Green Cities

[Funky_monks]

I don't think there's any doubt that under the right conditions urban agriculture can be highly productive, Cuba proved that. But whether you can achieve it without that pressure of scarcity is a different matter.

One of the better papers I've read about it was undertaken in Australia.

 

[yield]

I'm interested that you specify industry and traffic as the baddies. It depends quite what you mean by industry of course, but isn't industry part of what cities and people are all about?
I could go on for some time about the big failure of modernist town planning being in my opinion all to do with the way it dealt with transport, and transport and traffic are a big part of what I'd say needs to be fixed in order to make urban environments designed around people, but I think that industry needn't be incompatible with that.

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

James Scott calls it high modernism and the book's about their failures. Well worth a read teuchter

 

[teuchter]

That's where the time and motion studies fall down - "workers" are very inefficient because it's their hobby, so they stand around chatting - but the surprising thing is that even with this, yield/ha is still higher.
However, some papers highlight those social interactions as being really good for integration within rural communities.

Isn't the thing that it's not scalable though?

Maybe you could link us to the paper you mean.

 

[lazythursday]

One of the better papers I've read about it was undertaken in Australia.

But it's still pretty small scale though I imagine, unlike Cuba. I think urban agriculture projects can be great for the people involved but I remain sceptical as to their impact in terms of feeding the population sustainably. And there's a strong argument that as much green space in cities as possible should be given over to nature rather than food production (though some types of growing isn't mutually exclusive to that I guess).

 

[Funky_monks]

Isn't the thing that it's not scalable though?

Maybe you could link us to the paper you mean.

Does it need to be scalable?
You could have various small projects helping to feed various small communities - I don't necessarily see it as a method of feeding a community in it's entirety in the self-sufficiency stylee, but could take the pressure off land use by pretty intensive and chemical dependent ag.

I'll search the sources out when I'm on my work computer tomorrow - they were the subject of a lecture I gave to my first years on my sustainable ag module.

 

[yield]

Isn't the thing that it's not scalable though?

Maybe you could link us to the paper you mean.

Also in James Scott's book. US agribusiness and Soviet collectivisation were more about legibility in the eyes of the state and therefore subject to tax and control or confiscation.

Many smaller farms with specialised local knowledge are more efficient and resilient. But tough to keep tabs on.

 

[Funky_monks]

The critiques of urban ag (some of which come from the literature, some are mine) are that fert/compost is often bought in , which costs carbon (obviously this could be addressed by composting, but buying bagged compost is convenient), in the same vein inputs are often chemical for convenience. I think, if you look at small scale ag models, livestock are a missing component for fert and productivity (waste eating etc). I think chickens and pigs could have more of a part to play - pigs are a great community animal - 8-12 piglets/sow, can convert waste matter etc etc.

 

[lazythursday]

I've seen a lot of community gardens etc and they are genuinely inspiring places and I don't want to sound like I'm belittling them. But I think they're a bit of a red herring when it comes to focusing on the real big issues facing cities in terms of carbon reduction and tackling the nature crisis. And it frustrates me a bit that councils give a few grants to food growing projects and claim to be doing something about environmental sustainability in the process. They're great, but a distraction from what needs to be done in my opinion.

 

[Funky_monks]

I've seen a lot of community gardens etc and they are genuinely inspiring places and I don't want to sound like I'm belittling them. But I think they're a bit of a red herring when it comes to focusing on the real big issues facing cities in terms of carbon reduction and tackling the nature crisis. And it frustrates me a bit that councils give a few grants to food growing projects and claim to be doing something about environmental sustainability in the process. They're great, but a distraction from what needs to be done in my opinion.

Why?

The more food that is grown in this way, the less is produced by conventional horticulture which is one of the more input hungry forms of agriculture, not generally great for the soil either as hort needs the plough more than cereals - don't think anyone direct drills veg.

 

[lazythursday]

I'm not saying it's not a good thing. It's just that transforming the transport system, retrofitting buildings to be low energy usage and creating connected green infrastructure is more important on the city scale.

