[anador]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '
')I see that remoteness from the resource via layers of middlemen as the fundamental difference between urban and rural/rural oriented trading towns. In the context of the thread then, I don't see much difference between urban and sub-urban.

[anador]

you have to right click and "view image" to see the whole thing

or download it

[Newfie]

Without arguing the point of how villages, hamlets, towns, cities work that was all pretty much in a pretty static environment.

For the past 150 years or so we have been in a very different paradigm (God I hate that word.) The cities we have now FAR surpass anything ever seen before in history. They are much, much further from their food and water sources. They are much more dependent upon technology and a globalized trade system.

And soon that new paradigm will fall apart and we will be into a third situation, different to the others. That of a hugely massive population falling on very hard times. I don't know how it will all fall out.

I guess I kind of look at the cities as representing massive potential energy, as in a great big lake held behind a damn. That energy will eventually resolve itself one way or another. How that happens could be drought, could be through small leaks, could be through the damn collapsing. It will NOT be through an intentional draw down of the water levels. Hope the metaphor is not too obtuse.

I have my doubts about how well these past models will work in the future.

Not a criticism of anything here and there is much to learn from the past. I'm just thinking, "Boy, there is a lot different now."

I don't want to get caught up in the swirl when the toilet is flushed.

[Newfie]

True, Venice is sinking.

London is NOT.

THAMES BARRIER

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n the 1980s there were four closures, 35 closures in the 1990s, and 75 closures in the first decade of this century.[7] All told, there have been 119 flood defence closures up to the closing on March 2, 2010.[8] Unusually, there has been over a two-year wait since the 119th flood defence closure - the longest interval since the gap between the first and second closures back in the early 1990s. The closest the Barrier has come to closing was on 27 November 2011, then the Closure Team was called out and started to close the gates, but was not fully closed since the surge subsided at the very last moment.

[anador]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', ' ')I don't want to get caught up in the swirl when the toilet is flushed.

[Newfie]

We agree on much. Consider this though.

Living in a temperate climate, as most here do, is a modern age luxury. One of the factors limiting sustainable population is home heating. With the big populations we now have, and the poor energy efficiency and high energy dependence of our homes, we have to keep the coal and oil and gas flowing.

The burbs will have problems with heat. Condos will have problems with heat and also cooling simply because the windows don't work right, if at all.

At some point we start burning down the forests to heat ourselves. But that also destroyers the very lumbered will need to build canal boats and barges and coastal shipping.

Even the Venicians and Japanese and English had issues with resource depletion due to over harvesting wood for shipping and adventuring. We will be much more resource limited than they for a very long time.

True, not in out life time, our maybe even our kids, but soon enough.

[anador]

very true, I do believe the die off in the subsequent 4 decades will be large enough that the deforestation will proceed at a gradual pace, it took the british and japanese a millenium to deforest their islands, and the post agricultural suburban canopies of the northeast are considerably larger... though the first few winters will probably see the worst deforestation in several centuries if ever, all the street trees will be gone. the cut lumber for many aspects of society will be derived from the unoccupied suburban houses, it may be a very long time before a functioning sawmill is needed...

you may recall a solution to this Deforestation problem that I posted a year or two ago... I have to find it

[anador]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'O')kay, just did some calculations.

Lets say we take a 500 acre area, a zone which would contain 500 structures, no shops, and no institutions, and no food production in a typical sprawl pattern.

By applying proper low-energy-urbanism the 500 acre zone now supports 660 structures, with attendant shops, parks, farms, and institutions. A town.



The population has been doubled from 1,500 to 3,000

There are now 425 acres for growing to 75 acres of town.
Outside the inner 425 acre food ring (capable of sustaining 3400 people if biointensive practices are used) there are 3 rings of 208’ in width each

The first ring supports 84 acres of trees

The second ring supports 86 acres of trees

The third ring supports 92 acres of trees.

These rings acts as wood-lot energy producers for the town with a five year harvest cycle.



From the paulownia supply info. site the trees can be planted with a density of 132 per acre. Each tree produces 122 board feet of wood in a five year maturation period. 26 acres are harvested per year yielding:

132x122x42 bf per annum or 837,408 bf per year.

A cord of wood contains on average 500 bf so the production in cords per year is 1,675.

The 660 buildings each receive 2.5 cords of wood per year

Electrical generation by water jacket steam turbine generation have managed to achieve up to 70% efficiency.

