214 comments on Transit Oriented Development
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
214 comments on Transit Oriented Development
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
User login
Personnel
Classic posts
Archives
- November 2008
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- March 2008
- February 2008
- January 2008
- December 2007
- November 2007
- October 2007
The Oil Drum: New York City archives
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- February 2007
- January 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006
- September 2006
- August 2006
- July 2006
- June 2006
- May 2006
- April 2006
- March 2006
- February 2006
- January 2006
- December 2005
- November 2005
- October 2005
- September 2005
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
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.