A Resilient Suburbia 4: Accounting for the Value of Decentralization
Posted by jeffvail on December 10, 2008 - 10:10am
This series has been considering the role of suburbia in a post-peak future. One necessary, though generally ignored, element of any analysis of suburbia is a consideration of the value of decentralization per se. The decentralized mode of suburbia presents problems (greater energy requirements for transportation), and advantages (greater potential for individual self-sufficiency), but what about the economics and politics of decentralization itself?
This post will argue that, when measured from the perspective of the median participant, decentralization offers a superior structure for both economic and political organization, a structure that may prove far more sustainable in a post-peak world than our current, centralized, hierarchal patterns of organization. Suburbia, not as a model for material consumption, but as a legal and social lattice of decentralized and more uniformly distributed production land ownership, has the potential to serve as the foundation for just such a pioneering adaptation—a Resilient Suburbia.
There are many efficiencies gained through centralization and specialization (of both place and activity, or, as Jaques Ellul termed it, “technic”). These two principles combine to lay the foundation for most of “classical” economic theory. These efficiencies, however, also produce externalities—side effects that are generally unrecognized and unaccounted for when weighing the value gained by centralization and specialization. I’ve termed these “anti-economies.”
When weighing civilizational choices, it is also important to consider the dueling perspective of the median vs. the mean. A policy that grows overall wealth in an economy (raising the mean wealth) does not necessarily increase the wealth of most people within that economy (which is best measured by the median wealth). Is an overall richer society comprised of one super wealthy Tiger Woods and 100 destitute peasants preferable to an overall poorer society comprised primarily of a “middle class” at some level of wealth above destitute peasantry? How do we weight the value—from the perspective of economics, politics, sociology, sustainability, etc.—of equality of distribution versus overall wealth distributed? This is a question that is critical to any consideration of the value of decentralization, and represents a lens through which we must view the relative value of suburbia and its alternatives, their present failures, and future potential.
While, to some extent, the economics and politics of centralization cannot be separated, there are clear economic benefits to centralization and specialization. Great cities from New York and London in the present to the Hanseatic free cities or Phoenician trading bases of the past demonstrate this well.
If the economic advantages of urbanization are so clear-cut, what are its economic disadvantages? First, as an expression of hierarchy, a boundary analysis of cities must include their constituent hinterland—the region that produces the raw materials for urban production and consumes the services and products produced in the urban core. In our increasingly globalized world, this hinterland is also global—for example, the Vietnamese factory worker churning out products designed by the downtown LA design firm and financed by New York banks, or the peasant farmer’s income impacted by the cheap, subsidized grains produced on industrial farms and exported through the ports of major US cities. (Which comes first: the masses of urban poor dependent on government and aid organizations or the flight of farmers from small plots where they cannot compete with subsidized western agricultural exports?)
In addition, peer-polity competition for control and coordination of this hinterland makes the hierarchal model of urbanization fundamentally growth-driven, and therefore unsustainable. Cities are peer-polities, competing with each other to coordinate and control the economic activity of the largest possible share of a limited hinterland. If one city were to focus on a sustainable, no-growth approach to this game, it would be out-competed by others more concerned with near-term growth and intensification. This is natural selection among polities. Cities, by virtue of their necessary participation in the global peer-polity “eco-system,” are forced to adopt unsustainable practices—or they are out-competed in the game for near-term survival by those who do. Where a superficial sustainability-consciousness exists, its effects are generally limited to token measures within the city’s political jurisdiction, rather than the relevant and vastly larger economic reach to its effective hinterland.
It is also important to consider the “success” of urbanization through the mean/median lens. Urbanization, and the industry, trade, and centralization of economic activity that it supports, certainly increases the mean wealth within its bounds, but what does it do to the median wealth? Further, if the requisite hinterland is included within the bounds of our analysis, does urbanization even increase the mean wealth within that boundary, or does it simply affect an increasing concentration of wealth? These are the structural disadvantages of the urban form. Do they outweigh its advantages? We simply don’t have the data to answer that question definitively. What we do know is that, especially within American and European cities, the environmental damages and marginalization of the “hinterland” population largely falls outside our borders, onto the fragile ecosystems and massive poverty of the second and third worlds. This civilizational accounting failure represents a massive subsidy to urbanization—perhaps the greatest subsidy in history, and one that is incredibly damaging and short-sighted.
No matter how energy-efficient cities may be (especially when compared to presently extant alternatives like suburbia), they are most fundamentally the manifestation of hierarchal structures engaged in peer-polity competition—a mode of human organization that, I believe, is at its core the root of humanity’s unsustainability (because it drives our demand for growth) and it is, itself, undesirable (because it emphasizes the mean at the expense of the median, marginalizing the vast majority of participants).
Not only are there distinct, structural disadvantages to the urban model, but there are also nascent advantages of decentralized, non-hierarchal organization. The potential for distributed manufacturing is one example. The potential and advantages of decentralized innovation is another. 2000 small farmers each trying to develop a better system will develop and evaluate more theories than a single, equivalently-sized industrial farm, and the dispersed effort will also develop more locally-appropriate solutions. The advantage of decentralized innovation is particularly apparent in military innovation—the decentralized innovation laboratory of insurgents in Iraq, for example, has equaled or bettered the worlds single largest, centralized R&D facility (the US military-industrial complex), despite dramatic differences in funding, personnel, education, and other resources. Localized self-sufficiency and increased liberation from the peer-polity competition additionally frees innovators to focus on producing quality of life for the median, rather than intensifying the empire of the mean. The mindset of the 20th century was that physical aggregation was necessary for the hierarchal coordination of complex economic activities. The mindset of the 21st century may be that physical distribution excels, and is even preferable, when pursuing non-hierarchal, open source, and emergent coordination of complex economic activity.
There seems to be a nearly endless stream of skeptics who claim that physical proximity (e.g. the city) is necessary for the kind of complex economic activity that underlies our quality of life. Usually, in my opinion, these theories rely on an outdated or misinformed understanding of economic coordination. These doubters seem broadly unfamiliar with advances in open-source, distributed manufacturing; of platform-driven systems; of the potential for tying vernacular resource bases into global networks of open-source innovation. They usually focus on the services and amenities that cities can provide to the privileged few, while ignoring at great moral hazard the concomitant impact of these structures on the vast majority of its citizens—those that live beyond political borders but well within the economic hinterlands. Others point to the opportunities for interaction in urban areas—while it is certainly possible to see and interact face-to-face with more people in an urban setting on a constant basis, the attractiveness (or horror) of this situation seems far more closely tied to individual personalities and psychological adaptation than to any fundamental economic advantage of cities. Both evolutionary psychology and modern commerce suggest that cities may actually be counter-productive in these functions.
Dunbar’s number, for example, shows that human interaction functions best with group sizes of roughly 150--the norm in our ontogeny, and something that does not depend on the human density of cities. Additionally, cities may be liabilities when considering the theory of weak networks--the notion that the most powerful way to leverage humans’ limited capacity to form connections is to form several very strong, very close connections, and then several extremely distant and weaker connections. Cities present an environment more susceptible to tight-group isolation (though they don’t force such an arrangement), whereas the reliance by more distributed settlement on fairs (historically) and the internet (in modernity) may actually tend toward more powerful structure to coordinate economic activity.
This is not meant as a dispositive proof of the superior economic potential of distributed systems, but rather as food for thought—we tend to assume without questioning that cities are necessary and desirable for economic functioning, all the while ignoring significant evidence that this may be the result of little more than inertia. When readers wish to discuss a complex niche topic with other interested parties—a classic analogue for economic coordination—they are generally better served by a highly distributed virtual community (such as The Oil Drum) than by the kind of permanently physically collocated group one would find in a city. My guess is that even a well-connected individual in a “flagship city” like New York would be hard pressed to find the quality of discussion on a topic such as Peak Oil equal to what exists daily on this site. This same advantage spreads from agriculture to Medicine, to military theory--just one anecdote: go to the physical epicenters of military theory, such as the Army War College or one of the service academies, and you will fail miserably to find face-to-face discussions of the caliber you can find daily at John Robb’s blog between people from all over the world.
Additionally, highly centralized and specialized economic structures tend to require a great degree of “middle men” to effectively coordinate complex economic activity on a large scale. As a result, a huge majority of “workers” are not actually performing “end production,” but rather are performing some kind of coordination, command, or control activity. This is generally referred to as “Span of Control”—on the simplest level, one person can only effectively command so many subordinates. Historically, militaries have settled on a span of control of 5 (only 3 of which are operational). This leads to massive “middle management” in large-scale organizations. A similar effect exists in economics—while a massive dairy farm may reap significant economies of scale, it also tends to involve large behind-the-scenes forces performing management, compliance, legal, finance, marketing, transportation, human resources, and other non-milk-producing functions.
Open source networks of innovation have the potential to fundamentally replace this mode of economic coordination in a manner that eliminates the need for this middle-management. Every producer a part-time innovator/theorist, and every innovator/theorist a producer. This might sound like a hippy fantasy-world to some, but it is happening right now from commodity coordination by individual peasant farmers in Africa (via cheap, disposable cell phones) to a revolution in insurgent tactics in Asia. Ask yourself, do you actually make anything? Do you even know anyone who actually makes anything? Or do you and most of your associates engage in one of these “coordinating” functions? If this is the “efficiency” of our current, city-centric economic structure, it looks more like a target of historic opportunity to me.
Finally, the same structural tendencies of our economic systems have dramatic effects on our political systems and the course of our civilization. Centralization and specialization are the opposites of self-sufficiency and independence. When we centralize production of something we require, as individuals or communities we become dependent on the system that provides continuing access. We’ve been so indoctrinated to the benefits (and hidden from the externalities) of these interlacing networks of dependency that we rarely realize the degree to which we have ceded our own potential for sovereignty. The implications are striking.
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Jeff, I've been a fan of this series, but I'm more troubled by this contribution. I believe there's a case to be made for suburbia, but perhaps not this one. To accept your contentions is to accept that structurally, suburbia is less hierarchically structured than cities, which I tend to think it is not presently true. To a large degree, suburbs are precisely a product of urban hierarchy, the place where the culture of hierarchy gets frozen and reproduced - that is, where those who are the products of urban hierarchical culture move when it is time to reproduce. If you intend to argue that a peak oil crisis will render suburbia more flexible and less structured when it is isolated, I think you need a better case and a more explicit analysis.
I agree that suburbia has potential in terms of decentralization - but, not, I think necessarily in opposition to cities, but because suburbs in many cases are structurally similar to older-style cities. That is, many have similar population densities 19th and early 20th century milltowns and small cities. They come with large quantities of built space that could easily be adapted to production and sale, and room for interstitial additions. And while they are dependent on resource distribution, they both have the capacity to meet some needs, and are also closer to natural resources - to those hinterlands that provide natural resources. There is no reason, for example, for me to transport the food I produce all the way to New York City, because there is a more-than-adequate demand for it in the suburbs and small cities near me. I think the land-export model applies here - unless the cities remain centers of wealth, able to radically outbid the suburbs and small cities around them, more and more resources are likely to stay in place.
Sharon
Of course, local consumers have an economic advantage over more distant consumers, because of the cost of transportation. Also, it's easier for a local producer to deny food to a distant stranger than to deny food to a local consumer.
Another way to look at it is in terms of local consumption as a percentage of production. I just ran some number for some net oil exporters. Iran and Saudi Arabia respectively went from 38% and 18% to 43% and 23% from 2005 to 2007 (consumption as a percentage of production, total liquids).
local consumers have an economic advantage over more distant consumers, because of the cost of transportation
But large farming corporations also have the advantage of economy of scale, greater leverage in futures contracts, and lower overhead. They also have greater political influence through lobbying and targeted campaign contributions. Not that I like any of the above (I most certainly do not.), but that is how the situation is playing out right now.
I think you are talking about producers; he was talking about consumers. Anyway, I would want to live in an area that had a wide variety of local produce and locally produced goods, for a lot of reasons. Ideally, associated interactions would be as face to face as possible.
I think you are talking about producers; he was talking about consumers.
True, but local consumers imply purchasing from local producers. Distant consumers imply distant (agro-factory) producers. Economy of scale, etc, are factors that currently offset the local advantage. Anyone who has seen The Future of Food, however, realizes the problems we face with industrial agriculture and seed monopolies.
I am growing 45+ fruit and nut trees, tending 20'x80' garden, and raise a small flock of sheep, so I heartily agree with the thrust of the vision in your comments.
Will has good points and this concept can be done on smaller lots too. In our energy, commodity constrained future future.
Many people will start to work from home as the cost of going to work in time, money means one needs to produce 1/2 as much for the same real income.
How it can be done is producing RE power like solar steam engines, windgens, collecting local biomass to convert to electricity, fuel pellets, ect along with growing food like will does though I'm thinking on a much smaller plot like 1/4acre. A dozen fruit, nut trees and a greenhouse/garden supplies the occupants with food, cash.
These can bring in a good living because the costs are so low without work travel time, lunch, clothes, lack of time to do things, find deals costs are much lower, running costs are under $400/person/month plus mortgage so one doesn't have to make much.
I live on about $250/month total cost since my mortgage is paid for food, clothes, utilities,
transport which is easy to make in my garage building custom EV's, ect in my small shop.
Starting from scratch on a site this RE, food growing, workshop could be done for under $50k
plus land.
Urban, suburban both have their good points. Transport costs will drop a fair amount as we switch to cool smaller vehicles mostly powered by renewable produced electricity or mass transit powered by the same. In my present EV gets about $.06/mile total costs because it's lightweight and aero.
And it's adjustments like these that will give economist heartburn. If big business, oil, coal, gov don't get reasonable many more will do as I do which will hurt them big time.