 

[Funky_monks]

I'm not saying it's not a good thing. It's just that transforming the transport system, retrofitting buildings to be low energy usage and creating connected green infrastructure is more important on the city scale.

But if there are vacant areas and it has measurable benefits in terms of the mental wellbeing of citizens as well as providing food, why not?

 

[lazythursday]

But if there are vacant areas and it has measurable benefits in terms of the mental wellbeing of citizens as well as providing food, why not?

Why not indeed? And absolutely, the social benefits are proven. I just think that we are in an emergency, we have to cut carbon emissions year on year and even a large explosion in community gardening won't achieve that. It's great but is sometimes used by councils to show they're doing something when really it's not where they need to be focusing in terms of the basic maths of carbon emissions.

 

[teuchter]

Does it need to be scalable?
You could have various small projects helping to feed various small communities - I don't necessarily see it as a method of feeding a community in it's entirety in the self-sufficiency stylee, but could take the pressure off land use by pretty intensive and chemical dependent ag.

It needs to be scalable if it's going to take the pressure off land use by other forms of agriculture in any meaningful way. If that's its justification or purpose.

 

[Funky_monks]

It needs to be scalable if it's going to take the pressure off land use by other forms of agriculture in any meaningful way. If that's its justification or purpose.

Any contribution does that though and horticulture is already pretty intensive and small areas with the exception of: Carrots, spuds, some brassicas, onions celery, peas.

 

[teuchter]

Any contribution does that though and horticulture is already pretty intensive and small areas with the exception of: Carrots, spuds, some brassicas, onions celery, peas.

If on the one hand there's the opportunity to fiddle with 0.1% of food production doing vertical urban gardens and suchlike, and on the other to actually look at the methods employed in large scale industrial agriculture/horticulture, to make them less harmful, then the latter just seems much more important and impactful.

It's not that there's necessarily anything wrong with it, or that it can't be a good thing in lots of ways, it's just that its benefits often seem to be misrepresented.

 

[NoXion]

Yeah, no. This idea that hobbyist gardeners are going to feed entire cities is just a load of hippie bunkum. If urban farming is to be a thing, then it needs to be a paid job in itself, and said farmers need to coordinate at the municipal level while receiving support at the national level. If urban farming is to be a new model for agricultural production, then it is too important to leave it only to those with the time and inclination to futz around with allotment stuff. Go big or go home.

 

[lazythursday]

Yeah, no. This idea that hobbyist gardeners are going to feed entire cities is just a load of hippie bunkum. If urban farming is to be a thing, then it needs to be a paid job in itself, and said farmers need to coordinate at the municipal level while receiving support at the national level. If urban farming is to be a new model for agricultural production, then it is too important to leave it only to those with the time and inclination to futz around with allotment stuff. Go big or go home.

This is fundamentally the issue I have with urban farming. Urban community gardening initiatives are fucking brilliant at improving mental wellbeing, at bringing people together, reducing isolation, all of that agenda. But to turn them into something that had a serious environmental impact they would need to scale up, become proper businesses (even if co-operatives or whatever) and would likely completely lose what they have at the moment in terms of their social impact (or perhaps the community stuff would survive alongside new urban agro-businesses, but the two things are fundamentally different). The history of recycling has some parallels here - a couple of decades ago an awful lot of recycling businesses were nice social enterprises - few survive because recycling has become a mainstream business with lots of profit attached. I think we need more urban community gardens, and they need to be developed as part of a wider city plan for green infrastructure / urban ecology, but don't lets kid ourselves they are particularly important to food system change, in their current form anyway.

 

[discokermit]

fuck cities. repopulate the countryside.

 

[danny la rouge]

I'm interested that you specify industry and traffic as the baddies. It depends quite what you mean by industry of course, but isn't industry part of what cities and people are all about?

