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Cities of the Future

General discussions of the systemic, societal and civilisational effects of depletion.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby cephalotus » Mon 17 Oct 2011, 04:29:53

Imho the scenario is highly unlogical.

The bigest problems of ancient cities have not been food production or transportation but water, waste and wastewater and also epidemics.

A future city will also have other tranport possibilities besides walking or horses (horses are one of the least effective transport systems btw). Why should there be no trains or trams even in a oil less future? (which I heavily doubt).

And why is a high oil price a problem for the city? The exact opposite is true. 10US$ / liter of diesel will not be a problem for food transport into the city. Just do the maths and take a 40t truck, that needs 40l/100km diesel and lets say that they have to drive 200km to bring 40t of food into the city.

This makes 800US$ diesel for 40.000kg of food or 2ct/1kg of food.

At 10 US$ per liter (~35US$/gal) !!!

Peak oil is _not_ a food transportation problem, it is a people transportation problem. If you live in the city you can go to your job by bike, tram, electric bus or walking even in a world without oil, but if you have to drive 200km a day to go to work, 10US$ / Liter diesel would be a huge problem, because with a 5l/100km car you would pay 100 US$ each day for diesel use while commuting.

Now compare this to 2ct/kg of food for food transportation to the city.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby babystrangeloop » Thu 20 Oct 2011, 08:18:40

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cephalotus', 'A')nd why is a high oil price a problem for the city? The exact opposite is true. 10US$ / liter of diesel will not be a problem for food transport into the city. Just do the maths and take a 40t truck, that needs 40l/100km diesel and lets say that they have to drive 200km to bring 40t of food into the city.

This makes 800US$ diesel for 40.000kg of food or 2ct/1kg of food.

At 10 US$ per liter (~35US$/gal) !!!

That's assuming 40t of food can be found 200km from the city. What happens in the winter time? Is 200km radius enough? What about cities on the coast?

Plus you have to ignore all the fuel used to raise the food and process it and package it etc.

Plus the return trip for the truck, you have to double your price calculations or cut your distance in half.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby cephalotus » Thu 20 Oct 2011, 08:49:03

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('babystrangeloop', '
')That's assuming 40t of food can be found 200km from the city.


Very easy. At leats in Euroa there is more than 1 city in a 100km radius so the distance is a high estimation.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
') What happens in the winter time?


You do store your wheat and don't import it from Australia.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
') Is 200km radius enough? What about cities on the coast?


If you are on the cost you can use ships to tranpsort which are much more energy efficient comapred to 40t trucks.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Plus you have to ignore all the fuel used to raise the food and process it and package it etc.


Sure. But ist seams a lot more easier and logical to use different ways of food processing (eat potateoes instaed of fried fries...) compared to abandon the cities and go back to a medival system of small subsitence farmers, isn't it?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Plus the return trip for the truck, you have to double your price calculations or cut your distance in half.


There is no need to return empty but I even assumed so, because I used 200km instaed of 100m for my calculation.

The exact numbers do not matter, the dimension of rising diesel/gas prices are obvious:

+100 US$ a day for the long distance commuter in teh rural area vs. +2ct/day for food transport for a city inhabitant.

Living in (large) cities is the most energy efficient way so far, it is much, much more energy efficient to transport food than to transport people.
If you dream of a future world with subsitence farmers feel free to do so, but don't believe that this is in any way energy efficient. People in Europe and Asia would starve to death in such a system as history has already shown, maybe it would work for Nort America with its lower population density but at a living standard compared to Central Africa.

Btw, I'm not against food production in the city, if this is a real option (currently it rarely isn't, at least not at >100€/m²). You can also make the city greener with small gardens and improve living quality within a densly populated city, thise is also very positive.
I also do grow some vegetables in the city "just for fun".
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby babystrangeloop » Sun 23 Oct 2011, 09:46:22

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Urban Future – what does the future of cities look like?
Saskia Sassen and Charles Landry at PICNIC11 / October 21, 2011

US sociologist Saskia Sassen and British city urbanist and publicist Charles Landry in the interview with 2010LAB.tv.

In her presentations and publications ( Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, 2006 and A Sociology of Globalization, 2007) sociology professor Sassen provides analysis on topics such as Globalisation, Migration and City Development and describes the phenomenon of the so-called global city.

Landry has been studying the ramifications of the factors culture and creativity on city development since the 1970s. He attaches great importance to their creative potential with regards to a city's survival. His four-level strategy to create a creative city is much wanted in the course of this work as international consultant for city planning.

They were sought-after speakers and discussion partners on the festival topic "Urban Futures" at this year's PICNIC 11 in Amsterdam. They spoke about their analysis and visions with 2010LAB.tv.p


Site contains a 6 min 11 sec. video containing an interview with Landry. A brief transcription of a bit:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f we really try to relocalize food production--relocalize as much as we can--we will need a larger scale. If we can't import the food from where ever we want to, we will need more facilities to do that. ... and we have so much inequality you will get poor workers right there...in villages around the big city.


But I just read an article that had exactly the opposite viewpoint. People do not want to do farming jobs in the US.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Farms can't find pickers
In some areas, farm labor is so scarce that inmates in nearby penitentiaries are picking crops.
By Douglas French, Guest blogger / C.S. Monitor / October 20, 2011

... Depending upon which government unemployment figure you follow, nearly one in five Americans is unemployed. Yet at harvest time farmers are finding that the only willing labor has to come from a nearby penitentiary.

In Idaho, farm labor is so scarce, convicts from the minimum-security St. Anthony Work Camp are picking, sorting and packing spuds for $7.50 an hour and happy to have work outside the prison walls. “The best part is you have the influence of the real world, which eventually we’re all going back to,” said Thomas Alworth, a 36-year-old convicted of grand theft by possession.