It's what we did in the 73 recession which rove the price of oil back down to under inflation
adjusted rates to before the oil embargo though without the electric cars but by car pooling, smaller cars, fewer trips, vacations, ect. In fact this recession, oil pricing looks a lot like then.
jerryd
What's your wH/Mile?
Will has good points and this concept can be done on smaller lots too. In our energy, commodity constrained future future.
Many people will start to work from home as the cost of going to work in time, money means one needs to produce 1/2 as much for the same real income.
How it can be done is producing RE power like solar steam engines, windgens, collecting local biomass to convert to electricity, fuel pellets, ect along with growing food like will does though I'm thinking on a much smaller plot like 1/4acre. A dozen fruit, nut trees and a greenhouse/garden supplies the occupants with food, cash.
These can bring in a good living because the costs are so low without work travel time, lunch, clothes, lack of time to do things, find deals costs are much lower, running costs are under $400/person/month plus mortgage so one doesn't have to make much.
I live on about $250/month total cost since my mortgage is paid for food, clothes, utilities,
transport which is easy to make in my garage building custom EV's, ect in my small shop.
Starting from scratch on a site this RE, food growing, workshop could be done for under $50k
plus land.
Urban, suburban both have their good points. Transport costs will drop a fair amount as we switch to cool smaller vehicles mostly powered by renewable produced electricity or mass transit powered by the same. In my present EV gets about $.06/mile total costs because it's lightweight and aero.
And it's adjustments like these that will give economist heartburn. If big business, oil, coal, gov don't get reasonable many more will do as I do which will hurt them big time.
It's what we did in the 73 recession which rove the price of oil back down to under inflation
adjusted rates to before the oil embargo though without the electric cars but by car pooling, smaller cars, fewer trips, vacations, ect. In fact this recession, oil pricing looks a lot like then.
jerryd
I think this is very much open to debate:
A simple search will turn up dozens of similar articles.
I think this really explains the profitability of "big ag". Consider the use of health and safety regulations in denying market access to small producers. I believe that ignoring or removing these barriers would seriously undercut the advantages of "big ag" especially in dairy and value added processing. In my experience, your reputation for quality and care among your neighbors is way more important than having the local Department of Health's approval.
And since small producers are mostly satisfying local demand...
I agree that, as presently structured, suburbia and urban settlement are roughly equally hierarchal. I do think, however, that the very distributed land ownership model present in suburbia (which, admittedly, is far to vague a term here) is critical. I think, ultimately, the peak oil crisis will render most present institutions untenable, and as a result those areas currently characterized by more distributed land-ownership will trend toward more decentralized (and, in my mind, more sustainable and fulfilling) replacement structures, whereas those areas currently characterized by more concentrated land-ownership will trend toward a more feudal replacement structure...
Great thesis, Jeff. The question is just how "very distributed" the land ownership model is in suburbia? While there is surplus energy for personal transportation, suburbia may represent the best of both worlds in terms of natural resource contributions/green space and urban concentrations of energy, materials, and specialized jobs (Odum). But without surplus energy, there is no personal, private transport, and the green space may not be an adequate footprint to support the dispersed, decentralized type of lifestyles that the future will require. Maybe inner suburbs won't make it, and outer, more dispersed suburbs and exurbs will do OK?
http://www.patternlanguage.com/archives/alexander1.htm
Emergent Urbanism
http://mathieuhelie.wordpress.com
I bought A Pattern Language a couple weeks ago, this makes me even more intrigued to read it. Interesting, thanks.
I'm not sure there are any organizational differences between cities and suburbs in the US; the physical infrastructure differs but little else.
Discussions are fine and can be enjoyable, but the crisis demands new policies. These are made face to face, by people who are long- and well- connected within institutional contexts; university- to- businesses- to- law firms- to lobbying groups. These don't use emails or telephone calls (to avoid prosecution) and need to meet in order to hand the money back and forth under the table.
Until Oil Drum is given responsibility for policy, there will be BAU at the levels of governance and the 'nattering nabobs of negativity' at Oil Drum and the other forums, as Spiro Agnew once colorfully put it.
Decentralization works well; it is getting there that is difficult. Factions become insurmountable obstacles and coordination breaks down for petty reasons. The enablers of successful decentralization are highly conplex (think, the Internet) and mostly centralized and vulnerable to neglect and accident. Without centralized coordination, there is chaos; which results in a reassertion of central control, usually at a lower level of sufficiency. So ... getting to decentralization usually means total breakdown where the concept of de - central - ization becomes meaningless.
The military is a bureaucracy that has its own institutional imperatives that are simply not accessible to anyone who is not part of the policy making apparatus. This (de- centralized) apparatus has metastized in all directions and at all levels, creating as it goes its own 'efficiency' benchmarks for operational 'success'.
If you don't think the US military is very successful in Iraq and Afghanistan, (or Vietnam or Korea) ask a General and he will tell you.
One area where I disagree with you is, at least as I read into your comment, the endorsement of a need for new top-down policies. I think this would be great if it happened, but I liken it to the desirablility of world peace: we can have world peace tomorrow if we all just agree to stop fighting, but that isn't going to happen either. I think there is a great potential to build what Antonio Negri has termed a "diagonal"--to build a parallel civilizational structure that coexists with, but is out of phase with, the dominant hierarchal structure. The idea being, when the "system" collapses or deteriorates too far, "system-B" is already shouldering a significant portion of the load and proceeds to pick up the slack. As you point out, we need new policies, and we aren't going to get anything but BAU. My argument is that we need to build this parallel, decentralized structure on the understanding that real top-down solutions will be like crates of "cargo" from afar--it simply isn't going to fall out of the sky, no matter how long we hope and pray for it. I agree completely that building a decentralized system as a direct competitor to centralized hierarchy is inviting a conflict that decentralization can't win. However, I disagree that decentralization = chaos. There is amazingly interesting work being done--both in terms of abstract theory AND the realization that this theory has been a guiding principle in actual human organization in the past (and in marginalized regions)--that decentralization can be incredibly efficient and ordered, just not hierarchally ordered. Instead of a direct competitor to hierarchy, decentralized structures need to build in parallel. In fact, this is how they already exist--kin, peers, family, all of these are decentralized structures that currently exist in parallel to hierarchal government and polity, and that already shoulder a significant part of civilization's organizational burden. The key is to expand and strengthen the economic and political connections in these existing parallel networks, to move them explicitly into the realms of economic coordination and production. This doesn't require collapse as a prerequisite--to the contrary, a sufficiently elastic, decentralized safety net may actually facilitate a smooth transition instead of collapse...
To me, patriarchy is a hierarchicial family structure and the prototype for all subsequent tyranny and inequality. The fact that the family offers some practical relief from the polarizing agenda of the marketplace has simply allowed conservatives the lie of saying that markets should rule everything, then acting as though family burden-sharing is some completely different matter since it is God-ordained. Meanwhile, the wife-beating, daughter-raping Hebrew patriarchs handed their legacy down to the Protestants and Moslems, both of whom embrace Abraham and his special deal with God. The Protestant strain led to the American phenomenon of the white man with a beard and a gun who claims absolute dominion over his unfortunate "flock"; the slaveowners, rednecks, hillbillies, the King Ranch, down to Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh, the white militias and the Millenialists. They all want a national government to be a confederacy of patriarchs. For 400 years this scam has allowed rich whites to claim to poor whites that they are all a brotherhood of patriarchs, not an unjust class system ripe for overthrow by a coalition of poor whites and blacks.
It seems to have worked out much the same on the Moslem side. Dispersal seems to ensure male oppression in both traditions.
Just remember, Ernst Rohm and the Brownshirts wanted to shut down the factories, empty out the cities, and return to the land. Hitler got what he wanted from them until the big patriarchs demanded their termination. Our neo-confederates will likely meet a similar fate from their cynical leaders.
Two books that I've had recommended to me on this very interesting toipc, but that I haven't gotten around to reading yet:
Saharasia (Author?)
The Chalice and the Blade (by Raine Eiseler, I think?)
Have you (or others) read these? In general, Robert Anton Wilson does an excellent treatment of these this issue. While I'm sure this will seem incredibly abstract to some, it all seems to boil down to a sky-god/herder vs. earth-goddess/gardener issue... In one of my few and cherished conversations with Wilson he highly recommended Saharasia, so I guess it's time I get to the bookstore.
The Chalice and the Blade: Riane Eisler (see also Sacred Pleasure by the same author). Both highly recommended.
I think he should read The Redneck Manifesto. Have you read that one? It basically posits that rich whites in America have used racial division to keep poor blacks and poor whites thinking that each other are the problem, so they don't challenge the rule of the rich white class. He sees America as Rich vs. Poor, not Black vs. White.
I second that. The Chalice and the Blade was an eye-opener re inherited paradigms. It boils down to: a dominator model versus a cooperative model of civic organization. With the former lies nuclear annihilation; the latter leads to something more akin to 'the perennial philosophy', although Eisler didn't use that term.
I wonder what the futurist author Eisler thinks of peak oil and how PO will affect the dilemma described in the book.
An excellent Huxley term, which brings to mind another book recommendation (and perhaps my all time favorite): "Island" by Aldous Huxley.
Like chimps versus bonobos?
I actually think there is less hierarchy than you might be led to observe. I think that the 'public' such as those whose activites register economically and socially are far ahead of the leadership. This is certainly true where the public isn't doing their patriotic duty and rushing out to the malls to bankrupt themselves even further than they are already.
The collapse of the US auto industry is another good example. Appearing to be rich and acting like total assholes on the highways and byways isn't as much 'fun' as it used to be, even a few short months ago. People have gotten short courses on the outcome of too much debt and the wasting of time in traffic jams. As for debt, it isn't inconvenient; it's devastating. As for time, we are in 'Peak Time'. The public is learning.
Approve of them or not, institutions exist. Absent good policies, bad policies will fill the resulting 'policy vacuums' in these structures. Everyday actions of individuals really do matter. Private actions need to be leveraged; without good policy useful private actions never achieve any critical mass, the scale part of 'economies of scale' is what is important.
If you drive your car to the junkyard and start riding a bicycle, that is good for the environment and energy conervation; only policy can send all the cars to the junkyard and put the disgruntled survivors on millions of bicycles. This would be ugly, but it would be good policy.
Without critical mass and the resonance of good policy acting on the ground with many participants, the policy structure becomes irrelevant. The subsequent collapse of the structure is then, not far off. This is what is happening in the US Federal Government. Time is running out for it and its BAU participants, whose multi- trillion dollar machinatins have not met with any success. Unfortunately, there are few heirs to policy failure on a large scale. It's like a heart attack; it's diffioult for the stomach and the fingers to 'make a go of it' on their own ...
I see structural decentralization in both the cities and suburbs; that is, nodes that are within networks. Hierarchies are overlaid on top of the networks. I don't see any places that are completely homogeneous or truly hierarchial, despite convenants, homeowner associations, 'White Only' or income segregation. I will go a bit into this further on. Be all this as it may, it is dismaying is at the levels where decentralization of policies would gather useful results, there is little to differentiate between approaches. For example, there are twenty or so 'industrialized, developed' nations who are all pursuing the same sorts of energy and commercial development programs. There are slight variations between - say, France and Denmark - but no advanced country is making s dramatic break from the managed capital- managed money supply, consumption- and distributed production model. Even so- called socialist countries are emulating the United States in this regard. Similarly, the individual states in the US, who have much to gain by experimenting with different organization structures, information distribution and policy application all tend to follow along with the trends.
I think all kinds of parallel and geometric structures form all the time. Business partnerships and corporations are examples. All depend on the caliber of the individuals who act within them as well as the utility of their policies. I suspect these - as do the national hierarchies - have 'lifespans'; this might be a concept that bears some examination. I think an organization like Berkshire- Hathaway would have to be considered a successful parallel hierarchy; it makes its shareholders wealthy, it is benign and patriarchal in every sense (being directed by a white hillbilly with a rifle and a raccoon hat named Warren Buffett.) It does not challenge the social or political structures directly, even when it might be in its overall interest to do so; instead, it adapts and conforms. It is a hiorarchy by necessity; it is hard to see any other way of governing gaining Berkshire's results.
If there were more such parallel organiizations, there would not be the kind of financial crisis we are enduring at this moment. At the same time, it is hard to see Berkshire existing outside the centralized contest of government rules and oversight, property rights and legal system. If the government fails, it will probably bring down that company as well.
Another parallel social organization was George Pullman's company town, built in Chicago in the early 1880's. Originally, Pullman's town was beneficial to the Pullman Co. employees who lived there, although residents chafed at total company control of all matters within the town borders. The Panic of 1894 was its downfall; Pullman cut wages and hours for employees but refused to reduce rents or utility costs. The result was a bitter strike and the use of troops to quell it.
Interestingly, the 19th century 'suburban' design has influenced how the current residents interact:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050515/news_1h15pullman.html
Pullman's policies failed, the failures are being repeated at all levels today. It is reasonable to question the need for the hierarchies that create failure as a product, but since these hierarchies won't disappear and parallel structures may not provide a compelling substitute for them, I don't know if there is any choice but to focus on the policies.
This is a tremendously broad subject area that could engage us for weeks on a point by point basis. The inefficiencies of transportation of the decentralized system are mentioned very briefly then passed over. Even distributed manufacturing has it's transportation inefficiencies; where do the raw materials come from?
And as long as suburbanites commute into the city (or to other satellite points in the metropolitan area), the gains to be realized from your discussion are absent. Dispersed populations are difficult to serve with mass transit efficiently, so such a decentralized settlement pattern can be a dragging boat anchor on the transition to a better arrangement. In the end, the eventual solution can at best be a weak compromise.
