really just dive in. Land is extremely expensive these days and then nobody wants a farm around them. I could never see it as a reasonable thing to buy land and start farming at the cost of land right now. The return on investment would take forever.
Sadly this combined with all the stress and effort of farming stops people from farming. Not to mention the IRS breaths down farmers necks so hard that they just give up. Its a lose lose situation. I think the only way to encourage farming again is to remove all taxes from true farmers that run so many acres.
But what am I to know eh? Part of my family was run out of farming due to some of the above factors.That combined with farming being hard work and we live in a instant gratification society where people do not wish to wait for things to grow.
IMO farming is going to have to change with the times and PO. Local farming, less than 100 miles to the nearest city may start to flourish again as the FF costs of farming skyrocket. Thats not to say farmers will be making tons of $, but the need for local produce may become a necessity as the costs will be less than importing food from 1000's of miles away.
Farming will likely go more in the direction of manual labour and less machinery. You still see plenty of human labourers even in North America. Back in the seventies and probably eighties and maybe even now, manual labourers were and are still the backbone of many types of farming here in NA.
Cuba went back to labour intensive farming in 93 when they lost 85% of their FF from the Soviets. Every piece of arable land in and around towns and cities was put into production and that is how they barely survived their own version of PO and decline.
Here is what I reckon is the shape of food to come.
The Cubans more than "barely survived." Their health and longevity is now improved on Soviet days. They get more fresh fruit and vegies instead of just masses of grain and meat.
Suburbs are about people wanting to not be so close to large numbers of other people. Those who like living in cities do not understand that most people do not want to be that close to large numbers of other people.
I think this aversion to dense living has evolutionary origins. People like grass lawns for the same reason they like golf courses with grasses bordering on small forests. We evolved in those conditions. We like those conditions.
People who want others to gladly live in urban environments are trying to get humans to do something that is against their nature.
Hardly !
The "white flight" to Suburbia was just a mass movement, (see burnt orange shag carpeting comment above) and not the result of fundamental preferences.
You are pointing to a single data point in our very long history and claiming that is "human nature".
I think the opposite is very true, Suburban social isolation is aberrant, unhealthy and contrary to the basic requirements of mental health.
As one sure sign of the pathology of Suburbia, look at the growing rates of obesity, and prescription psychotropic drugs.
Alan
You are right, there aren't much farmers left in usa, I guess less than one percent of population whose prime source of income is farming because most farmers in usa has other non-farm-related sources of income too.
But usa is just a minute part of world on any perimeter except fossil-fuel-driven-economy and fossil-fuel-driven-technology. Most of the world still live in villages, a simple low-bio-foot-print life and has community-sense that americans don't.
Its right that babylon, rome, athens, tenochtitlan, constantinople were and are all cities but only a minute part of population lived in those cities as compared to populations of whole civilizations of each of these countries. Also don't forget that we can build sustainable cities but it has to be much much low-energy-consumer than modern cities, a scaling down of 100 i should say.
I don't know what you mean by a "scaling down of 100", what does that mean in actual numbers of people. My own look at the topic of city size lead me to think that absent fossil fuels, the largest likely city size would be on the order of magnitude of 100,000, with 10,000 much more common. Cities of a million could exist as capitals of great and well-organised empires, but there'd only be a few of these in the world.
Yes, I am of that rural mind set. The idea of living in a contemporary city of say 4 million plus has no appeal to me what so ever. By the way , the aforementioned cities of the world had many fewer people. The idea of living in one of the big American cities post energy decline and in a struggling economy appeals to me even less. I, like most Americans, do not want to live like the Chinese live now. Nor the people of Bagdad, nor even Paris or Toronto. Doing so in the future may not be to comfortable for anyone. That is where planning comes in. Any effort made is better than none. More importantly, the issue of an ever expanding population needs to be addressed more than anything else. We need to begin campaigns encouraging population control, every aspect of population growth. If it were possible, we should also be addressing the Antiquated Perpetual Economic Growth Paradigm. They are both killers.
Crystal City, Virginia (next to DC), although built in the 1960s, meets most if not all of the criteria cited. It doesn't have restrictive zoning laws, and combines offices, apartments, subway, and retail. It also has a vast underground component.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_City,_Virginia