Green Cities

[stavros]

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

I've certainly heard that with regards transport - higher density development means the population live closer to services, reducing or negating the need to drive, along with a generally more connected public transport network.

Is it true of other parts of life? I'm thinking domestic heating, building practices, food and drink, etc. Is there any obvious correlation either way regarding urban living and air travel?

 

[lazythursday]

Higher density is generally good for creating greener cities - transport being the key thing but also means you can implement district heating systems (heating through a network rather than individual properties) and it's just more efficient with generally supplying energy and services. Where it falls down is pressure on green space and nature, cos higher density in our system usually means high land values.

 

[yield]

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

May not sound wholly good but building more resilience into systems is sensible.

The pandemic and the Suez canal have shown how vulnerable just-in-time global supply chains are.

 

[danny la rouge]

May not sound wholly good but building more resilience into systems is sensible.

The pandemic and the Suez canal have shown how vulnerable just-in-time global supply chains are.

Exactly. And this isn’t new. Kropotkin and Bookchin both talked about over reliance on imported foods.

 

[teuchter]

The pandemic and the Suez canal have shown how vulnerable just-in-time global supply chains are.

Have they though? Nowhere really ran out of food or anything like that.

 

[yield]

Have they though? Nowhere really ran out of food or anything like that.

Over 30 million people 'one step away from starvation', UN warns

The pandemic, climate crisis and conflict combining to drive ‘alarming’ levels of global hunger, says report

www.theguardian.com

 

[Funky_monks]

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.

When, in reality we are doing the opposite. Agriculture accepts that more and more land is going to be taken out of production for schemes etc, so the watchword is "sustainable intensification", wringing more out of the less that will be available. This is hoped to be achieved by precision farming, genetics etc.

There is an argument that resilient environments with decent soils (eg the UK and NZ) should be as intensively farmed as possible and be feeding those in much more brittle environments.

Re: urban ag - it can be done on a business scale. I think we like to want to have a simple "just do this" solution to environmental issues, and I don't think it's that simple. I don't see any need for urban ag to feed entire cities completely, but it can contribute, certain things - can work quite well on a community level. The pig is ideally suited for this (and is probably why it was domesticated) as is the chicken - turning inedible waste into protein. Urban ag has massive room for productivity and efficiency gains.

 

[stavros]

Higher density is... more efficient with generally supplying energy and services.

Is some of that efficiency offset by the end use of the energy likely being a greater distance from the generation point? Some energy is lost in transition in I think every power network, regardless of the medium.

 

[teuchter]

Is some of that efficiency offset by the end use of the energy likely being a greater distance from the generation point? Some energy is lost in transition in I think every power network, regardless of the medium.

Why would it likely be a greater distance from the generation point?

 

[stavros]

Why would it likely be a greater distance from the generation point?

I assume that power stations are largely situated outside of the major conurbations.

 

[teuchter]

I assume that power stations are largely situated outside of the major conurbations.

Yes, but they are also situated outside of all rural areas except the ones that happen to be next to them.

 

[stavros]

Yes, but they are also situated outside of all rural areas except the ones that happen to be next to them.

OK, so the transfer inefficiency isn't really a factor then.

 

[teuchter]

OK, so the transfer inefficiency isn't really a factor then.

Well, it obviously depends on quite a lot of things, many of which I'm no expert in. Depending on the type of power station you can choose to locate it reasonably close to centres of population. Renewables such as wind can change the picture a bit.

But as I understand it, the losses are greater, the further you step down the voltage. So you presumably have a high voltage link to various substations, but then links from each of those substations to further substations and/or end users. I would image that in a rural substation with a bunch of connections to individual users, those final connection lengths will tend to be much longer than for an urban substation. I don't know how the numbers work out as far as inefficiency is concerned.

Densely packed dwellings will, I think, tend to require less energy input to heating, assuming similar levels of insulation in the building fabric. A block of flats or terraced housing will have a lower surface area per occupant than an isolated dwelling, and so on.

It's not just electricity; there's also water and sewage and things like rubbish collection.

 

[8ball]

May not sound wholly good but building more resilience into systems is sensible.

The pandemic and the Suez canal have shown how vulnerable just-in-time global supply chains are.

A lot of vulnerability comes down to profit reasons, but more importantly this is a case of heavy dependence on a particular region, which I am arguing against.

 

[teuchter]

Over 30 million people 'one step away from starvation', UN warns

The pandemic, climate crisis and conflict combining to drive ‘alarming’ levels of global hunger, says report

www.theguardian.com

That seems to be a story about places where food shortages are in danger of arising due to the failure of locally grown crops. That's not a story about shortages resulting from the failure of global supply chains. If anything it's an argument against being dependent on local sources.

 

[Flavour]

Waffley Mexican anarchist take on the metropolis as a space, and the possibilities afforded by its rejection :

There Are No Metropolitan Revolts, only Revolts Against the Metropolis • Ill Will

A revolutionary perspective no longer focuses on an institutional reorganization of society, but on the technical configuration of worlds.

illwill.com

 

[Doodler]

Some forms of light industry can go quite well with housing, creating interest and variety and giving a sense of local distinctiveness or identity. I mean things like clusters of small workshops, dairies, bakeries, builders yards, garages, boatyards and so on, sometimes a larger factory associated with a well-established name like Cadburys, Peak Freen, Tiptree etc (for some reason food makers seem to be generally well regarded).

Maybe just a personal quirk but I find endless housing to be boring and dispiriting, the monotony of it. Pretty much everything is being turned into housing.