And simply because someone does not handcraft a piece of furniture or something else solid does not mean their work is trivial. Architects create architectural designs, accountants keep the books straight (the straight ones, anyway), engineers design systems, the policeman keeps the peace, the subway dispatcher keeps the subway trains running smoothly, the doctor helps the patient return to work, etc. There was a time that I thought service jobs don't contribute anything, but I've changed my views since.
Much of this rings of the Jefferson/Hamilton debates; Jefferson sought to have a largely yeoman farmer civilization with modest villages and cities. Hamilton wanted large cities with factories stuffed with ignorant masses on poverty wages. If we are to pick the former, we must realize that the coordination provided by many would likely mean we no longer have high technology items at our disposal. While many are trivial, others, like the computer you're looking at, can contribute much (under the right circumstances).
Note that small farms are struggling right now against large agro-corporations, as the latter has economy of scale, more influence over regulations (which can impede small farming operations), and greater leverage with buyers.
Decentralization can work, but the transition to such a system will require significant motivation; PO might be the eventual such motivation. But suburbia is not true farmland, nor is it the city; it's similar to half milk, half water, where the end product in a PO environment doesn't satisfy one solution or the other.
My sense is that farms operating within the context of the commodities system are becoming fewer in number, and, necessarily, larger on average.
On the other hand, farms that bypass the commodities system are becoming greater in number though newer, and thus poorly capitalized, and therefore smaller.
There seems to be a structural bifurcation going on in the ag sector in the U.S.
So do see local small scale ag as being a potential avenue for a nonhierarchical economic/political system to evolve in parallel with our existing dominant system (see Jeff's comment in the thread above this one)?
Due to Peak Oil, resource constraints, unemployement, inflation, the credit crunch, and the inability to sell homes, most people will stay where they are and the suburbs and metro areas will not change in terms of their basic residential or transport structures.
In most of the developed world, post peak suburbia will be mostly depopulated.
After the last power blackout, most people will die from exposure, infectious diseases, and intestinal infections from a lack of sanitation. Rivers and the water most people drink will contain raw sewage from up stream.
Because most people are preparing for some sort of slow down, instead of a rapid collapse, they imagine that all of the stuff in a 1890 Sears catalog will magically come rolling down the highways to enable them to farm. And somehow they manage to heat their homes, even though there are no heating systems working and people can't cut and move 5 cords of wood.
Independent studies conclude that global crude oil production will now decline from 74 million barrels per day to 60 million barrels per day by 2015. During the same time, demand will increase. Oil supplies will be even tighter for the U.S. As oil producing nations consume more and more oil domestically they will export less and less. Because demand is high in China, India, the Middle East, and other oil producing nations, once global oil production begins to decline, demand will always be higher than supply. And since the U.S. represents one fourth of global oil demand, whatever oil we conserve will be consumed elsewhere. Thus, conservation in the U.S. will not slow oil depletion rates significantly.
Alternatives will not even begin to fill the gap. And most alternatives yield electric power, but we need liquid fuels for tractors/combines, 18 wheel trucks, trains, ships, and mining equipment. The independent scientists of the Energy Watch Group conclude in a current report titled: “Peak Oil Could Trigger Meltdown of Society:”
"By 2020, and even more by 2030, global oil supply will be dramatically lower. This will create a supply gap which can hardly be closed by growing contributions from other fossil, nuclear or alternative energy sources in this time frame."
http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Press_Oilreport...
With increasing costs for gasoline and diesel, along with declining taxes and declining gasoline tax revenues, states and local governments will eventually have to cut staff and curtail highway maintenance. Eventually, gasoline stations will close, and state and local highway workers won’t be able to get to work.
We are facing the collapse of the highways that depend on diesel and gasoline powered trucks for bridge maintenance, culvert cleaning to avoid road washouts, snow plowing, and roadbed and surface repair. When the highways fail, so will the power grid, as highways carry the parts, large transformers, steel for pylons, and high tension cables from great distances.
With the highways out, there will be no food coming from far away, and without the power grid virtually nothing modern works, including home heating, pumping of gasoline and diesel, airports, communications, and automated building systems.
Last June, I took a trip to Albany, NY to talk to 3 audiences on Peak Oil impacts and survival. In the group that invited me, the Capital Regional Energy Forum CREF), is a physicist who teaches solar energy at a major university, and who had served in the Peace Corps.
He has solar powered just about everything, including a solar powered canoe which we went on for a long ride on a lake in the Adirondack Mts., and a PV solar powered house and pump for his well. He repairs everything on his house himself and he heats much with passive solar. So the guy knows his stuff. He is no ivory tower academic.
We talked for hours about survival in the northeast after the last power blackout.
It looks "challenging."
Eventually batteries and even the solar panels deteriorate. He thinks that he could store dry batteries with the liquid stored in glass and thus make "new batteries" after they conk out (my idea :). But eventually the batteries and solar panels give out.
Cutting and moving wood without trucks, horses, and wagons will be a major effort and very time consuming. There are not many horses around and it will take decades to breed enough horses to go around. Horses require food, care, vets, and medicine. No one is making wagons these days locally.
Wood stoves break, just like everything else. You could keep one or 2 extras, but eventually you have none and can't get more, because there is no transportation on the highways.
Asphalt roof shingles need to be replaced, and houses need to be painted and maintained.
Food must be grown in with a short growing season, and all of the farm stuff that used to be in a 1890 Sears catalog is no longer available. Last summer I took a tour of a farm and saw how dependent farming is on oil -- transportation and manufacture of plastic feeding bowls, containers to store grains/feeds, straw, roofs for animals and storage areas, wire, rope, wood boards, cement, fencing, antibiotics for animals, asphalt shingles etc. Seed and hardware used to be available at the local hardware store, no more.
Then there is clothing which is manufactured and transported from afar. Making cloth is a major operation from growing cotton to making cloth. I have studied the textile mills of Lowell National Historical Park in Lowell, MA for years, as I used it as an example of the confluence of capital, technology, and labor for a course I taught on Global Urban Politics at the University of New Hampshire. I know that the parts in those factories were manufactured in many places with a vast transportation network. After the last power blackout, those factories will not be built again. And there are not many sheep around, nor animals for making leather clothes. Eventually down coats and comforters wear out, as do blankets. It sounds like just keeping warm will be a major problem.
Potable water is another problem, and sanitation also.
And there will be no modern pharmacies or hospitals.
It is time to make preparations for surviving Peak Oil.
For further reading:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/274/5295/2025?maxtoshow=&HITS...
http://www.countercurrents.org/goodchild230808.htm
http://www.countercurrents.org/po-norman181006.htm
http://drmills.wiki-site.com/index.php/Peak_Oil_Preparation
Regards,
Cliff Wirth
Mr. Wirth,
You have been making this case ,extremely well I might add, for some time now.
I suspect you will still be making it until the last Apache Webserver passes down the 'path with the clearing at the end',meaning it dies.
And somewhere ,someplace,perhaps in a locked down,dying suburbia crackerbox frame house there will be one last remaining refugee who reads it by a flickering candle as his last solarpowered battery winds down and gives its last surge of electrons to paint the video screen of his powering down laptop.
Might as well continue soldiering on though. The suburbanites do not have the space,the soil,the skill nor the tools or initiative to survive. Not to mention many of what you detail above.
Water alone will take them out. Phoenix? Vegas? LA? New York City? Dreamlands is what they are.
My spouse is now living in a suburb of Chicago.Totally unsustainable.
Recklessly unsustainable. Unimaginabily unsustainable. Vast areas of this country do not have the prerequisites to be sustainable. Winter without fuel will kill them all off up there.
All the woodlands are now gone in suburbia.
Paved over with concrete and blacktop.Who will be able to remove the concrete and buildings to expose the soil underneath? Will they all walk miles to some garden spot and return on foot? Each day? Carrying water to irrigate with? Obtained how? How will they cook their gleanings? This is a travesty.
People just live there because they can ship stuff in. Those days are going to end. The TPTB have destined us to this future. Go out to I-40 near Tulsa(as I did a few years back) and watch the unending stream of semis rolling from and to the two coasts,packing all the JIT stuff to make suburbia possible. Every 5 seconds a semi will blow by you. And the same in the other lane across the divide. Endlessly they roll,never stopping,never ceasing. Across the wastelands of drought stricken north Okieland. When I went there "Oklahoma Is Burning" was the word. My buddy lived on a farm but couldn't grow a garden. No well water and piped in was way too expensive. This last year I returned to this area in OK to pick up a Honda Trail 90 from a farmer.
His sand wheat was a disaster last year. The whole area was mostly sand for some reason. This is what is happening in the prarie lands.
It will continue. We here in WKY are in a drought. The creeks are barely moving. Many ponds are almost dry. Springs and wells are still ok and will remain so and if they do go? Well the rest of the US will be far far gone by then.
TPTB?
And if Obama can't fix it then who can? So far I don't see it happening.We have not reached the state of pure out panic and won't IMO. Not till its far too late. And if we did go into panic mode tomorrow just exactly what can be done? About PO,CC,Economic meltdown?
Dying off of so many species?Polar icecaps melting? Irreversible events that are still crashing down?
Airdale-if that wasn't bad enough,Verizon's VZaccess is just a piece of mousy ,trashy code ...ahhhh script monkeys!
Airdale,
Thanks, yes you are right, a winter without fuel would kill many and that can happen this winter:
Phillip Schewe, author of “The Grid: A Journey Through the Heart of Our Electrified World,” writes that the nation’s power infrastructure is “the most complex machine ever made.”
In “Lights Out: The Electricity Crisis, the Global Economy, and What It Means To You,” author Jason Makansi emphasizes that “very few people on this planet truly appreciate how difficult it is to control the flow of electricity.”
A 2007 report of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) concluded that peak power demand in the U.S. would increase 18% over the next decade and that planned new power supply sources would not meet that demand. NERC also noted concerns with natural gas disruptions and supplies, insufficient capacity for peak power demand during hot summers (due to air conditioning), incapacity in the transmission infrastructure, and a 40% loss of engineers and supervisors in 2009 due to retirements.
According to Railton Frith
http://sandersresearch.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1257
and
Paul H. Gilbert (National Research Council scientist testifying before Congress),
http://www7.nationalacademies.org/ocga/testimony/Blackouts_America_Cyber...
power failures currently have the potential of paralyzing the nation for weeks or months. And Paul H. Gilbert's testimony is graphic reading about what could happen.
Yes, it appears that very few listen to the collapse stuff, but a lot of folks read TOD, and they get a different view of the future.
They can investigate and think if they so choose. Your on the ground way of looking at things is very helpful.
Look at those huge trucks rolling on the Interstates when it is zero degrees out, and look at photos of the gargantuan housing developments heated by oil and natural gas, and imagine what happens when oil is too expensive and too scarce to keep things moving.
I hear the stuff about droughts too, from people in the South who tell me that irrigation now is a must for the family farm, though it was not so years ago.
Cheers,
Cliff Wirth
If you think about it ... you have to wonder how we've come so 'far' already. Lions. Tigers. Bears. Heat (which is actually more dangerous than cold). Tsunamis. Meteorites. The great Yellowstone Caldera eruptions:
http://www.yellowstonenationalpark.com/calderas.htm
What could happen next? An invasion from outer space! A Russian nuclear attack! A terrorist could introduce a reformulated Smallpox virus:
http://txtwriter.com/onscience/Articles/bioweapons.html
Etc. Etc. Etc.
I suppose I could hang myself tonight, just to get it over with ... but no. Somehow, civilization will remain an inch in advance of chaos and we - I - will muddle through, somehow.
I don't know exactly how. I don't care. I'll improvise. So will most people. There will be a lot of 'labor' available in the post- Peak Credit world. One person working alone has a hard time getting big jobs done; twenty people working together can do a lot. If twenty people can get something done and well, there is no reason twenty thousand people working together can't do that much more. Success is infectious. The 'word' will spread. Even without cheap gas, convenience, easy credit or vacation time, life will go on.
People won't quit. I know I won't. How about you?
When we are all gone, nature will return, ever so slowly but surely. No big deal. Mankind was a poorly designed experiment that failed. Better luck next time. Is mankind a species that is really needed for the health of the planet, or a positive detriment. My guess is the latter.
George Carlin: The Planet is fine, we're Fucked
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw&feature=related
Thoughts Following a Trip
My wife's family had an early Christmas get-together this past weekend since her sister's son and his girlfriend could fly out. The rest of the family is spread out in Laytonville (our home), Palm Springs, Pacific Grove and Carmel. We celebrated in Carmel. My wife and I went down Hwy 101 to San Fransisco (about 180 miles) and then Hwy 1 to Carmel (about 120 miles). We went from our boondocks cattle and timber area, through urban SF, then south through some suburbia and ag land and, finally, affluent Carmel.
I normally only go to "town" (15 miles away) twice a week to get the mail and some groceries or building supplies. Because of this, I am not immured to what passes as civilization elsewhere.
My simple take home was that society will collapse if some form of BAU isn't possible. There are wall to wall cars, houses and people none of whom have a chance to be even partly self-reliant. Even Pacific Grove and Carmel haven't the slightest chance despite their walkable town centers.
Although I think Jeff's Rhizome Communities make sense, I can't see any realistic way to pull it off. I continue to remain a doomer.
Todd
If anyone believes we are this close to the edge then they should also be prepared to stump up the current large amounts of cash to 'take them through the bad times' by being ahead of the curve. A sort of hedge/insurance policy.
-There's a leader article in this weeks UK New Scientist about going off-grid.
"The futures here -we just can't afford it yet" : this also seems true of renewables... The big question remains 'will it ever be affordable?'
Nick.
Cliff,
I'll start by saying I'm still in New Hampshire, and planning to stay there. I am however in Cheshire county not the Seacoast, which I agree resembles New Jersey far too much these days.
