[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '
')With no sarcasim I think the most effective social engineering we do is when we incarcerate people and then they can learn from their elder in jail. Number 2 after that is the military.

[Newfie]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Newfie', '
')With no sarcasim I think the most effective social engineering we do is when we incarcerate people and then they can learn from their elder in jail. Number 2 after that is the military.

[Revi]

I think you are right, Mos. I am feeling very defensive and vulnerable lately. It's hard to get back to feeling good about your neighbors when your property is attacked every week.

Maybe hardening our sugarhouse seems a little paranoid, but we have been attacked at least 5 times.

It feels like we are descending into the bunker mentality.

I am going to take some time off next week and the week after, so maybe things will mellow. Maybe...

I don't really want to abandon this position. Maybe there's a middle way.

[americandream]

How sad.

Are you in the country, exurbia, the suburbs or in a small town or city?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') think you are right, Mos. I am feeling very defensive and vulnerable lately. It's hard to get back to feeling good about your neighbors when your property is attacked every week.

Maybe hardening our sugarhouse seems a little paranoid, but we have been attacked at least 5 times.

It feels like we are descending into the bunker mentality.

I am going to take some time off next week and the week after, so maybe things will mellow. Maybe...

I don't really want to abandon this position. Maybe there's a middle way.

[Ludi]

The violent neighbors up the road cruelly invited us to their violent family post-Halloween party/Haunted Hike, where we met many of their violent children, grandchildren, killer babies and a vicious great-grandmother (also a neighbor, from the other end of the road).

[americandream]

killer babies

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'T')he violent neighbors up the road cruelly invited us to their violent family post-Halloween party/Haunted Hike, where we met many of their violent children, grandchildren, killer babies and a vicious great-grandmother (also a neighbor, from the other end of the road).

[Revi]

I live in a small town and own land outside of the town center in the hills. That's where our sugarhouse is.

There seems to be a lot of pressure on the poor lately, so maybe we are a target of their frustration. We are barely hanging onto our lower middle class existence, but we make it better than most because we changed some things to allow us to live on less when we saw peak oil coming.

I have decided that I can't change them, but I can re-arrange some things to make it harder to shoot up our shack in the future.

That's the plan anyway. I am going to try to get a group together to work on the probems we face in our town.

That will work to get the neighborhood together which may be essential for survival if things get really bad.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', ' ')And you used to be a love-child?

[Newfie]

Hey Ludi, you see this?

Plowing Detroit Into Farmland
INSERT DESCRIPTION

Today’s idea: Detroit’s “massive failure” makes possible a radical transformation of the blighted city, an article says, including shrinking it down to its urban core and turning much of the place over to crops. And an ineffective government is actually a plus.
F. Costantini for The New York Times Fords into plowshares? No, this is an old Chrysler lot.

Cities | Could Detroit pull a reverse Joni Mitchell — unpave its parking lots to put up a metro-agrarian paradise? That’s a glib yet hopeful way to think about the urban experiments envisioned or under way in the city, as described by Aaron M. Renn in an article in New Geography.

Renn says the sheer size of Detroit — a largely vacant urban prairie bigger than Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco combined — makes it a prime test case for the “shrinking cities” movement. And so an American Institute of Architects study imagines Detroit reduced into a metro core surrounded by green belts, “urban villages” and banked land.

Already, Urban Farming, an international outfit that has made Detroit its headquarters, is said to boast some 500 small plots under cultivation to supply free food to the city’s poor. “It wouldn’t surprise me, frankly, if Detroit produces more food inside its borders today than any other traditional American city,” Renn writes.

Even raccoon- and pheasant-hunting is not unheard of within the protein-poor city’s limits. Yes, a retired truck driver reportedly shoots raccoons and sells them as food, at $12 per carcass to feed a family of four.

Such is Detroit today. But in what many see as a nightmare town, where a house can cost less than the TV you put inside, loftier dreams can also be dreamt — especially, Renn says, when government doesn’t get in the way: “In Detroit, the incapacity of the government is actually an advantage in many cases. There’s not much chance a strong city government could really turn the place around, but it could stop the grass roots revival in its tracks.” [New Geography; background: The Week]

[Revi]

That is an awesome article. Detroit is turning back into countryside again. I think it's going to be the fate of most industrial cities. People will need to learn how to live there again.

The prices of most real estate were attractive enough to start to farm the place again.

If you can buy a house for a thousand, put a thousand into equipment and grow a market garden you can make it work.