“One cord of well-seasoned hardwood (weighing approximately two tons) burned in an airtight, draft-controlled wood stove with a 55-65% efficiency is equivalent to approximately 175 gallons of #2 fuel oil or 225 therms of natural gas consumed in normal furnaces having 65-75% efficiencies.”

So the equivalent in heating oil used for the demonstrated 1675 cords per year represents approximately 293,125 gallons per year or 444 gallons per structure per year

Reasonable amount if your climate isn’t too severe. Would work fine in New England.

You would have to plant more rings in more harsh areas. I would also say a factor of safety would have to be considered anyway, as these numbers are all taken off the internet and may not reflect what really happens.

But still, supporting the energy and food needs of a small town in the space taken up by a large subdivision isn’t that bad!

Sources:

http://www.zilkha.com/category/tree-facts/
http://www.iowadnr.gov/forestry/definitions.html
http://www.paulowniasupply.com/why_grow ... cially.htm

[anador]

Also.... those first few winters, after the powers out... the m,igration south will be relentless and chaotic. Think about it, Untold millions flooding the midatlantic and southern states on foot, escaping the cold. Fewer will stay behind to burn wood than you think.

[Newfie]

Good. Let 'em run.

I've got 168 wooded acres up North. That's enough for my offspring for a couple of generations.

Mostly black spruce, but a bunch of nearly 100 yo maple and beach on top the hill. Not great property but good enough. I planted some apple, pear, cherry, and oak a few years ago. Not a lot, but a start. Keep a few deer around.

I want to add that my Wife is from Bavaria, and much of what you post looks similar to what I see there. But even there I can see a change in the past 20 years. Still you can see the model at work.

[autonomous]

URBAN ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTS: WHY CITIES CANNOT BE SUSTAINABLE

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'R')ather than asking what population a particular region can support sustainably, the critical question becomes: How large an area of productive land is needed to sustain a defined population indefinitely, wherever on Earth that land is located?

Ecological footprint analysis illustrates the fact that as a result of the enormous increase in per capita energy and material consumption made possible by (and required by) technology, and universally increasing dependencies on trade, the ecological locations of high-density human settlements no longer coincide with their geographic locations. Twentieth-century
cities and industrial regions depend on a vast and increasingly global hinterland of ecologically productive landscapes for survival and growth. Cities necessarily "appropriate" the ecological output and life support functions of distant regions all over the world through commercial trade and natural biogeochemical cycles. Perhaps the most important insight from this result is that no city or urban region can achieve sustainability on its own. Regardless of local land use and environmental policies, a prerequisite for sustainable cities is sustainable use of the global hinterland.

The other side of this dependency coin is the impact urban populations and cities have on rural environments and the ecosphere generally. Combined with rising material standards and the spread of consumerism, the mass migration of humans to the cities in this century has turned urban industrial regions into nodes of intense consumption. The wealthier the city and the more connected to the rest of the world, the greater the load it is able to impose on the ecosphere through trade and other forms of economic leverage. Seen in this light and contrary to popular wisdom, the seeming depopulation of many rural areas does not mean they are being abandoned in any ecofunctional sense. Whereas most of the people may have moved elsewhere, rural lands and ecosystem functions are being exploited more intensely than ever in the service of newly urbanized human populations.

In effect, cities have become entropic black holes drawing in energy and matter from all over the ecosphere (and returning all of it in degraded form back to the ecosphere). This relationship is an inevitable expression of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The second law normally states that the entropy of any isolated system increases. That is, available energy spontaneously dissipates, gradients disappear, and the system becomes increasingly unstructured and disordered in a inexorable slide toward thermodynamic equilibrium. (Ayres 1994).

The analysis shows, that as nodes of energy and material consumption, cities are causally linked to accelerating global ecological decline and are not by themselves sustainable.

How economically stable and socially secure can a city of 10 million be if distant sources of food, water, energy or other vital resource flows are threatened by accelerating ecospheric change, increasing competition, and dwindling supplies?

[dinopello]

Even Texans like walkable cities.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')efore he moved to his current U Street neighborhood — and to Dupont Circle before that — Doug Rogers knew exactly how long it would take to walk to the Metro, the grocery store, the pharmacy and local restaurants.

“It was a big draw,” says Rogers, a fraud investigator and former president of the Dupont Circle Citizens Association.