On today's topic, I respectfully disagree with your assessment of various things' lifetimes. Wood stoves for instance do wear out, but well maintained, their lifetime is 30-50 years. Surely that's enough time for folks to relearn making cast iron, especially with books from the public library.
It is true that there are few wagons today. There are however many trailers. Adapting one to horsepower is trivial, and at a maximum speed of 10 mph, it too will last many years. I grant you redeveloping collar and harness could take a few years, but I mean a literal few -- three to five.
Finally, you can still buy a two man crosscut saw. Google Lehman's non-Electric. With one, 5 cords of wood is a simple matter of hard work. They don't last as long as the stuff above. Fortunately two or three should be enough to last till the village blacksmith is up and forging. There are still people alive who remember firewood before chainsaws.
I grant it will take awhile to breed back horses, although teenage girls have talked their parents into more than I believe you think they have. You can grow a flock of chickens 2-300% a year, sheep by 50-75 plus lamb and wool depending on the breed. Cattle are 50%/year plus beef or oxen and there are all the confinement dairy herds to disperse.
And all this before we talk about third world roads, freight sleds or the likelihood that Hanover and Bellows Falls (Hillsboro, Marlborough...) can keep their hydroelectric installations running for centuries.
Hi Frank,
Thanks for the feedback. Some wood stoves don't last long, some do. I always recommend that people look in to that. Most people will ruin 2 before they learn how to use them, and some people will not learn. Most people are not used to starting wood stoves and using them for 6 months.
Most of the horses will be eaten when famine hits, it is quite common.
Forget the electric power, as the lines will fail and no spare parts.
Forget forging new wood stoves, as the materials will not be available. Maybe they can do it of awhile at Vermont Castings, but you will be cut off from them.
Forget most of the farm animals, as they require special medicines. Better to raise wild rabbits in a closed in area in the wild, where they can protect themselves from foxes, and grow some oak tree to keep some squirrels handy and tasty, easy to catch.
Get a 180 Eagle crossbow http://www.sportsauthority.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2628511
and learn how to make them, and order a lot of the strings, or whatever you call them
I found the saws by googling: two man saw.
Here's some books for the library to order:
* A TIP: ORDER BOOKS NOW - sold out after an emergency
* Antibiotic Alernative: Natural Guide to Fighting Infection and Maintaining a Healthy Immune System, Cindy L. A. Jones
* Composting Toilet System: A Practical Guide, David Del Porto
* Crisis Preparedness Handbook: Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival, Jack A. Spigarelli
* Doctors Book of Home Remedies, Series, Eds. of Prevention Mag.
* Donde no hay Dentista, Murray Dickson
* Donde no hay Doctor Para Mujeres, A. August Burns
* Donde no hay Doctor, David Werner
* Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook, Peggy Layton
* Encyclopedia of Country Living, Carla Emery
* Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine, 2nd ed. Michael Murray
* Gardening When it Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times, Steve Solomon
* Green Pharmacy, James A. Duke
* Herbal Antibiotitcs: Natural Alternatives for Treating Drug Resistant Bacteria, Stephen Harrod Buhner
* Human Manure Handbook: A Guide to Composting Human Manure, Joseph Jenkins
* Natural Alternatives to Antibiotics, Dr. John McKenna
* New Organic Grower, Eliot Coleman
* Organic Gardner's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control, Ed. Barbara W. Ellis
* Oxford Handook of Tropical Medicine, 2nd ed., Michael Eddleston
* Practical Encyclopedia of Natural Healing, Mark Bricklin
* Rainwater Catchment Systems for Domestic Supply, John Gould
* Rodale's All-New Encyclopedia of Organic Gardenting, Robert Rodale
* Seed to Seed: Seed Saving and Growing, Suzanne Ashworth
* Storey's Basic Country Skills, John and Martha Storey
* The Herbal Medicine Maker's Handbook: A Home Manual, James Green
* Water Storage: Tanks, Cisterns, Aquifers and Ponds, Art Ludwig
* Where there is No Dentist, Murray Dickson
* Where there is No Doctor: A Village Health Care Handbook, David Werner
* Where Women have No Doctor: A Health Guide for Women, A. August Burns
* Wilderness Medicine: Beyond First Aid, William W. Fogey, MD
check out this http://drmills.wiki-site.com/index.php/Peak_Oil_Preparation
and there are enough people in NH to start a blog, send me your email if interested, mine is found by clicking my name in here red.
Good luck and keep in touch.
Woodheaters.
I have 4 of them. Used. Three have burnout holes in the castiron grates and one of those or two has burnout holes on the sidewalls.
Some of this is repairable and some isn't so I trade out parts/grates etc.
Right now I am sitting next to the best of the four. Yet it will have a limited life I am sure. The grates do slowly disengrate,especially if you build a really really hot fire and open the dampers all the way.
So I have alternative plans but right now the woodstoves are getting me thru the transition phase as I cut further and further down to the bone.
I hang my wet clothes to dry behind the stove. I cook some on it. I love to sit by it and absorb heat as the cold wind blows outside. It is very comfortable, yet I run it only 4 hrs a day to conserve it and my woodpile.
So today I purchased at a farm store some military polyester thermal underwear. Really good stuff. I expect to soon lay in a far bigger supply then I can roam the woods in comfort this winter and many more.
I am also saving my wood ashes to make lye with this spring and try my hand at soapmaking as I watched my grandmother do.
I have going to soon get my hot hands on a real old fashioned woodburning range with at least 6 holes and maybe a sidemount water heater tank.
Best,
Airdale-plans and more plans..thats my livelong day...that and repairing computers
do a google on polartec 300, great stuff for keeping warm
You're completely correct that you can burn out even the best stove in a season if you let it roar.
So don't do that. I did it once too, in 1989. The next one, treated right, is still going fine 19 years later.
Cliff,
Interesting how you manage to include the same unsubstantiated rant almost everyday no matter what the subject of the thread is. Your solution seems to be to hoard certain items, wood burning stoves for instance, so your kith and kin can outlive all those other kinds of people who deserve to die.
I disagree that Cliff's rant is unsubstantiated. No, I do see a significant chance that it will happen. I think it's wise to prepare, and study as many of those topics as you can.
Where I disagree with Cliff et. al. is the inevitability of this scenario. Based on many things I've discussed in other threads and don't want to repeat in great length here, I really think there are a range of possible outcomes, and no one is smart enough or has enough information to really say which will happen. I continue to think that some degree of technological society is worth saving-- if that is possible. Based on our history and the way people have learned to cope in past hard times (compared to which our current financial hard times are nothing), and based on having lived in a third-world country, I think it is quite possible for us to cope and adjust. I also think the oil/energy descent will be less sudden and more gradual than Cliff predicts. Rather than a sudden collapse into total chaos, I see as more likely a long series of ups and downs, like we are seeing now with the price of oil. Therefore it's worthwhile to explore solutions, alternatives, and ways to make a smoother transition to a lifestyle of much-reduced resource consumption, while still keeping key aspects of our technology (such as computers and the Internet, and basic, efficient labor-saving devices). I disagree with the fatalistic embrace of collapse as the only possible outcome; this is far too simplistic a view.
While saying all this, I still continue to make steps to prepare for the worst-case scenario. A set of books like those Cliff listed would be useful to collect, and I already have a subset of these topics/skills either on my bookshelf or in active, practicing use. Many of these may come in handy even in a smoother transition or decline.
Hi Thomas,
I put everything I know about Peak Oil survival on the internet for everyone here on TOD and here: http://survivingpeakoil.blogspot.com/
It is a lot more than wood burning stoves.
I do lots of volunteer work to try to educate the public and policy leaders.
I don't think anyone deserves to die, not even the worst criminals, not even the "leaders" who have failed us and have generated the deaths of thousand of innocent civilian. Many of them should serve time in Federal prison, but nobody on the planet deserves to die.
Regards,
Cliff Wirth
Sorry Cliff your story just won't happen because we know how to build homes that need no or little heat, we can have transport that gets 100-1000mpg so everyone can have good transport. While it won't look like what we drive now, it will get you from one point to another at very low
cost.
I drive such vehicles now. My last one only cost $600 to build for 45 mph and 80 mile range, recharge time
in 20 minutes or a small 3hp gas motor/generator
for unlimited range.
A nice super insulated home with passive,
active solar heating would rarely need extra heat
PV solar is NOT cost effective but a solar steam engine, basically a 5hp steam engine/3kw alternator
with a 200sq' collector with a wood/grass pellet back up burner is so much better as peak solar power matches peak electric so can get premium price for it and the burner can be used for peak or non solar times. This could be mass produced for under $6k, much lower than a $20k PV system with so much more utility, profit potential plus lots of solar heat for hot water, heating.
1kw wind generators now go under $1k giving 3-20kwhr/day means we don't really need much oil.
Semi's will be NG hybrids with aero composite chassis
, bodies can double their mpg or more.
One much not go hog wild with numbers as they have limits. As they get more extreme innovation will accure. There really is not a shortage of energy, just a
shortage of will, equipment to make, catch it.
Plus you forget the cheapest energy, the energy we don't use through eff, conservation which as much as we waste can be 50% less without any problems.
You just seem to be another fear monger like Cheney as your post doesn't stand up to physics or economics. While it will take a new way of living life from the wasteful life most here spend now, it can be a
very good one costing less than we spend now.
I found out early it's not what you make, but what you spend. By investing $6-8K in RE equipment like above one can have energy for life which beats the hell out of being gouged by oil dictators, big oil.
A main reason why I stopped using oil is
to stop supporting terrorist and places like Iran, Russia, SArabia, ect. Iran is almost bankrupt and will be overthrown if we can cut our oil enough to keep it down in price. It's much cheaper than fighting wars over oil.
I have batteries that are 35_ yrs old
Ni-cads and still putting out rated power and
some Edison NiFE batteries from 1910 are still going strong. So kind of shoots holes in your battery
arguement.
I could go one but this is enough for now. I've done all this or seen it done and it's all old tech, just bypassed in the cheap oil era that's now passing.
Sorry Cliff your story just won't happen because we know how to build homes that need no or little heat, we can have transport that gets 100-1000mpg so everyone can have good transport. While it won't look like what we drive now, it will get you from one point to another at very low
cost.
I drive such vehicles now. My last one only cost $600 to build for 45 mph and 80 mile range, recharge time
in 20 minutes or a small 3hp gas motor/generator
for unlimited range.
A nice super insulated home with passive,
active solar heating would rarely need extra heat
PV solar is NOT cost effective but a solar steam engine, basically a 5hp steam engine/3kw alternator
with a 200sq' collector with a wood/grass pellet back up burner is so much better as peak solar power matches peak electric so can get premium price for it and the burner can be used for peak or non solar times. This could be mass produced for under $6k, much lower than a $20k PV system with so much more utility, profit potential plus lots of solar heat for hot water, heating.
1kw wind generators now go under $1k giving 3-20kwhr/day means we don't really need much oil.
Semi's will be NG hybrids with aero composite chassis
, bodies can double their mpg or more.
One much not go hog wild with numbers as they have limits. As they get more extreme innovation will accure. There really is not a shortage of energy, just a
shortage of will, equipment to make, catch it.
Plus you forget the cheapest energy, the energy we don't use through eff, conservation which as much as we waste can be 50% less without any problems.
You just seem to be another fear monger like Cheney as your post doesn't stand up to physics or economics. While it will take a new way of living life from the wasteful life most here spend now, it can be a
very good one costing less than we spend now.
I found out early it's not what you make, but what you spend. By investing $6-8K in RE equipment like above one can have energy for life which beats the hell out of being gouged by oil dictators, big oil.
A main reason why I stopped using oil is
to stop supporting terrorist and places like Iran, Russia, SArabia, ect. Iran is almost bankrupt and will be overthrown if we can cut our oil enough to keep it down in price. It's much cheaper than fighting wars over oil.
I have batteries that are 35_ yrs old
Ni-cads and still putting out rated power and
some Edison NiFE batteries from 1910 are still going strong. So kind of shoots holes in your battery
arguement.
I could go one but this is enough for now. I've done all this or seen it done and it's all old tech, just bypassed in the cheap oil era that's now passing.
Off-road trucks will fix this. There's also rail transport and river transport.
Yes. Eventually.
Solar Still.
I'm wondering if "suburbs" are well enough defined for this discussion? There are ten thousand angles on in. Sharon takes it one way because the suburbs she thinks of are part of the city. I'm thinking Jeff has in mind suburbs that might be more able to stand alone - older towns that have merged into an urban sprawl, for instance. And even there, a suburban development is very different than the older homes that line long established corridors. Like where I live. I have a little more than two acres of land and am turning it into garden from fencerow to fencerow; one big solar collector. Within 100 yards of a state highway and what was a large interurban rail system. Very different than the cluster developments around here that have gone up over the past decade.
In one context transportation is critical. Suburbanites in the developments have to get to work. In my case, it is not so critical; I don't really have to go to the city but rarely. Where suburbia is a bedroom, it has an entirely different place in the hierarchy than where it is a productive unit.
Jeff makes a wonderful point about externalities. Energy abundance has given us a system where the hierarchy is bigger than city and countryside. It goes to China not only for tea, but for baby diapers and "organic" food. [Melamine is organic, right?] Political, cultural, social and economic spheres in our current world are not coterminous, so we can get away with externalizing the costs of the city through social, cultural and technological structures like "free trade". Peak Oil - more than the depletion of any other resource - is going to flatten the hierarchy and make it more difficult to externalize some costs. We won't be so able to dump the direct costs of resource extraction halfway around the world, but will have to strip mine our own back yard.