Crisis means opportunity for some people.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', ' ') Detroit is turning back into countryside again.

[Revi]

And don't forget the roving gangs of thugs.

I'm not rushing into Detroit to farm, but I guess there are people who are doing it.

It's hard enough in Maine.

[Newfie]

Ludi,

I think that this is closer to the scenario I was contemplating here a while back than rioting gangs. Or maybe it is just a precursor.

Here is another tidbit. Something similar is going on here in Philadelphia. They can't tear down the old abandoned houses fast enough, it takes a long time to clear through the legal system to get the demolition permits. Our previous Mayor made is a cornerstone of his administration to speed up the process. Still there are something like 40,000 abandoned houses in Philadelphia alone.

Still, there is no where near enough land to feed everyone. There is only enough to feed a small portion. If the social support system goes down sufficiently then these people will need to look elsewhere for the basic necessities of life. I think what I was getting at, riffing off of Mos' ideas, was that these inner city people can and will make life less certain for those in the fringing communities and so on.

If you feel like being depressed.....there is a movie on the web from England called "A World Without Water." It is not entirely fair handed but does chronicle the commoditization of water in three third world countries: Bolivia, India, and Detroit. Most people won't sit through the showing.

Nope, no riots.

[Newfie]

Pstarr,

Gated communities within the city? Why not! To some extent it happens now. I live in a nice neighborhood. Our crime rate is low and our schools are good. Go 10 or 20 blocks south and the situation is far different. They don't get nearly the same level of civic support I do. I get better police coverage and we have a Center City Civic Association that hires folks to clean up our streets. Largely paid for by the merchants to keep it all looking nice.

Then there are the high rise condos. Many are over a million bucks for an apartment with a doorman. But we all share the same parks. There is one very nice and prestigious one in my block. And the city spent a lot to make a river walk near my home which assisted my resale value.

Then they tore down a whole lot of tenements. Replace them with suburban looking twins. Some places you can't tell you are in the city. Then again, when I drive to our suburban office about 30 miles out, I pass acres and acres of new "town home" developments. Thousands in size. They have all the charm of a row house community, except they aren't built as well and don't have any corner delis or bars, or mass transit. Too far to walk to the mall so you must drive.

My point? Someday those that have less will get sufficiently desperate and/or pissed to try to even out the score.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'A')nd don't forget the roving gangs of thugs.

I'm not rushing into Detroit to farm, but I guess there are people who are doing it.

It's hard enough in Maine.

[Newfie]

30 some years ago I was a foreman on a cable replacement project. It was tough work along the railroad. What equipment we had needed to be carried in. Trucks to the end of the road and then load your stuff on push carts for the last mile. I had a 6-man crew. Times were tough, being in a recession, and I had a couple of recent college grads in the group. Nice guys, real bright about all the things that didn't matter. Love to go have a beer or glass of wine with them, good conversation.

But out on the line they were pretty much useless. They couldn't tie their shoes and, to make matters worse, they had no spatial analytic powers. It's not that they didn't try, they tried hard, they just didn't have that skill set. If I told Charlie or Bill, “Rig this manhole just like MH-107 we did last Thursday,” they did it right. If I said “Rig this manhole just lime MH-107 we did last Thursday except fair the lead to the left instead of the right.” they were lost. They were smart guys, good SAT's, good IQ's. They just didn't have the spatial thing going on.

There was another fellow in the gang, Willie. Willie was a genius. I would say “Willie, rig the hole,” and the hole was rigged. Period. I have been tested for spatial reasoning ability and I come out in the top 97%. Yet Willie was a good bet better than I. He was a true genius. I don't know Willie's IQ because, growing up as a Black share croppers son on a South Carolina plantation, Willie never went to school, he was illiterate.

10 years later I had a similar experience. A old lineman foreman “Mag” put me to shame, “dressed me up in short pants and sent me home” was the saying. He did stuff I didn't think possible. One day a stupid young kid in the gang had a stupid accident in a line truck. Mag had to fill out an accident report. He was getting another fellow to help him. I thought it was because he was missing a couple of fingers (line work can be tough) but nope. Illiterate, signed his name with an X. Guess I'll never know Mag's IQ, but if I had to have someone on my team? I'd pick Mag, and Willie.

By the way, Mag is short for something like “Magnamus.” Dame'd if I know what his ethnicity/race was, it doesn't matter.

[Ferretlover]

Off topic posts removed. Please stay on topic.