Convict labor in Arizona is up 30 percent this year, with Arizona’s tough immigration law a primary reason. “The crackdown on immigrants just makes it so hard” to find workers, said Richard Selapack, vice president for labor contracts at the Arizona Department of Corrections. ...

It's true. We are going to see the un-moneyed countries adapt to what is happening much more gracefully than the US.

Already Haiti is becoming a test bed for turning shit into gold and other permaculturisms. Try developing those kind of closed-cycle, truly sustainable technologies in the US mainstream and I'd say "good luck to you."
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby AgentR11 » Sun 23 Oct 2011, 11:19:14

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cephalotus', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('babystrangeloop', 'W')hat happens in the winter time?
You do store your wheat and don't import it from Australia.


To be honest, as long as you're talking about something that stores well like wheat or rice, intercontinental ocean shipping is cheap beyond imagining, and has the advantage or using a fuel (bunker) that pretty much is unwanted anywhere else. Getting wheat from Australia to Los Angeles will likely be cheaper than getting that same wheat from LA to Phoenix.

Though, point of order, *WE* are generally the grain exporting country, so discussing how to get the grain from Nebraska to Houston for export shipping is likely more important.

There's just no getting around how much material you can move by ship or rail at miniscule cost. Peak oil doesn't change this in the slightest.

Is there a significant US-48 City that does not have a rail hub?

Energy Use in Freight Transportation
Intercity trucks = 3400 btu / ton-mile
Rail = 1700 btu / ton-mile

For comparison, large tankers come in under 100 btu / ton-mile; linky
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby AgentR11 » Sun 23 Oct 2011, 14:47:58

Gas... was someone talking about hovercars??????

Being purposefully vague and flashy at the same time to disrupt the conversation without adding anything of interest to it.... Kinda an odd behavior, no?

I do believe we were discussing energy requirements to bring food into cities, and whether such costs would cause an increase or decrease in the efficiencies involved in having most of the people living in those cities.

Unless, perhaps, you are suggesting that you have a design for a hover car that can bring food into a city for less than what rail, freight ship, or over the road tractor-trailer can do?
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby copious.abundance » Tue 25 Oct 2011, 22:13:06

Here's the city of the future. :)

Image
Stuff for doomers to contemplate:
http://peakoil.com/forums/post1190117.html#p1190117
http://peakoil.com/forums/post1193930.html#p1193930
http://peakoil.com/forums/post1206767.html#p1206767
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby anador » Wed 26 Oct 2011, 11:18:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('OilFinder2', 'H')ere's the city of the future. :)

Image


But Oily, Thats the city of the past! the city that got us into this mess, the city that made us fat and lazy and indebted, the city that helped outsource our factories and drive millions of teenagers to suicide with its bland humanless mediocrity. That city is solitary confinement behind the demilitarized zone of a graveyard plot you call a lawn. That city is where the doomers go to die, that city is already showing its obselecence

That city requires many times the infrastructure per-tax-capita than a proper city, that city requires students to be bused and mail to be trucked huge distances, that city is the downfall of our empire and the end of our black-golden age.

Thats the city that no longer has any value, full of foreclosure.

You want to see cities of the future? try these?

These cities have held and expanded their value despite the crash, the ONLY typology that has done so, These cities provide safety and walkability, these cities are the cities built for human, not the machine.

These cities are consistently sold and built out even in this economy.....
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
Image
@#$% highways
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby Tanada » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 09:54:01

This is your city of the future, towers built to be hyper energy efficient oriented to take the best advantage of solar energy to power themselves, likely with additional renewable energy sources along the roof line, surrounded by parks and wilderness with rail lines feeding in food and supplies via underground systems.

Image
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alfred Tennyson', 'W')e are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby GHung » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 10:21:13

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'T')his is your city of the future, towers built to be hyper energy efficient oriented to take the best advantage of solar energy to power themselves, likely with additional renewable energy sources along the roof line, surrounded by parks and wilderness with rail lines feeding in food and supplies via underground systems.

Image


....... poor people and folks belonging to certain scary terror-promoting religions not invited.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby Pops » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 10:26:53

I'm not a city guy so my fond vision of the future city is the country.

Lots of people like the city, the hustle, amenities, etc, but I think lots are there because that's where trade is so where you find jobs and money. Suburbs & exurbs are a poor compromise between work and elbow room but show me that people don't really want to be stacked like cordwood.

If the commute is not necessary or possible because of whatever reason (robots, telecommute, expense) then living in the country has lots of aesthetic appeal. So same description as T, tight, small, smart and an easy walk or pedal to a little local village for purchases or as in days past home delivery with perhaps online ordering.

We lived just that way for a decade and it was great. Unfortunately the kids moved to the city for work...
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby Paulo1 » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 10:28:09

Yeah....when I imagine scaling this up for 7+ billion....say a Lagos of 50 million, I ask myself, " Is cardboard really this wonderful of a building product"?

And the Jetsons have their airplane in their garage just behind the back.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby SumYunGai » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 14:18:47

This is really your city of the future!

Image

It will be 100% powered by renewable energy.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 14:23:00

Funny, I find Tanadas and SumYunGais pictures about equally appealing.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby SumYunGai » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 14:29:05

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', 'F')unny, I find Tanadas and SumYunGais pictures about equally appealing.

Yeah, I think the whole city thing has basically run it's course. It wasn't such a great idea in the first place.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby GHung » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 14:40:47

Cities of The Future:

Image

Includes housing, bunkers for the elite, food storage, nurseries, soldier barracks...... Jeez, they even have TV and tour buses.
Last edited by GHung on Mon 28 Nov 2016, 15:35:57, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Cities of the Future

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 28 Nov 2016, 14:43:22

Far closer to rcognizing our inner workings than most want to admit.
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