That discussion of hierarchy and resource horizons then brings you back to mean and median and who decides and how. But suburbia, per se, doesn't seem a big part of that discussion. I wonder if the discussion of externalities, mean and median shouldn't be separate? It's really a much bigger discussion than suburbia. What sort of patterns are viable. That's Jeff's rhizome. Another way to think it through is Alexander's Pattern Language.
cfm in Gray, ME
Dryki, I don't think suburbs are part of the city - I think some of them are potentially small cities in the making, with interstitial commerce involved. But I do think that the value system, the culture of the suburbs is actually less flexible hierarchicalism than the city has - it may, as Jeff suggests be broken by isolation and change - but I'm not sure that is inevitable, or universal. I think it will probably depend on the places.
Transport is an issue, but I think sometimes overstated - the reality of cramming a bunch of people into the flatbed of a pickup is that it takes very, very little liquid fuel to get 10 suburbanites - and their shopping - to and from their workplace (which often isn't in the city in the city anymore, but in another suburb.) We have not even begun to use mitigation strategies in transport. And if the jobs disappear in both city and suburbs, suburban dwellers who can at least grow food and can use some of their enormous houses and garages as places for local businesses do have an advantage.
I'm watching the local Amish use precisely this model in a small town near me - they've moved east from another town, where real estate was getting scarce. They buy rural houses, but also inexpensive in-town housing with reasonably large yards, and are willing to sometimes drive to their woodlots and farmland. The garages become barns or workshops, and shortly after each family's arrival, the economic niche they occupy begins to arise - one family sells jams and baked goods, another family sells homebuilt furniture and the wife and oldest daughter take in mending and light tailoring. One comes with a portable sawmill and custom-cuts lumber, another household makes harness, one sells bulk foods out of the old garage, others sell produce at the farmer's markets. People make quilts and baby clothes, sell eggs and do construction.
What's remarkable is that in these neighborhoods, the local economy isn't just fed by the Amish - the economies they begin to establish not only serve the "English" but are emulated by them - you have to look for the power lines, or the jobs you know that Amish people won't be taking (home computer repair, or auto body work) - the number of home based businesses among the English has, to my counting, quadrupled in the same three year period. So now this tiny town (which before had a general store, a feed store, two churches, a library and a beauty parlor, along with an antique shop run out of an old barn, and two other home busineses) now has 31 small home businesses. It isn't on a major route, and the Amish in New York aren't like the PA Amish - they aren't a tourist attraction here - most people don't really even know they are around unless they live in the area. Most of these businesses are being supported by the town (population 1300) and the immediate surrounding towns.
They have not eliminated needs for importation of goods, of course, but they are, I think, a useful reminder of the role of the informal economy, and how quickly a compensatory economy can be developed.
Sharon
Oops, re-reading, I realize my language was a bit awkward - by "drive" I mean "drive their horses" to their woods and farmland
;-).
Sharon
While you don't see the suburb as part of the city, I do. Otherwise it would be a "town". The example of a bedroom suburb is easiest to see; those depend on the city for their creation and are highly specific products of the city - less flexible hierarchicalism as you write. And Jeff's discussion of the hinterland - considering the hinterland as part of the city - would certainly include them in the city's ecoshed.
What you describe the Amish doing is what I think Jeff is suggesting. Punch out a house, put in a food-coop. Punch out another house, put in a sawmill - or building recycler. That can happen now in the small town you write of. But it probably cannot happen in any development type suburb because the technology, society and culture are too restrictive at this point in time.
It will be quite the sight - a bunch of retail clerks, real estate brokers and lawyers coming up with anything workable; they will have to import some Amish or other first generation immigrants to show them how. :-)
cfm in Gray, ME
An excellent post which will challenge the thinking of many here.
You've touched on one aspect which is ignored by the promoters of high density urbanism; complexity.
Some of the thinking about complexity comes from computer science, some from biological systems.
It is often related to the idea that increasing complexity increases system entropy and falling reliability.
This means that the greater the complexity the higher the energy required and that there is a practical maximum amount of complexity before the system becomes hopelessly inefficient.
Complexity is also a topological problem (as suggested by your graph) and it is highly dependent on existing physical layouts and by itself it will resist change.
A city may have grown up around a small river crossing, which overtime loses all its significance, and so the layout becomes inefficient for that reason alone.
Joseph Tainter points out that increasing social complexity alone(even without environmental degradation) can lead to system collapse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter
It is true that suburbs also produce a certain amount of complexity but the effect is less IMO.
I wonder sometimes why urban complexity itself seems to attract some folks while others cannot stand it. The majority of people however would prefer to leave the urban environment once they can afford to do so.
I'd like to see this discussion, perhaps in a future article, discuss the political advantages of decentralization (although maybe TOD is not the place for such a discussion). I find it insane that US Senators can be said to "represent" millions or tens of millions of people. Democracy demands localization of political decision making where the ratio of representatives to constituents is something sane. Only in that way can people be thought to have any true say regarding the path of ones community. It is odd that in the US, the Democrats are the party of centralized political power, the neo-cons the party of centralized economic power. We need a party that is for decentralization of both, like the paleo-cons traditionally urged.
In theory, that would be a radical Green agenda (radical as in getting to its roots). In practice, I'm not seeing much understanding of that. Congregationalism. See also Frank Bryan's works, from Vermont.
This discussion reminds me of the novel "The Dispossessed" by Ursula K. Le Guin.
Jeff, are you from the planet Anarres?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dispossessed
Wow, I haven't read that for at least 25 years. As I remember, it was a thinly veiled profile of a feminist style of communism, almost anarchic. Didn't seem to address decentralization at all, but the years have been many...
Decentralization is a major theme too. Much of the political principles of anarchy have to do with lack of power hierarchies. In terms of production and distribution, equality is above "profiteering." In the book, on Annares being called a profiteer is a major slander, so is "egoism." The actual situtation is full of ironies, as the anarchist Annarians also recognize that humans are social animals, and hence freedom is always limited by duty to others. Where you work and live is both a function of broader social needs and your interests and skills, and you have some choice in the matter, but not always. During times of crisis the "state" can coerce you into a filling a role. But mostly it functions out of a sense of duty that is reinforced through dispersed social coercion, not a state monopoly on violence.
First point to start any such discussion at: In any society, some one/group MUST have a monopoly on violence, else violence will occur until they do. Best to deal with that one FIRST.
I think you raise a very important topic.
I don't think a monopoly on violence is actually a prerequisite to preventing violence (or is even compatible with the goal of peace). While tribal societies are not necessarily any more peaceful than modern society, they (mostly) aren't characterized by ceaseless violence until such a monopoly arises. Instead, they tend to settle into a stable equillibrium of custom backed by retributive acts of violence. This is, in fact, the very root of tort law (whereby individuals bring action for wrongs committed on them) as opposed to criminal law (whereby the state brings action for wrongs committed against it). For the vast majority of human history the level of violence was equal to or lower than the norm in modern "states," yet there was no monopoly on violence. Retributive violence tends to be very destabilizing in a system dominated by a monopoly on violence. However, once retributive violence becomes the norm, I think it can become a stable system at a lower level of violence than we experience today.
A monopoly on violence is one approach to dealing with violence as a problem, but it is by no means the only approach. An equally stable approach is one with a radical distribution of the means of violence. Don't get me wrong--there are huge problems with both of these approaches. But the decentralization of violence is an option, and if done properly (pursuant to strong social bonds, reduced wealth disparity, etc.) it may be much more desireable than a centralized monopoly on violence... basically, as long as there is massive, nearby income disparity, then there will be a strong motivation for the poor to commit acts of violence against the rich, and a strong incentive for the rich to support a monopoly on the use of violence by a system that will enforce there property rights. As soon as you move away from an abstract theory of ownership supported by a monopoly on violence to a primary-use-based theory of ownership supported by retributive violence, I think you get a much more peaceful, sustainable system. That's the bottom line: the primary role of a state monopoly on violence is the enforcemet of abstract property rights, not the actual prevention of violence. And, of course, abstract property rights lead to income/wealth disparity, class tension, peer-polity competition, the growth imperative, and the fundamental unsustainability of civilization (no matter how much oil is out there).
Apparently I'm the only one who got the memo that today is "Wing-nut Radical Wednesday"...
[Burst out guffawing!]
[try to take a breath...]
[Burst out laughing again!]
[eventually get to the point of taking a settling breath]
[Sorry, burst out laughing again!]
Ok [chuckle some more], I'm no more a wing-nut than I am a lock washer (very independent), but I can see how my post above might have given you that idea. I simply call it as I see it, and I don't look down my nose on people who are feminist, communists (as long as they don't try too compel me by force), or anarchists (as long as they don't molotov my house). Sorry I missed the decentralization theme (it's likely been closer to 3 decades since I read the book).
The monopoly on violence is (unfortunately) important in some cultures, and that's how strongmen hang on to power, rightly or wrongly (Ataturk vs. Saddam, for example). I think the key term missing is "justice", which is needed in any forward looking society. Of course, every human society needs a jail, which needs a jailer, which needs someone to be able to put someone in that jail.
Retributive violence: Hatfields and McCoys...
It seems that you read my post as calling YOU a "wing-nut radical." Sorry for the confusion--that comment was directed squarely at myself, in recognition of the fact that I was voicing some *moderately* outside the mainstream opinions!
Only the most vicious among the group, can afford to be the most gentle.
It is why we lose every day in Iraq. It is why we lost in Nam, and it is why we will lose in the US.
Power Down.
London -and I suspect many European cities- have formed by merging large numbers of formally independant 'satellite towns'. These new 'suburbs' connect to the main hub via metro corridors that expanded in density untill the whole mass merged to become one giant city.
Anyone visiting London should make the effort to come over to Barnes -perhaps one of the last of the London 'villages', complete with duck pond, butchers, fish mongers, pubs, etc. Only connected via public bus (no metro) its a very very nice place...
Nick.
Again I think this series is misguided but I'll only comment once.
The village model is very powerful and fits into what Jeff is suggesting suburbia is. Suburbia is not a village the distribution of land and structures is simply not correct. Will villages eventually form in what is suburbia certainly and some current suburban areas may become towns or even cities. Will some of the current structures be reused in the transformation sure. Will the value i.e wealth invested in suburban buildings be saved ?
Not a chance.
The intrinsic problem with this series is it assumes that the wealth will be saved without proving this premise.
We actually know the right form for population distribution. Its small farms/ranches to villages to towns to small cities with a very small number of larger cities that act as economic centers. This form has worked for thousands of years across all cultures. Attempts to leave it only work briefly on a historical time scale.
And over any reasonably long historical time period down to a few decades at any time in history we have and will continue to abandon large amounts of infrastructure developed at great cost the moment they are no longer economically viable. Crumbling infrastructure is the norm not the exception this includes cities, suburbia, farms etc. Infrastructure of all types have routinely been abandoned for thousands of years just a brief investigation into archeology will show this.
And to propose that a society is having problems feeding its populace yet does not have security issues makes no sense. The defensibility of suburbia is in my opinion low. In fact on reason for the natural distribution I've described is it allows a decent defense structure.
Basic issues such as security, fire protection, electric, water supplies and waste treatment are not addressed at all by this series yet it focuses on food issues ?
How on earth can we have the issues raised in this series without addressing the ones I'm highlighting.
Suburbia is unique in inheriting the worst problems of both urban living and less dense patterns.
It has the security weakness of the isolated farm house coupled with the dependency of a more urban setting on fire, electric and water supplies and sewers. It offers a questionable advantage over the cities it rings in partial food production capacity. Only one variable could be ranked as slightly better then all other patterns.
And last but not least the simple fact that most of suburbia exists as a ring around mega-cities that are themselves of questionable future stability is completely ignored. Somehow the denser inner core is going to die quietly while suburbia continues blissfully on ? If we are growing food in former suburbia one would assume that the populations closer to the core with less land would be having problems.
Certainly one could argue that non of what I'm saying will come to pass the core cities will continue to be supplied with food we have no problems at worst we need to change our transportation policies etc. Well if thats the case then suburbia does not have a food security problem. If we are discussing a better way to live because we want to make changes not because we have to then this is a discussion for social change thats certainly sensible but its not about survival.
This is an interesting aggregation of off-the-point techno-babble. Have you ever been in an American suburb? How would you propose forming strong networks there, where zero now exist? Ideologically, culturally, and infrastructurally, the suburb is designed to encourage strong ties in tiny groups living within houses. Outside "personal" houses, the suburb yields hostilities and disregards. This has been studied. Take a look at M.P. Baumgartner's _The Moral Order of a Suburb_. The literature on the atomizing, demobilizing, and, yes, centralizing effects of television is equally relevant.
At the more macro level, you also severely underestimate the extent to which automotive suburbs are an after-effect of corporate-capitalist power and planning and coercion.
And I also think your largest point about centralization and power is outdated and excessively abstract. This planet has 7 billion people. The nation has 300 million. Decent survival under these conditions will require large amounts of centralization, like it or not. To presume that people in the burbs can somehow start growing crops on the their lawns and while forging a Jeffersonian world strikes me as being as dangerous as it is unlikely.
I have spent some time in an American suburb, considering that I live in one. I think we form strong networks there exactly as we do anywhere--talk to people, have dinner parties, salon, etc. The intellectual vibrancy of suburbia might not be the same as the Left Bank, but I've always found it interesting. I've talked to dozens of my neighbors, two of whom were regular readers of my blog before they knew I was their neighbor, and one who had a copy of my book. To some extent this is a self-fulfilling prophecy: if people think suburbs are community and intellectual wastelands, then they will be. But making them otherwise doesn't seem particularly difficult. I've read Baumgartner, as well as Gerry Mander's treatment of television, and I think that these are excellent critiques of the problem of our current suburban built environment WHEN COMBINED with our current mode of living in that built environment. My argument is that we limit ourselves by choosing this mode, and that there are different ways to live within, and eventually shape, the underlying lattice.