A Texas native, Rogers put a premium on the District’s walkable neighborhoods. “In Texas, you drive everywhere. . . . People would ask me, ‘How’s living in the big city?’ It seems counterintuitive, but it actually feels like we live in a small town. Being able to walk helps create a neighborhood feel.”

[Newfie]

Two months ago someone broke into my daughters apt building,and made two more attempts to get into her apt. Raised hell with landlord and he took security measures. Rough neighborhood mixed with college students.

Last night about 11 we hear a noise, I think it is the stupid cat, wife goes to investigate. Some guy, with a flashlight, is prying open a window. No matter it's barred. Wife yells at him and he takes off.

This is a really good neighborhood, lots of security. This was a very brazen attempt.

The only motive I can discern is that Wife is a psychoanalyst and has started to see patients in our home. Perhaps someone thinks she keeps drugs around.

When matters become concrete, up close and personal, you opinions can change, rapidly.

[Pops]

That sucks Newf, the part about living behind bars I mean.

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'T')hat sucks Newf, the part about living behind bars I mean.

[Newfie]

Yeah, the bars thing sucks. But condos are little different. You don't have barred windows because you live above the first floor. The bars are your doorman.

Sure is different from the summer I spent on the boat.

[SeaGypsy]

In places which live like that, the security guard/ company themselves is the most likely serious criminal exposure in such compounds. Walls represent an 'us and them' basis for a point in geography, they deliberately delineate a community, alienating both inside and outside. In the long run the concept will be recognized as a failure and go away naturally.

[Newfie]

In Newfoundland and Nova Scotia the attitudes towards landownship are different but changing.

There was sufficient land to go around so people worried little about fences or securing titles. If you wanted a garden you found a place and gardened. You walked across fields and fished where you like.

Shore front beach was different cause that was were you dried cod and that meant income.

Things are changing. NS regulated its title process about 10 years ago, and about he same time Newfoundland started to require titles for registered transactions. Too almost 2 years to buy a garden plot from a fellow, he had no title and had to prove he was the rightful owner in a process much like the Catholic Church marriage vows where you read the intent three times to see if any one objects.

Things may go back to more casual ways, but not for a long time. It's good to see remnants of how things were.

[Newfie]

Just came back from Thansgiving celebration at church. I've talked about these folks before. Nice, older, well educated, city dwelling, liberal. Very concerned about conservation and ethics.

I saw a 70 yo statistician an asking another guy how to reset a circuit breaker, as he has done to me three times. WTF?

A 60+ guy volunteered to carve the turkeys, he watched a u tube video last night so he would know what to do. He got immediatly stumped because he could not figure how to get the turkey out of the pan onto a carving block.

I don't make this shit up.

He cut the breast meat off and proceeded to chuck the rest. One older lady screamed and retrieved the carcas from the trash befoe it got fouled. She is one of the exceptions here. Good gal.

I cooked one turkey, it came with no giblets, for sure! Another gal cooked the other turkey. She was a complete basket case because her button had not popped. So her buddy stickers it with a met thermometer and waits for the temperture to go up, with the oven door open. I get the carcass home and find giblets. They we NOT from my bird. So that means the other gal didn't know to take them out. There is no way she would have left those yuckkie parts in.

I got over four pounds of meat from their scraps, from people who INSIST we recycle all glass bottles. To me it is a sin to waste meat.

Somehow, these folks manage to eat and not kill themselves.

What this to do with this thread????

What I see is that, technical advantages aside, city folks, more correctly SOME city folks, become very disconnected from the natural world. To an amazing degree. When you see how they live you can start to have a clue as to why some of their ideas are so messed up. These are nice people I like. But they are complete slaves to the matrix. This group is utterly dependent and will perish quickly if their support system fails. Too many acknowledge that, as if they would have no desire to go forward without their convinces.

I am positing that this is an urban phenonem and a downside to city life. Not all are so bad, but far too many.

But perhaps I am mixing things up. Maybe the burbs are just as bad? I've never met country folk so removed from the natural world.

[Pops]

Kind of what I was getting at earlier Newfie. Urban/sub-urban living is based on specialization and centered on jobs: grow up, get a job, buy stuff. There is not the time to learn to do many things since to be successful one needs to specialize.

Perhaps it isn't entirely urban/rural per se but also generational. As people have become more mobile and particularly since the advent of the car and suburb they have become less attached to the lifestyle of their parents.