[Quinny]

Wheres that darn Groundhog?

[jasonraymondson]

Please combine with this thread

http://peakoil.com/americas-discussion/ ... 53893.html

[Serial_Worrier]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... rvive.html

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')ut Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that "big is good" and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

He said: "The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there's an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they're shrinking, they're failing."

But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.

Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.

"Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow," he said.
Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution "defeatist" but he insisted it was "no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again".

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'S')o is the food free? The public "comes in and harvests". Who decides how much food per person? It's an all you can eat buffet? Is there really going to be so much surplus for that to work? You need strict control over this otherwise the food forest would be picked clean in no time. That's one of the problems I have with the CSA model. It's okay as a "hobby" for a small group of people when the supermarkets are bursting at the seams, but if people are literally living subsistence off a remote patch someplace, what are the odds someone else isn't going to come by and gobble your crop? If you aren't going to be there to protect it, someone you trust better damn well do it. Once the crop's gone, catching the perp won't matter because you're as good as dead.

[Bman4k1]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/fina ... rvive.html
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.
--snip--
Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was "both a cultural and political taboo" about admitting decline in America. "Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They're at the point where it's better to start knocking a lot of buildings down," she said.

[Serial_Worrier]

Imagine all of Michigan returned to the Native Americans!

[cephalotus]

there is some experience with "rebuilding" cities especially in Eastern Germany.

Take Dresden as an Example.

It has been bombed to dust during WorldWar II



The Democratic Republic of Germany (Eastern Germany) did not have the money to rebuild the city during the time, when cities in Western Germany have been rebuilt with lots of concrete in the style of the 1960th.
So after reunion in 1990 it was possible to rebuild the city with modern standards and Dresden is now one of the most interesting cities in Germany imho.
And there are still many parks and "empty places" but it is good this way.

The population of Dresden is still lower than before WW II. (70 years since then)

There are also other parts of Eastern Germany (i.e. Mecklenburg Vorpommern) that are shrinking extremely fast (-30% since 1989) and after all the young people have left and the infrastructure will not get rebuilt it will not attract any young people any more and the old people are dieing in almost empty villages. A vicious circle.

On the other hand that does not need to be a bad thing. Just remove that stuff and make better (peak oil compatible) infrastructure somewhere else than trying to keep that old stuff intact.

[galacticsurfer]

http://www.jens-eichenberg.de/Lean%20City.pdf
http://www.em-oderbruch.de/bilder/press ... stitut.pdf

http://www.amazon.de/schrumpfenden-Stad ... 3929797771

http://www.schrumpfende-stadt.de/index.html
http://www.schrumpfende-stadt.de/impressum.htm

http://www.schrumpfende-stadt.de/projekt.htm

http://www.schrumpfende-stadt.de/forum.htm

http://www.schrumpfende-stadt.de/forum/newsletter40.htm

For German language readers it seems this is the academic site available with newsletters and academic/planning experience from city planners and architects mostly for East German area. The term Lean City appears to be an entirely German-English word for smart shrinking of cities , so called "Denglish", though I could be mistaken. AS usual German technical experience is proving useful in America as in Scrapping cars for a premium or paying people to work shorter hours. The Germans are obviously way ahead in this area and have it down to complicated flow charts, etc. as to the complicated mechanisms working through demographic and economic mechanisms to propel a city to manage on asmaller area with less people and money effectively. Americans could well do to borrow from this experience. Unfortunately all in German.

folgen.gif

[anador]

Demolishing parts of cities just leeds to more decay.!!

That has been proven from detroit to philadelphia, from the urban renewal of the 1970s to The land clearances for the highway.

If the same money were in vested in re population schemes instead of wholesale demolition some of these areas might actually come back.

Its cutting off your nose to spite your face, and then your ears, and then your eyes, and then your bankrupt and cant afford to knock anything else down, but you've scared the remaining population away and have to cancel police, fire and road maintenence because you have NO TAX REVENUE.

damn!