I don't disagree that automotive suburbs are an after-effect of "corporate-capitalist power and planning and coercion." I don't, however, think I underestimate it--a root cause of why suburbia exists is not the same as a mandate for how it must always exist.
Finally, i don't think the issues of centralization and power are outdated (though, admittedly, they tend to the abstract). On the contrary, I think that with 7 billion on Earth and 300 million in the US, and with our trend toward ever-increasing national and global dependencies based on faith in the continuity of the self-same global system, these issues are more timely than ever. I certainly agree that the thought of people, en mass, growin crops in their lawns and forging a Jeffersonian world is unlikely. I find this tragic, but more importantly I find the suggestion that we shouldn't try (especially in a scale-free manner) to be far more dangerous. Do you propose "we" simply coast along with the currents, or do you have an alternative suggestion for the masses?
do you have an alternative suggestion for the masses?
Alternative suggestion ?
30% of Americans want to live in Transit Orientated Development TODAY, only 1% to 2% do because of the lack of T for the OD.
Step One: Meet unmeet market demand (I suspect that the 30% will grow post-Peak) for TOD.
After 40% or so of Americans live in TOD, we can figure out what to do with the remnants of Suburbia, other Urban areas, etc.
Best Hopes for TOD (and NOT forcing a round peg into a square hole).
Alan
BTW, You miss the main reason that American Suburbia exists, to avoid the "Other". This is the basic driving force for "white flight" and affects all else in social organization in Suburbia.
Alan, see part one of my series. In order for suburbanites to move to shiny-new TOD residences, they need to sell their suburban homes. If they find a buyer, there is no net-loss from suburbia. If they don't, they won't move to TOD. Thanks to the magic of supply-and-demand, the prices of suburban homes will fall as much as is required to keep them occupied, all the while erroding suburbanites' potential to afford (and therefore finance) TOD construction. The fact that 30% of Americans WANT to live in TOD has, unfortunately, no bearing on their ability to do so. I want a lot of things . . . if only this made them materialize.
Best hopes for envisioning implementable solutions.
Lots of Suburbanites are either without mortgages (don't own or paid off) or are above water (18 years into a 30 year mortgage for example).
New Suburbanites move out of their parents homes every year; they are not shackled to their old mortgages.
And many of those foreclosed on can immediately move to rental near TOD.
So your argument is not supported by facts. There will be more potential Suburbanite emigres to TOD than we can easily build TOD.
Sources include those currently renting, those setting up new households for the first time, "Empty Nesters" whose equity has shrunk but is still positive, and those who mailed their keys in (last group will likely be renters).
Best Hopes for Reality Based Planning,
Alan
Many Suburban homes can (and likely will) be abandoned. A combination of foreclosed/abandoned (jingle mail) homes and "mother moves to nursing home" and no buyers for "fix it upper" she leaves.
If TSHTF then I think Jeff's distributed model will win out over centralization. I don't see major cities as being very sustainable if we have massive collapse. In my nightmare SHTF scenario the US govt. collapses due to insolvency or war, then all survival needs such as food, water, heat would be more sustainable in areas where there are fewer humans per square mile. I think that will be the major rule of thumb if things get real bad, coupled with it's corollary: bad things will happen where there are concentrated masses of hungry, thirsty, cold humans. No one will send food & stuff to cities if there is nothing of value to get back. Honestly, most economic output in many cities are services and such. Dense cities require constant JIT deliveries of materials, food, and waste removal. There is no way NYC for example could feed itself, keep warm, or even have water without those resources flowing in from upstate and out of state.
New York City water is quite secure and extremely energy efficient. MUCH better than any suburb I can think of. Gravity feed from dams in low population areas, via underground tunnels to about the 5th floor with only gravity.
There are far better reasons to send food & energy to NYC than to, say, Long Island or Suburban Connecticut.
Alan
THE FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPT IS WRONG !
All else that follows is terminally flawed.
Cities are the birthplace of democracy, from Athens to Townhall meetings.
Social contact (the greatest weakness of modern American Suburbia) is required for democratic or other "non-hierarchical" systems to evolve.
Urban neighborhoods (see cities with a multiplicity of neighborhood associations) are MUCH more functional than Suburbia for self governance and "improving the median" as well as the urban fabric we live in.
Alan
I guess it goes without saying that I disagree--both on what substance I can find in your argument and in your implied notion that conclusory statements are of any value as an argument.
First, I'm not convinced that "democratic order" or "democracy" should be our goals, so the thrust of your arguments seem off. Democracy tends to lead to tyrrany of the majority, to failure to resist inertia, to the growth-imperative, and to the lure of short-term solutions. I think, instead of aiming for a social contract as a predicate for democracy, we should be aiming for increased self-sufficiency as the predicate for sustainable civil interaction derived from voluntary, rather than mandatory coordination.
Your statement "democratic or other 'non-hierarchal' systems" mistakenly implies that democracy is a non-hierarchal system. Quite the contrary (and one reason why it is fundamentally non-sustainable, in my opinion).
Cities, contrary to your suggestion, are the birthplace of entrenched class structures, not democracy. The only Athenians who could vote were the male citizens, and "citizen" didn't mean everyone! Townhall meetings as a model for democracy only functioned as the form of governance in small, largely self-sufficient communities, and certainly not in anything tht could be termed a "city."
Your last statement is nothing but conclusory. I don't see urban neighborhoods as being any more, let alone "MUCH more" functional than suburbia for self-governance, and especially not for improving the median. Aside from offering zero support for these bald assertions, the situation seems to transparently contradict you: urban areas tend to require, much higher police presence, more general government employees per person, and much higher degrees of government regulation (all the exact opposite of self-government), for example.
However, and more fundamentally, you're consistently setting up a straw-man against which to argue. I'm not suggesting that we continue "American Suburbia" as it presently exists--I think it is fairly clear that the thrust of this series has been to argue for how we must change suburbia. My conclusion has been that suburbia is more capable of changing into a sustainable, fulfilling geography than are urban areas. You seem insistant in arguing something entirely off-topic: that current urban areas are more sustainable than current suburban areas (the truth here is that both are unsustainable!).
Too many points ATM (your articles post on inconvenient days).
But some points:
You are apparently unaware of cities with strong neighborhood associations (I pay dues in two, Faubourg Marigny & Coliseum Square).
Their websites
http://www.faubourgmarigny.org/
http://www.coliseumsquare.org/
Austin also had a group of strong neighborhood associations (Houston & Baton Rouge do not AFAIK).
They have political power and "can make things happen", especially when they bond together to support each other. Their strength is based on the efforts citizens put into them, and they operate by close to consensus. 40 to 60 citizens attend an average monthly meeting. Several subcommittees on specific issues.
Cities can easily develop a sustainable synergy with their hinterlands, Suburbs are a lost cause. There are degrees of unsustainability, and modern American Suburbs (in large part because of their residents#) are the least sustainable. Your entire series in an effort to force a round peg into a square hole in order to save Suburbia.
# American Suburbia developed to escape from the "Other" (see "white flight"). Largely racism, but not entirely. This "founding flaw" affects the social interactions (or lack thereof) of Suburbia today and is a monumental roadblock towards the change you advocate. Issues you did not address
Alan
Wow! Well, at least we now know the basis for your argument, Jeff:
"First, I'm not convinced that "democratic order" or "democracy" should be our goals, so the thrust of your arguments seem off. Democracy tends to lead to tyrrany of the majority, to failure to resist inertia, to the growth-imperative, and to the lure of short-term solutions. I think, instead of aiming for a social contract as a predicate for democracy, we should be aiming for increased self-sufficiency as the predicate for sustainable civil interaction derived from voluntary, rather than mandatory coordination."
That's a stunning statement. I deeply, radically disagree with you, and would ask you to go back to some pretty basic world history. Democracy isn't perfect, but it's the least-bad of all possible arrangements. That's basically beyond dispute at this point.
By the way, you DO actually greatly underestimate corporate capitalist power. You are blaming democracy for the present unsustainable economy, but capitalism is not economically democratic. "Consumers" have only a very weak and indirect veto over whether to purchase what gets produced and citizens have only occasional, poorly framed choices over what gets subsidized by the state. By definition, capitalism runs via private, profit-seeking dictatorship over macro-level investment decisions.
And you may know and like your neighbors, but monthly dinner parties are not necessarily evidence of strong social networks.
Understanding our energy situation doesn't mean you are a good sociologist or political analyst.
What we need is more democracy and more social planning, based on public enterprise, collective solidarity, and radical urban reconstruction/de-suburbanization. If we do a decent job of that, small farming collectives and better neighborhood bonds will follow. If we start at the end, though, we'll never get anywhere.
Michael,
I think where I disagree with you is the notion that democracy is the "least bad of all possible arrangements." I agree that it's better than fascism or feudalism or monarchy, etc. But the logical flaw in your argument is that historicl forms of organization circumscribe what is possible. How do we know that there is no other, new form of organization that will work better than democracy? That is precisely my argument, and, if nothing else, I think you're dead wrong in stating that it's "basically beyond dispute at this point." I dispute it, and I think there is very reasonable ground to do so. If nothing else, there are extant models of civilization--admittedly, at at MUCH lower population and population density--that I think did work better from the perspective of maximizing human happiness (see, e.g. Marshal Sahlins' comment that the hamlet economy was the best humanity has ever seen). There's certainly room to dispute these claims, and the potential to apply them to a world as populous as ours now is, but to say there is NO room for dispute is seriously overreaching.
Next, I think it's necessary to look at exactly what we mean by "democracy"--after which, I'd argue that we disagree less than you suggest. Do we mean a theoretically representative democracy where, in actuality, people have power and influence more proportional to their wealth and connections? That's the system we have now, to a large degree, and it's arguably the only system of democracy that has existed. Or, do we mean a true participatory democracy where individuals voluntarily (never out of depencency or force) donate their personal sovereignty to the larger compact in order to reap collective benefit? That has never existed on a large scale for any significant period of time. The reason it has never suggested--and you hint at this in your discussion of capitalism--is that our hierarchal economic structure short-circuits any possibility that we achieve such a participatory, voluntary democracy.
What I am suggesting is not that democracy per se is "bad," but rather that it's a symptom, not a cause. The root good that we should strive for is decentralized, scale-free self-sufficiency...true independence, such that we are then actually capable of voluntarily cooperating in what would necessarily be a democratic fashion (because, with independence to abstain from any participation that is not mutually beneficial, we wouldn't voluntarily submit to any OTHER form of self-governance). Democracy without a high degree of scale-free self-sufficiency is a hollow shell--a facade that conceals a highly stratified and unequal society, as much an "opiate of the people" as any other belief system. A system characterized by a high degree of scale-free self-sufficiency, however, will naturally produce truly democratic interaction (as happened, for example, in the types of democracy that did arise among the highly scale-free self-sufficient US colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries). While it's popular to confuse these two (especially if you're only focusing on "pretty basic world history"), it is very misguided. Show me a genuine, participatory democracy characterized by a relatively high degree of equality that DID NOT arise out of a system characterized by a high degree of scale-free self-sufficiency . . .you won't find one, precisely because the only power structure that will permit such a development is one already characterized by scale-free self-sufficiency.
How dense was Athens in the 5th Century? How dense was Boston in 1750? I agree that the burbs as presently constituted don't make a lot of sense...and I don't think the present suburban lifestyle will be resilient, but I do think there will be a lot of adaptive reuse of a good amount of the suburban geography in the wetter areas of the US.
Some of the NE cities are too dense. Walking up 20 floors when the electricity is off wouldn't be a lot of fun, especially with no AC.
And a lot of pathology develops in too densely packed urban aggregations. Five stories seems to be the max for a tolerable walk up situation.
Low rise cities like NO do make sense with aggregations of village plots (old suburbs) along light rail lines radiating out from a central core. And I'm not saying all the sheetrock palaces will survive. But there's a lot of good scrap there until the 40 year shingles give out completely.
Most of the "builders model" shingles are the cheapest available, put on with a minimum of nails (25 year ?).
I do prefer the low rise density and efficiency of New Orleans, with the greenery that the Lower Garden District is noted for. As few VMT as NYC, but on a much more human scale.
We have a good synergy with the outlying countryside, swamps & estuaries (our cuisine was built around what grew and could be caught locally plus what floated down the Mississippi (mainly wheat) and what came in on sailing ships).
During WW II, the Swiss drafted their urban population to help grow food, often on the weekends. They would travel by tram or train (often with their bicycles) to a stop, and then go from there to the farms (usually stay over Saturday night I understand, except during harvest, when they would stay for a week or two).
Such arrangements are possible if TSHTF, and likely a better deal than Suburban "farming".
I am six blocks from one particular new housing that is not very appealing, but could be a prototype of post-Peak TOD for the FWOs. Concrete platform ~10' (3 m) high (parking @ ground level) and a 3 story block of wooden apartments above that, built on the platform. My eyeball guess is 40' wide and 160' long. 19,200 sq ft. guess. Minimum surface area to heat & cool, built of sustaionable wood (except for concrete platform). With shared walls, there is more than enough wood grown each year to build LOTS of these type buildings.
I can't help but wonder how many people could be crammed in there, especially if they built out most of the parking spaces underneath.
Better than living under a bridge, or isolated w/o transportation in Suburbia,
Alan
I wonder if there is too much of a "one-size fits all" in both perspectives here? Perhaps some suburbs will die completely, while some will morph into vibrant towns. A lot depends on specifics.
If Alan puts a good rail line from his city to the next, and it happens to go through your suburb that has water and power, there is hope for industry and agriculture to intersect and flourish there. Suddenly your old suburb IS a new TOD town.
