Letters to the Editor
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Broadband and low cost flights to save small towns?
Whether small towns survive depends on the overall population density. In densely populated England they have become outer suburbia, although that may mean long commutes, in less crowded parts of Europe such as France or inland Spain, they decline. However after years of falling French rural population has stated to rise again. Many are retirees from elsewhere in the EU (especially British and Dutch) but low cost flights and universal broadband means that very long distance telecommuting is becoming a prospect for many. A lot of back office functions could be shifted to such telecommuters, at a saving in labour cost to the employers and an improvement in quality of life for the employee.
Long term however Europeans have to be encouraged to have more children again, and solving the housing situation so people can afford to have children in their twenties is essential. Otherwise it becomes a population of crumbling oldies tomorrow, Eurabia the day after. France and Sweden have both shown that family incentives can act to boost the birthrate, it is central and southern Europe that is the demographic disaster zone.
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London a model of urban planning?
That's a comment made by someone who has never taken public transportation in London within 3 hours of peak rush hour. Or tried to drive in London. In other words, either someone who lives next to their place of work (and how many of us do that?) or someone who doesn't have a clue.
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Bangalore, Mumbai, Kinshasha, Lagos, Sao Paulo, Cuidad de Mexico, Cairo, Manilla
Dhaka, Karachi, Chennai, Khartoum, Abidjan
Ever been? Cities can suuuuucckk big time.
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History Repeats
Back during the Depression and currency crash, Germany was faced with a big prole urban population which had little to offer the farmers in exchange for food. The result was starvation--and a huge upswing in socialism (nationalist brown and internationalist red), which was (initially, at least) urban worker-oriented and not worried about farmer votes. The U.S. fared much better due to the high percentage of rural population still down on at- or near-subsistence rural route farms. This provided the perfect padding for us to weather the economic, as well as the political storm. Unfortunately, we're pretty much a 1920's repeat of Germany: monster urban sprawl with practically nothing real to offer farmers for their food. So look out. When this Bitch goes south, it'll make Depression Germany look like a picnic. Will Europe fare better? Even though they are indeed seeing the "North Dakota" effect, they should have the cool heads to handle this...while we go ape-fecal-matter...because we're dominated by an overclass that can't/won't see the truth and won't ever consider a Plan B.
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Uh oh.
Maybe we Westerners aren't the apex predators of modern societies. Sure we can make bombs with the best of them and producing and consuming stuff is second nature to us, but shifting demographics will doom us in the end.
Nasty foriegners will infiltrate our ranks when we import them to wipe our elderly asses and the Osamas of the world will triumph in the end.
So long western capitalist democracy.
Five hundred years from now we will be a long forgotten and misbegotten experiment.
Oh well, its been fun while its lasted.
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Someday, somewhere
At some point, humanity is going to learn to shrink. If we continue to assume that an expanding population is necessary for economic prosperity, we are admitting that prosperity will someday come to an end, because the expansion surely will.
In the meantime, those of us whose neighbors are hills and trees wish to thank the rest of y'all for crowding together in your asphalt and concrete beehives.
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For further reading . . .
While concentrating the burgeoning human population in (well planned!) urban centers could be very beneficial to the environment, the current migration from rural to urban areas in the West is symptomatic of unsustainable agricultural practices that spell trouble for everyone. Michael Pollen discusses this problem at length in The Omnivore's Dilemma, Richard Louv comes at it from a different angle in Last Child in the Woods, and Jarod Diamond touches on it in Collapse. All excellent books worth checking out if these issues interest you.
Cullen Murphy addresses the issue of demographic and political change due to mass immigration in Are We Rome?, and advocates more liberal immigration policies in the United States in particular. He makes very cogent arguments that 1) there is a need to sustain Western political systems and infrastructure and 2) this can only be done by absorbing migrant populations as citizens. I won't go into his arguments here, but this is a little gem of a book.
Anyway, more food for thought!
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Peak Oil Will Reverse This
No worries...cities are by definition places that can't produce sufficient food for themselves.
As soon as liquid fuel significantly rises in price (the IEA says no later than 2012 when the "wheels fall off" -- the Chief Economist's words, not mine), people will stream back to where land is available. Food production is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, approximately 10 calories of fossil energy for every calorie of food.