Interesting you should frame it that way. However cities grew (and I’d argue that agriculture and commerce, rather than industry per se, were the original driver), the point is about how fit they are for the populations now. We don’t say, “well in mediaeval times cities did x with their faeces, so we should do the same”, what we say is “what is best for humans now given the knowledge and technology we have now?”. And that’s what I’m interested in: improving lives environments. That’s why I’d like the emphasis to move away from traffic and industry and back to human beings.

 

[ska invita]

However cities grew (and I’d argue that agriculture and commerce, rather than industry per se, were the original driver), the point is about how fit they are for the populations now.

An aside: thing I read recently made the case that it began in Kent, creating the first mass city: London (definition depends on what population makes it a mass city). With a reducing of the commons and changes in rent on farming plots (landlordism kicking off) pushing "unproductive" peasants of the land and therefore into cities to survive. Conclusion: mass cities (as opposed to market towns) exist where peasantry are forced off what was their land - or at least land they had good access to. Currently happening with issues around the farmers strike in India.

 

[teuchter]

Interesting you should frame it that way. However cities grew (and I’d argue that agriculture and commerce, rather than industry per se, were the original driver), the point is about how fit they are for the populations now. We don’t say, “well in mediaeval times cities did x with their faeces, so we should do the same”, what we say is “what is best for humans now given the knowledge and technology we have now?”. And that’s what I’m interested in: improving lives environments. That’s why I’d like the emphasis to move away from traffic and industry and back to human beings.

I suppose I am wondering, in what way do you see cities and their design, currently, as being centred around industry? Or what do you mean by moving emphasis away from industry?

The reason I ask is that the way I see it, the trend for almost all modern cities is an increasing detachment from industry. You can look at for example London or Glasgow and see cities that were at one point built around vast industrial operations on their rivers, but now they are cities with virtually no major industry happening within their limits. It's either moved away altogether or moved to peripheral sites.

I'm not suggesting that a return to something that existed before is necessarily desirable. It's just that if I look at most cities now, and what's wrong with them, I don't see being built around industry as being one of the problems. If anything, from a town planning point of view I might want to try and think about what negative consequences might arise from pushing industrial activity to entirely peripheral locations. It has implications for things like the environment people work in, how much of their day they spend travelling, and so on.

 

[8ball]

Interesting you should frame it that way. However cities grew (and I’d argue that agriculture and commerce, rather than industry per se, were the original driver), the point is about how fit they are for the populations now. We don’t say, “well in mediaeval times cities did x with their faeces, so we should do the same”, what we say is “what is best for humans now given the knowledge and technology we have now?”. And that’s what I’m interested in: improving lives environments. That’s why I’d like the emphasis to move away from traffic and industry and back to human beings.

Human beings still need to produce what they need to survive/thrive. The entire economy doesn't rest on middle-class information workers sat in their pyjamas at laptops. If you don't have places of production integrated into your city, that ultimately increases traffic (in terms of transport, if not in terms of 'traffic' as we currently think of it) - people need to be able to get to their place of work and back again, and goods need to be moved.

I'd be interested in your thoughts about "more ideal" cities, though, on the purely human level.

 

[NoXion]

fuck cities. repopulate the countryside.

Given the century ahead of us, I think we should be doing exactly the opposite. We're in for a rough time climate-wise, so we need as much arable land as we can manage. One of the implications of climate change is an impending refugee crisis which has the potential to utterly dwarf anything we've seen so far. Thus even if birthrates go down even further than they are already, immigration has a strong chance of more than making up for that. So we should be making the most efficient usage of land on this island, and I hardly think that pandering to pastoralist fantasies will achieve that. Not just arable land either, but the country as whole needs relatively large untilled green spaces that everyone can enjoy.

 

[8ball]

Given the century ahead of us, I think we should be doing exactly the opposite. We're in for a rough time climate-wise, so we need as much arable land as we can manage. One of the implications of climate change is an impending refugee crisis which has the potential to utterly dwarf anything we've seen so far. Thus even if birthrates go down even further than they are already, immigration has a strong chance of more than making up for that. So we should be making the most efficient usage of land on this island, and I hardly think that pandering to pastoralist fantasies will achieve that. Not just arable land either, but the country as whole needs relatively large untilled green spaces that everyone can enjoy.