My suburb on the other side of the city, though, away from the new rail line, and which happens to have no river access or water to speak of, will neither support industry or agriculture. It is likely to struggle and wither, until a few ranchers manage to eke out an existence running a few beef, aided by some scavenging money made selling recovered lumber in the other town.
In the end I strongly suspect it all comes down to availability of basic necessities, and that includes employment. I don't see how a bunch of big cities will survive -- what will the people DO? Sure there will big steel mills and big factories, but not as many, and the smaller ones could just as easily be in that rail-side town (rebirth of the old factory towns?).
As I commented in an earlier part of this series, I see what I saw around Boston as viable "rail suburbs". Towns of 5,000 to 20,000 (vague) with a commuter rail stop and a walkable community around that stop.
Some people worked in town (school teachers, police, retail clerks, one pharmacist and one dentist perhaps) and a percentage took the train into Boston every workday. Poor farmland around Boston (Thomas Jefferson commented on this) so limited farm interaction, but other locales could have that.
As for New Orleans, what would we do ?
1) Port and related activities (ship & barge repair, railroads, etc.)
2) Medical Center, two medical schools, one dental school, one nursing school
3) Tulane, Xavier, Loyola and other colleges
4) Food manufacturing with coffee roasting being the largest
5) Support for offshore oil & gas
6) Tourism (Rhett Butler & Scarlet O'Hara had their honeymoon in New Orleans pre-oil)
7) Music and Culture
Among other activities.
Best Hopes,
Alan
On democracy:
Both you and those who argue against you confuse "democracy" with "representative democracy". They are NOT the same animals at all.
Jeff-
Conterposing the suburb to the city misses the point in my opinion. That the city is more energy and resource efficient you concede. But I am willing to concede that the city itself is, in the longer run, unsustainable just as is the modern suburb. This we know because underground resources are peaking, energy first, and because of energy, metals and minerals.
What is sustainable in the longer run? I maintain there is only thing that has a chance: small, dense towns that are connected to local diverse agriculture and animal husbandy. Mechanized monoculture will fail. A far more labor-intensive but diversified and organic agriculture must replace it. Small light industry must be accompany it. Agriculture on small isolated farms will be difficult because transport won't be easy and an the inability to attain any degree of self-suffiency, too small a base for specialization: e.g. weaving, medicine, etc.
Facilitating the transition to this future doesn't seem to figure in anyone's plans. A restructuring that took us in this direction is needed post haste. But since this is tantamount to moving ever larger parts of the population outside the market economy, it won't happen until things are quite disastrous.
Much more to say, no time to say it right now.
2000 small farmers each trying to develop a better system will develop and evaluate more theories than a single, equivalently-sized industrial farm
I am skeptical of that. A small farmer has a small surplus. A large farm has a larger one, even if it is smaller on a per capita basis. This allows a large farm to take more risks, and trying out new ideas is inherently risky.
Re: cities/suburbs/villages.
I'm a late-arrival at the PeakOil Ball - dragged kicking and screaming from my amateur Bronze Age researches in the Languedoc by my savvy wife who has been lurking on TOD ( Those Old Doomers I used to call them . . . ) for several years. But it was when my Peak Wood news-flashes (Late Bronze Age : 1000 BC) clashed with her Peak Everything updates, that I realised that maybe I should Get With The Program.
So it was with interest and surprise that I read some posts about those ideal Tuscany hill-villages. For the past 10 years we have been living in the Poor Man's Tuscany : the Corbieres wine-region of Languedoc in S W France. And we have become deeply appreciative of the qualities of French village life. We are also acutely aware of the interconnectedness, not just of the village inhabitants - but also of the closely-bound network of villages and intercommunal life all around.
The church has long ceased to be the hub of village life (the law of 1907 placed all religious buildings in State hands) and the State increasingly took upon itself the responsibility to look after the needs of the citizen. It is a serious and enormously costly undertaking - placing a heavy tax burden on the citizen, but relieving the populace of its fears about poverty, illness and old age (and allowing it to get on with the important things in life - like the pursuit of happiness . . . ).
Fresh from the land of the Celtic Tiger, the French model, to us, looked ponderous and inflexible - a dead hand of authority on private enterprise and the entrepreneur (one of those French words that the French don't use). But now that we can see the true face of 'capitalisme sauvage' - where the law of the jungle prevailed (the survival of the fattest) - there's no other country I'd rather live in.
France is an extraordinary web of roads and villages - each generally no more than 5 miles distant from the next. A brisk hour's walk. A short cycle-ride. A morning's trip in donkey and cart. You don't have to go far to find yourself in a different micro-climate. Two villages away they grow apples, kiwi and peaches - and red rice. While here in the bad winters of 1955/56, ninety percent of the village's olive trees were destroyed.
This web of habitations and trade was begun back in the early Bronze Age, with strings of oppida throughout the country - originally defensive hill-settlements that gathered animals and people in a protective encampment during times of danger. I have reported on one oppidum nearby that enjoyed one thousand years of unbroken occupation, stretching from protohistoric megalithic dolmens, through to sophisticated trading centre rich in jewellery, coins and even drugs ( opium poppy plants and seeds). The hunter-gatherers had become villagers.
I keep on at my Old Stones researches on my dolmen.wordpress.com blog - but the urgency of the current situation now has me digging for Victory ( hmm - will there be victors this time around?) and posting on bloodyparadise.wordpress.com
You could say that my wife and I have reached a stale-mate situation. Except it's never stale, mate.
Info-snack:
There are 31,927 villages of less than 2,000 people in France. They account for about 15 million or 25% of the population.
Here in this corner of Languedoc there are 384 municipalities/communes/villages of less than 1000 people, 54 communes of 1000 to 10.0000, and two with over 10,000 people (figures for the departement of the Aude). And in France as a whole :
Very small villages ....................... 3 911
(0 to 99 people.)
Small villages ............................ 17 124
(100 to 499 inhabitants.)
Medium villages .......................... 6 759
(500 to 999 inhabitants.)
Large villages ............................... 4 133
(1000 to 1999 inhabitants)
How France compares with other European countries :
France: 36 565 communes/municipalities
Germany: 14 727 communes/municipalities
Italy: 8 070 municipalities
Spain: 8 027 municipalities
Britain: 522 municipalities
The French commune with the shortest name is Y (Somme, 89 inhabitants).
Before the French Revolution there was no comparable entity to the commune. The smallest administrative level was the parish. There were more than 60 000 in the kingdom of France. In the countryside, the parish consisted mainly of the church, houses gathered around (the village) and agricultural lands that were attached. These, in turn, were a development (through the mediaeval period) from the Roman era of settlement of quasi-military villas (extensive farms). Our ordinary little village (of 500 souls) is one such. The main prehistoric/Celtic/Visigoth/Roman trade route from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic runs past us - pottery and coins turn up regularly after ploughing and rain.
Richard
Good News : 50 per cent of humans ARE smarter than yeast. Bad News : Guys, it's not us. (Based on past performance at Running the Whole Show. Some individual models may return better mileage).
Mea Culpa: I'm only just getting the hang of this comment thread business. One recent comment went to completely the wrong person. Sorry, Heading Out.
There are 31,927 villages of less than 2,000 people in France.
Great, already pre-configured for Powerdown.
my amateur Bronze Age research
Consider it PO preparation.
TOD (Those Old Doomers)
-= Funniest post of the week! =-
Welcome! Now you have set high humor expectations, and we expect you to meet them...
Wow, two good laughs in one online session...
hello B-Paradise / Richard....
Great to run across France and Languedoc too on TOD.
I live over a little east of you in the Cevennes in Aveze near the Causse of Blandas where there a lot of dolmen and menhirs and a couple of beautiful circles in a radius of about 4km. there and the food that comes out of the ( irrigated ) limestone is heaven on earthly.
It is a very happy place with the same kinds of organic social structures you talk about plus a tradition of being a land for refugees.....mostly religious seeking haven from some opposing religion but also for the resistance-fighters les Maquisards during the Hitler war. I feel deeply at peace there. I feel it is a place that may be good for the coming collapse.
There is the ruins of an ancient mill down in a totally lost canyon in a limestone gorge between Causses of Blandas and Larzac where a “lost” subteranean river jets out of the canyon walls with enormous force ...... it’s called the Source de la Foux .
It’s so inaccessable I asked my old mentor Adrienne Durand-Toullou how the hell the old ones found it profitable to schlep the grain and meal such a distance along the stream-bed to get to “wherever”. She said that a laden burro goes “straight up” the canyon wall (or nearly so) illustrating the narrow particularity of my 4x4-tarmac-oriented vision of geomorphology.
I find your reportage style of talking about livable habitat quite understandable. I fully agree that France is for some reason in better shape than US for survival of its inhabitants. I have been back in VT for a 6 weeks or so and thinking dark thoughts of the coming economic chaos. Yesterday, after a taking full stomach of Illargi & other US-outlook news I looked at le Figaro on their Bourse page and was amazed at the difference in the feeling of the news-writing. They write about the same kind of collapsing companies but somehow without the heavy overlay of FEAR and paranoia that seems ( to me ) oozing out of our MSM. They are publicly discussing PO and electric train development. I showed it to my wife and she saw what I meant.
I’ll be lookin for your positive signature on TOD some more.
thanks,
sydney
Urban areas go through a life cycle. Initially cities grow at resource and transportation centers. For example, New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, San Francisco were principal ports. Additionally, cities on the Great Lakes like Chicago were also close to major iron ore, copper and other mineral deposits (now largely depleted), as well as the Midwest farm belt. Other cities grew up around waterways, manufacturing and railroads.
Cities eventually grow beyond their strategic geographic origins. For example, for all that was made of the need for housing for New Orleans dock workers after Hurricane Katrina, the fact is that with containerized freight and improvements in mechanized handling of bulk materials, the number of people required to load and unload ships is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago. Detroit’s decline due to the transfer of auto manufacturing jobs offshore and to assembly plants in the South, and the loss of steel making jobs around the Great Lakes, Pittsburgh and other areas have left many cities without their original economic base.
Aging cities are associated with high cost. Older cities bear legacy costs such as benefits for retired municipal workers. And there is deteriorating infrastructure such as leaking water lines and potholed streets. Translation: higher taxes.
Much of the housing in older cities is beyond its useful life due to being energy inefficient, deferred maintenance, rot, termites, mold, etc. Then there is congestion, urban decay and crime.
Many engineers like myself who have been involved with cost estimates involving repair or replacement will tell you that it is usually better to build a new manufacturing facility than to rebuild an existing one, except under the best of circumstances, such as incremental improvements with short pay back times. Also, from my experience building a truly modern energy efficient concrete (AAC) house, I can tell you that you cannot take a typical American home and upgrade it to a world-class type structure without it costing more than starting from scratch.
So if urban areas no longer have a viable economy and high costs, people will move to new areas that have growth, which means jobs, and have modern infrastructure, new housing and lower costs. What is needed is to plan these new cities to be more sustainable, with mass transit and energy efficient buildings. “If you build it, people will come.”
I agree that cities are where they are at because they connect a region's producers with the global economy. For instance why did New York become our largest center of commerce and other cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore did not. It is because of the Erie Canal made trade between western farmers and the rest of the world much easier than climbing through the Cumberland Gap. This was done before the first railroads were built in America and created a sort of economic inertia since all this transport of goods needed financing.
The creation of railroads meant the financiers no longer needed to live close to where they worked which eventually turned small agricultural communities into places where the new upper middle class kept their wives and educated their children. They no longer had a personal connection with the schools, churches, and other institutions which the working poor depended on. Center city schools suffered from a lack of financing which meant poor kids were unlikely to compete for the high paying positions which the suburbanites held. Police protection also suffered and high levels of crime which mostly occurred after regular business hours became self reinforcing phenomenon. They enforced their separation from the unwashed masses through local housing codes which kept homes prices too high for undesirables to move in next door. Other trading centers followed this example from coast to coast.
The growth in automobile ownership and the building of paved roads meant the suburbanites no longer needed to live near train stations of move back and forth according to the train schedule. After WWII millions of veterans took advantage of zero down mortgages and bought into newly created suburbs and white flight depleted the tax base of the center cities. The financiers made billions in profits from this migration over the last 60+ years. In the 21st century though the game of financing the financiers has gotten ridiculous if not outright dangerous in the economic sense. Mortgages were no longer held by the originators for any significant time period but were quickly bundled together and sold to those higher in the finance chain. Insurance against defaults was sold to encourage more of this financing of financiers. Eventually it became apparent that if mortgages were sold with low teaser rates then defaults would increase down the line and more profit could be made from insurance claims than from collecting interest on fixed rate mortgages. As long as only a few played this game all would be well. Playing the game spread quickly and we now have this mess which is bringing down the whole world around us.
the fact is that with containerized freight and improvements in mechanized handling of bulk materials, the number of people required to load and unload ships is a fraction of what it was 50 years ago.
New Orleans handles a lot of containers, but it is not our forte (see Los Angeles/Long Beach).
Most years, we are the largest steel (and other metals) port in the world. Safely removing or loading structural I-beams, coiled steel, plate, specialty steels scrap steel, etc. from a ships hold and onto rail, barge or trucks requires skilled and experienced labor.
The various petrochemicals all require specific handling for each individual chemical (and cleaning afterwards). Again, experienced & skilled labor.
Another specialty is exporting frozen poultry. Chilled carcasses are brought in and flash frozen & packaged for export.
And so forth.
Containers are not all that goes through a modern port.
Best Hopes,
Alan
I think that some suburbs will be resilient thru adaptive reuse. Some will disappear. It will be very much a mixed bag based on region of the country so it is almost impossible to make a global statement about suburbs.