[Ferretlover]

Sounds like a good WPA (Works Progress Administration) project to me. There is going to be a time when those used bricks, pipes, window panes, etc are going to be difficult to come by, and therefore, valuable.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Hermes', 'T')hey're going to bulldoze Baltimore???

Sweet!

[anador]

disrespecting our cities is what killed them and got us into this energy mess.

It will not solve either.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('anador', 'd')isrespecting our cities is what killed them and got us into this energy mess.

It will not solve either.

[anador]

no, the suburban housing act and the interstate highway act in the 1950's depopulated and bankrupted cities by essentially creating suburbia and making it law.

Thus the middle and upper class were excised, leading to concentration of poverty in the city centers.

This further served to illustrate the feds invented point that the cities should be abandoned in favor of the car and the suburb.

The race riots in the 60s were propogated largely by populations living in areas where all services had been cut because the tax base had been destroyed. or by the rapid detrioration of the neighborhoods that were being systematically demolished by the government in favor of public housing mega projects.

which all ultimately became untenable.

The cities were reacting to rampant urban renewal and gentrification already by the 1960s

The urban fabric cannot be punched full of holes, or crime increases, services decrease and blight sets in.

These are all symptoms of sprawl and gentrification, not an inherent quality of urban areas.

loss of industrialization to the suburbs as well caused many of the poor left in these areas to become jobless. They were not wealthy enough to escape to the suburbs, they were trapped, and eventually these populations became desperate... thus crime and violence both increase exponentially.

This plan will only hasten the decay and enhance the blight in the areas that remain.

It DOES NOT WORK!

[anador]

Just Lookie Here!

[jbrovont]

Come on mos - people wouldn't take more than they need. Adult content
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'S')o is the food free? The public "comes in and harvests". Who decides how much food per person? --snip-- If you aren't going to be there to protect it, someone you trust better damn well do it. Once the crop's gone, catching the perp won't matter because you're as good as dead.

[bromius]

Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that growing food on reclaimed lots in a city formerly home to heavy industry may not be entirely safe. Maybe one alternative to growing food would be to grow fuel using a coppice system using hybrid poplar, willow or maybe something like black locust which would help improve fertility of the soil over time. People will need to keep warm in the winter and need to be able to cook their food. On a similar line of thought, the same space could alternatively be used to grow a fuel crop like rapeseed.

I suppose if things got really bad, people would grow food there and eat it regardless of consequences since not eating is more hazardous in the short term than eating food that will cause slow poisoning.

[rangerone314]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('bromius', 'E')arlier in the thread it was mentioned that growing food on reclaimed lots in a city formerly home to heavy industry may not be entirely safe. Maybe one alternative to growing food would be to grow fuel using a coppice system using hybrid poplar, willow or maybe something like black locust which would help improve fertility of the soil over time. People will need to keep warm in the winter and need to be able to cook their food. On a similar line of thought, the same space could alternatively be used to grow a fuel crop like rapeseed.

I suppose if things got really bad, people would grow food there and eat it regardless of consequences since not eating is more hazardous in the short term than eating food that will cause slow poisoning.

[bromius]

Rangerone>
You make a good point about the locust borer. When planting any tree on a large scale it makes sense to consider the environment it will be growing in, potential pests included in that list.

That said, in a coppice application, I think black locust would still be appropriate. Harvesting in a coppice system occurs on a much shorter rotation than in a conventional forest where growing high value sawlogs is the main objective. Borer holes will cause a serious degrade on a sawlog, but that is not an issue with fuel. Black locust in a coppice would be harvested while the stems were fairly young and small, say no more than 1 or 2 inches in diameter, before losses to the borer pose a significant problem. From personal experience I have seen black locust reach at least 3 or 4 inches in diameter here (Central NY) with no major signs of ill health. It is prolific along the highways in this area, which is encouraging because those areas were disturbed by heavy machinery during the highway construction. In a scenario where vacant suburbs are being bulldozed I think there would be a similar environment - compacted soil with a lot of the surface organic matter removed or buried. For the intended purpose I think it would be an ideal species for reclaiming damaged land.