Jamais on RCs

OTF:

But here's the golden hope: the first one(s) to figure out how to do this, how to make suburbia sustainable and to do so at a breathtakingly low cost, will win the world. Because, as much as China and India and South Africa and Brazil are hot to get their hands on their local iterations of the 1950s American Dream -- a house, two giant cars, and a TV in every pot -- they'll be desperate to figure out how to afford it pretty damn soon. They'll be looking for this same elusive model, and will pay well for it.

This is good too:

The bright green mantra, when it comes to the built environment, is that cities rule, suburbs drool. Cities are more (energy) sustainable, resilient, cultural, diverse, better for your waistline, surprise you with presents on your birthday, and so forth. Suburbs, conversely, are bastions of excessive consumption and insufficient sophistication, filled with McMansions and McDonalds, and are probably hitting on your spouse behind your back.

The problem with cities is that they assume inexpensive industrial agriculture and functional supply chains. They also don't degrade nicely, particularly if the security model changes -- downside risk includes feral outcomes.

Comments

[tim302]

I disagree about the "don't degrade nicely" bit. If you have a full scale societal collapse (fall of the Roman empire/dynastic change in China) then city states become the most defensible. Try defending even a ''gated community" -- I don't think that works out well.

Also, I think that some of the stuff that is happening with urban agriculture/hydroponic agriculture as well as sewage recycling give cities significantly more resiliency than they had in the past, because it addresses the food/waste issue.

As far as supply chains, again, for generations you had market towns all over the world. Certainly if _all_ hell breaks loose (Kunstler-esque peak oil scenario) and you're stuck with mostly steam driven rail and draft animals, then market towns will definitely come to the fore again.

[James Bowery]

That's pretty funny. The only places the Romans couldn't conquer through military force were where the cities _weren't_, such as Germania. Indeed, I recall something or other about the Vandals...

[John Robb]

Tim, there's a big difference between a "market-town" and a multi-million person city. That's not even accounting for the nearly 30 mega-cities of 10 million plus.

[tim302]

James,

This is what I get when I talk out of turn =) Here's a question for you-- were the Vandals primarily settled? Or were they mobile hunter gatherers?

John,
I guess I'm looking at the mega cities as potentially "breaking down" into functional neighborhoods. I'm with you, that the typical modern city is a disaster waiting to happen, because , as you said, the long supply lines etc. Also, they seem to breed a kind of dependency in the residents-- naturally so when food, water and power are all provided for them, and there is no way to make it for themselves...

However, have you seen this?
http://www.alumni.berkeley.edu/calmag/200609/fraker.asp

Basically turning Chinese apartment superblocks (75 to 100 units per acre) into more self contained entities through sewage recycling and localized power generation. They haven't done it yet, but it is an interesting idea with respect to resiliency.

If (and it's a big if, since this hasn't been done yet) this kind of thing was implemented on a city wide scale, ultimately you'd have a collection of semi-autonomous neighborhoods.

That's very different from what we have today. I'd argue also, that cities (and especially mega cities) take agency away from the residents precisely because of the state of dependency.

[Will]

Havana, Cuba, provides a good example of what is possible with urban farming for food production. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba lost is principal customer and the money necessary to buy petroleum based imports. Took them a few years, but they've developed a much more resilient alternative. Much to learn there.

The key resource input for adaptive co-evolution is intelligence. Cities are the major repository -- when properly organized, which isn't the case at the moment.

[John Robb]

Tim, totally on board. As you point out, there are already trends in this direction.

Will, agree with adaptive intelligence. Possible to maintain high innovation rates through social software connections now -- which means that distributed/decentralized isn't a bad thing.

[James Bowery]

The closest thing to a solution to the "1950's middle class carrying capacity" problem I've come up with in the present circumstances is something I call the SUTABS -- Solar Updraft Tower Algae BioSphere:

http://www.geocities.com/jim_bowery/sutabs.html

(Although I need to update that brief proforma to include a reasonable design for the downdraft condenser I've recently come up with.)

Basically, the SUTABS gives you sustainable, developed-world supplies of food, water and energy in 200,000 person groups in with an ecological foot-print of something like 2000 hectares.