Suburbs in the Sonoran desert may not be so resilient. Those in the wet green suburban eastern US will probably be very resilient.
One thing is for sure, our high carbon footprint lifestyle will change.
I have traveled about India a lot over the past 25 years, a country that is crowded but has a very low carbon footprint per person. India really doesn't have a lot of fossil fuel so it gets used fairly conservatively. The urban areas are low density (low rise) except for show office towers in the major urban areas. The suburban areas seems to be aggregations of rural Indian villages with bit of intensively cultivated garden plots wherever possible.
The doomers should get out more and see how the energy sippers live. It might seem to be hell for energy hogs, but it doesn't have to be Mad Max and the Thunderdome.
india is overpopulated and imports food to survive
India is a net agricultural exporter, by almost a factor of 2:1. It's a major exporter of meat and dairy, as well as food grains, and a major importer of edible oils.
Overall, though, the available data suggests that India is a net food exporter, which makes one wonder why you claim the contrary with quite such confidence. Care to share your evidence?
Suburbia is symptomatic of the overall stuctural issue in this country - too much centralization. We are less overpopulated than over-centralized. Suburbia represents decentralization in the microcosm of major city centers, but in the big picture is more a part of the big-city centralization structure than representative of true decentralization. The decentralization needed is a backing off from the major city centers of which suburbia is the most external layer and regrouping in smaller and more numerous town centers surrounded by forest and farmland. There may be a case for some currently suburban areas being reworked into this type of arrangment, but I don't think most suburban areas are really very fertile ground for a more locally centralized, nationally and globally decentralized future.
I think the primary advantage of urban areas is not so much economic as military.
The reason people came together in clumps and built a wall around themselves in the first place...
Towns came from economic advantage, cities from military advantage. Safe place to live. Safe place to trade.
The highly concentrated, centralized population has a huge military advantage over the distributed, low population density civilization, and quickly pillages and/or enslaves it...
Whenever you guys write your analysis of post-collapse society, where are the roving gangs of marauding barbarians? These always seem to be left out. any scenario at the mercy of a medium sized motorcycle gang does not seem viable to me.
towns that survive will have to get tough enough to stamp out the motorcycle gangs with no fuel for their cycles. The ones that aren't won't survive. There will only be safety in the kind of numbers a local resource base can support. The oil drenched illusion of safety our mega city system provides will dry up and real civilization will have to defend itself... I think the idea too is not that there will be no big cities, but that big cities will be a lot less big than ours, and will not crop up in the same places for all the same reasons. Not all of the old infrastructure will be viable. In the cyclic development process of global human civilization we are entering a downturn, a "chaff from the wheat" period.
Rome has an interesting history.
It was built on 7 hills above a swamp.It was an incredibly overcrowded maze(1.2 million people in 5.3 square miles).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurelian_Walls
The city building code under Augustus actually restricted the height of tenaments to 70 feet because they were continually collapsing--builders usually ignored the law.
The City was a tremendous fire trap for hundreds of years(Nero's famous fire was one of many, many).
The way the Romans dealt with the crowding is by
granting veterans lands and cities as 'colonia'--colonies in Gaul, Spain, etc.
Under Julius Caesar and Claudius a harbor called Ostia was built to import grain from Africa to Rome--it silted up after a couple hundred years. The Roman people were fed a loaf of bread a day, the so-called dole and later after Claudius they got salted pork on holidays. Rome fell to Alaric in 410 AD
and the Western Empire fell about 50 years later. Incidently, the Western Emperor ruled out of the arsenal
at Ravenna near Venice which could be resupplied by sea and not in vulnerable Rome itself.
The way Romans got fed is that between 4 AM and 9AM the streets were given over to teamsters who took goods to the shops, after 10AM people went out to shop and eat, etc. and carts were not allowed in public streets.
By the 1400s Rome, the center of the Christian world had shrunk to less than 20000 people with the palaces and temples of antiquity being converted to castles--I think at that time the Collesium had a medieval fort on top of it and the Pope's fort, the Castle St. Angelo was in the Emperor Hadrian's tomb--IOW, it was a complete dump. What got things moving again was Spanish New World gold and the selling of indulgences in Germany.
The Emperor Constantine knew Rome was militarily indefensible and unsustainable so he moved his capital which he called 'Nova Roma' to Byzantium(Constantinople aka Istanbul) which is at a major trade crossroads, has a built-in port 'the Golden Horn' and can never be starved out as the sea(the Bosporous) is full of fresh fish every day. And Constantinople didn't fall(the Bulgarians, Vikings and Arabs tried) until the Fourth Crusade in 1204 AD and later to the Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II in 1453 AD. At that point the city had partly fallen into ruins after the crusader's fire and the Turks ended up leveling the Imperial palaces, the Blachernae and Boucoleon to build their own.
In Constantine's day the decay of civilization was getting pretty obvious and his Plan B did actually preserve 'New Rome' for 1000 years longer than the original.
So investing in cities just because they are there doesn't really address urban sustainability at least in that case.
Hello Jeffvail,
"A Picture is worth a thousand words"
I just love the opening graphic, as it clearly demonstrates JHK's & Alan's RR & TOD as the standard gauge 'spine and limbs', then imagine the minitrains and SpiderWebRiding Networks as the 'ribcage' to additionally support the overall skeletal structure. Then imagine the last topsoil square foot and distance bidirectionally covered by cargo-bicycle and/or wheelbarrow.
In short: A farmer needing to get eggs to market will have much better success on a railtrack than someone balancing the eggs on their head Zimbabwe-style.
As posted before: I tend towards Jay Hanson's fast-crash Thermo/Gene Prediction timeline, but I hope we can have some Optimal Overshoot Decline if we can somehow rapidly move to O-NPK recycling and spiderweb infrastructure driven by our 'innate territoriality' cultural norms.
Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?
Decentralized systems have been used by termites as shown by the distribution of their mounds below.
http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticF...
From http://www.apple.com/ca/science/profiles/universityofcalgary/index.html
Yes, but notice how the closer, older mounds now experience Peak Wood, and their occupants now have to travel a long distance through the territories of other mounds to reach their resource (i.e., North Sea => Nabucco...)
This conversation seems a bit in the weeds. Consider the following:
- It is convenient to assume that future human social systems will be somehow fundamentally different than past social systems. Evidence from the past (pre-oil economy) suggests that cities are the places where culture, commerce, politics, and education reach their zenith. As in Philadelphia 1776?
- If democracy is so bad, what would be better? Are we really back to arguing for philosopher kings, anarchy, and the like? This seems very far from a conversation about energy. The speculation seems highly theoretical (and wishful), ignoring the evidence of existing and past systems.
- If the massive infrastructure of civilization fails, bringing New York City to its knees, then I presume the internet will also shut down. So much for arguing that sites like the Oil Drum have replaced the necessity for central places altogether.
- While cities are entirely dependent on the countryside, they tend to be centers of trade, usually of the most precious sort. Even if all Trans-Atlantic communication is by schooner in the year 2100, this actually argues in favor of flourishing port cities. Trade, in turn, provides for the wealth to purchase groceries.
- Cities used railroads, rivers, canals and horse carts to provide effective transportation long before the internal combustion engine. Densities in pre-auto cities were actually much higher than today, albeit in a *much smaller* footprint.
fantastic post, & comments too. such differences of valuable opinions/perspectives keeps me reading TOD; & i think there is truth/accuracy in many of the opposing views.
decentralization will happen due to declining energy, but probably not initially, or quickly for slow descent scenarios. eventually though we will have hollowed out cities & clusters of functioning social units around them. ecology will force this.cities by definition formed when there was adequate resources for storing/accumulating & transport of goods & services. centralization definitely can increase the efficiency of these specific processes, but ecological costs are 'pushed ' onto the hinterlands as jeff points out. some cities due to geography will probably maintain relatively strong cores.
location & topography as pointed out in comments above, will be central to how/where what plays out. i live in an old 'ville' of a metro area. i have fantasized writing a 'return of [this] ville' as i think eventually that will happen. there is no sign of our past ville; but once there was a school, blacksmith shop, 2 stores, phone exchange, & a mill on the creek. No sign of an of this. autos have made the 6 mile trip[25 to main metro downtown] to 'civilization' a few minutes & the 'hill' readily climbed. topography [rock] & has kept sewers at bay such that the density is not 'suburb' everywhere. a few farmers holding their land has also helped immensely.the hill & bottoms & very large creek will probably be the basis for this 'ville' to re-form post peak.
so some suburbs may do ok; if they have a core geography going for them. most i fear will not.
re Dunbar's no.- thanks for this info; i had not run into it before but feel that human needs & communication matches such sizing & such simple human needs as being recognized, held accountable, etc. is necessarily connected to grouping of this range of sizes. the tragedy of the commons is also subverted by being able to directly know the consequences of ones actions via location or at least knowing the people affected. ecology requires such. i think if we make it longer term jeff is spot on that human units of this size, or 'local' will be how we re-form.
Jeff, this article has left me a little confused. I'm mostly in agreement with you on the advantages of decentralisation but I'm not at all sure that suburbia can be described as 'decentralised'. (Disclaimer: I don't live in the US and my perception of the US suburban arrangement may not be entirely accurate!). I may be wrong, but I suspect there's a tendency to conflate two separate concepts: decentralisation and dispersion. Suburban dwellings are certainly more widely dispersed than those closer to the city core. However, just because suburbia is a low-density living arrangement does not necessarily make it decentralised. From many perspectives suburbia cannot be seen as decentralised at all.
Economically speaking, suburbia relies heavily on neighbouring urban areas with many suburban residents deriving their wealth from more central urban areas. Truly local goods and services are often in short supply. Early in your piece you alluded to the problems with transportation in suburbia. I believe that transportation issues are a symptom of suburbia's non-decentralised nature: residents are frequently compelled use motorised transport to travel relatively long distances to centralised points where goods and services are dispensed (e.g. strip malls). Goods must also be trucked in, often over vast distances, to these distribution points. You also mentioned 'production land ownership' but taking into account debt and mortgages, how many suburbanites could actually be said to 'own' their land?
Is the suburban infrastructure decentralised in any meaningful sense? Many suburban homes are dependent on centralised sources and distribution networks for electricity, fuel, clean water, sewage and communication (in the UK at any rate). Do many suburban neighbourhoods maintain their own roads?
How decentralised is suburbia in a political sense? Are there many areas with strong, effective local governance systems and bodies? How many suburban neighbourhoods rely on centralised systems for provision of public services such as law enforcement and fire-fighting?
I don't believe that the urban/suburban dichotomy is particularly helpful. Suburbia would not exist were in not for the urbs. Suburbia is not simply a geographical phenomenon; it's a way of life and a state of mind, defined by its interaction with the urban. I'm not for one moment suggesting that urban areas will be largely unscathed by Peak Oil. Many problems will be common to both urban and suburban areas. The massive urban conglomerations we see today were unprecedented in earlier human history and I suspect they are solely the product of abundant cheap energy. Modern urban centres and their suburbs are part of the same unsustainable paradigm in which humans currently operate. It is of little use to argue over which bit of the paradigm is less sustainable: massive adjustments are needed in all areas.
You could argue that suburbia will be easier to mould into a suitable post-peak form. However, many proposed changes (e.g. self-sufficiency and local trade/barter, local agriculture, turning abandoned lots into small homesteads, sharing/aggregation of dwellings into small communities, eschewing ties with the city etc.) would change suburbia into something almost completely unrecognisable. Such changes are following an older rural paradigm of smaller settlements, not a suburban one. It may seem a semantic nitpick but is it really appropriate to call suburbia 'resilient' if it must be transformed into something completely different in order to survive?
It may be that any future for humankind rests on the adoption of decentralised settlement patterns. However, the process of getting there could involve the temporary neglecting of suburbia. Current power structures are urban-centric and, as the human body conserves energy by reducing blood flow to its extremities during hypothermia, political elites may sacrifice the urban periphery in order to prolong the life of the centre. This may not be a viable long term strategy but the lack of investment could, at least temporarily, paralyse the suburbs.
Apologies for such a long post but your article gave me much to think about! Thanks.
two separate concepts: decentralisation and dispersion
Excellent post.
Excellent points, and I agree that, at present, American suburbia is dispersed, not decentralized (both politically and economically). I think the key is that suburbia, by virtue of its present dispersion, is more capable of transforming into a decentralized system than are more concentrated cities (or the much more widely dispersed rural regions). You're probably right that it's incorrect to call suburbia at present "resilient" because it must change into something wholly unrecognizeable to most current suburbanites before it would have this resiliency. I didn't mean to imply by my title that suburbia at present IS resilient, but rather that it has this potential for transformation . . . . that said, it might be the best catalyst for this kind of suburban change if urban elites do exactly as you say and "reduce blood flow" to the extremities. As long as suburbia depends on handouts from on high, it will not make the difficult changes that may make it, in the long run, resilient.
From a "political will" or "bankrupting the country" standpoint, Iraq looks very bad. But we don't have a stomach for any body bags at all, or the patience for an occupation, and this is the first war in history that was accompanied by tax cuts, so that isn't surprising. However, from a pure body count standpoint, the Iraq war has been more successful for the US than probably any war in history waged by any country. Yes, a few rebels have successfully killed a few US soldiers, but US soldiers have killed many times more rebels.
So if we take this lesson and apply it to suburbia, what it says it that a few people will successfully live in suburbia after peak oil, but many more will not. (Which were pretty much what my feelings about suburbia before I read this post.) From a practical matter, as someone lives in [1920s] suburb, what I need to do is be one of the better prepared, (as opposed to planning on moving,) and I can do that. And if I was the sort of person that runs down Walmart employees to save money on a big screen TV, I should be worried, but I'm more the type to buy 500 gallon water tanks and bury them in my back yard instead, so...