Also, people living in cities have a markedly lower environmental impact on average.

 

[discokermit]

Given the century ahead of us, I think we should be doing exactly the opposite. We're in for a rough time climate-wise, so we need as much arable land as we can manage. One of the implications of climate change is an impending refugee crisis which has the potential to utterly dwarf anything we've seen so far. Thus even if birthrates go down even further than they are already, immigration has a strong chance of more than making up for that. So we should be making the most efficient usage of land on this island, and I hardly think that pandering to pastoralist fantasies will achieve that. Not just arable land either, but the country as whole needs relatively large untilled green spaces that everyone can enjoy.

Given the century ahead of us, I think we should be doing exactly the opposite. We're in for a rough time climate-wise, so we need as much arable land as we can manage. One of the implications of climate change is an impending refugee crisis which has the potential to utterly dwarf anything we've seen so far. Thus even if birthrates go down even further than they are already, immigration has a strong chance of more than making up for that. So we should be making the most efficient usage of land on this island, and I hardly think that pandering to pastoralist fantasies will achieve that. Not just arable land either, but the country as whole needs relatively large untilled green spaces that everyone can enjoy.

no.
democratic feudalism and a subsistence living. itll be the best option in the oncoming global dark age.

 

[NoXion]

no.
democratic feudalism and a subsistence living. itll be the best option in the oncoming global dark age.

Democratic feudalism is a contradiction in terms, and if we reduces ourselves down to subsistence levels, then we'll have nothing else to fall back on should that go awry. I don't know how you're getting this idea that such arrangements would generate resilience. Quite the opposite in fact, agricultural societies are more prone to famine than their industrial or post-industrial counterparts.

 

[8ball]

Democratic feudalism is a contradiction in terms, and if we reduces ourselves down to subsistence levels, then we'll have nothing else to fall back on should that go awry. I don't know how you're getting this idea that such arrangements would generate resilience. Quite the opposite in fact, agricultural societies are more prone to famine than their industrial or post-industrial counterparts.

I think it's best to not assume an utmost seriousness in discokermit's posts.

 

[NoXion]

I think it's best to not assume an utmost seriousness in discokermit's posts.

I think the internet has throughly broken my ability to tell when people are being sincere or not via text. Because I have run across too many people who have proposed all kinds of wacky, unworkable and/or just downright awful things, apparently in all seriousness. So if they're being facetious then it failed to come across to me.

 

[danny la rouge]

Human beings still need to produce what they need to survive/thrive. The entire economy doesn't rest on middle-class information workers sat in their pyjamas at laptops. If you don't have places of production integrated into your city, that ultimately increases traffic (in terms of transport, if not in terms of 'traffic' as we currently think of it) - people need to be able to get to their place of work and back again, and goods need to be moved.

I'd be interested in your thoughts about "more ideal" cities, though, on the purely human level.

Of course. However, moving towards a city designed around the health of human beings does not necessitate moving away from the things humans need. Quite the reverse.

Before refrigeration, for example, cities required to be surrounded by food production. I read once that until the 1930s, 60% of New York’s food was produced within a 60 mile radius (or if not those figures, then something similar). We need to return to that sort of dependence on the local.
In the 1960s, Glasgow, like many cities, decided it needed better transport links. It whacked the M8 right through working class communities like Anderston, disrupting their organic flow and cutting them off from amenities, including shops, recreation and parkland, and creating a grim wasteland from a public space in front of the Mitchell Library.

This was repeated in the 90s when the needs of vehicular transport were put ahead of the working class communities of Corkerhill and Pollock.

What I want to learn about is work that has been done on how to redress that balance. I’m not proposing abandoning technology or manufacture. I’m wondering how we redesign where we live to better support the health of the community.

 

[8ball]

I’m not sure “dependence on the local” sounds like a good thing.