This.
And I would say the broader distribution will actually be good for the environment as whole. Or at least it could be.
And I would say the broader distribution will actually be good for the environment as whole. Or at least it could be.
I think you have this reversed.
Downtown residents walk and use transit. Places with broader distribution of people typically rely on roads because transit isn’t economically efficient.
My intuition is that higher population densities are more environmentally efficient because more people can be served by any resource. Are you thinking otherwise?
Energy = force * distance = mass * acceleration * distance.
Broader distributions means increases in distance means increase in energy consumption.
And usually having more space means having more stuff, which means an increase in mass, which also results in increase in energy consumption.
But the bulk of the environmental impact of civilization seems like it is more efficient at density, though I suppose the negative effects may be more concentrated and visible (a few big trucks making deliveries rather than a huge number of small vehicles)
It is just me noticing my own behavior patterns and extending it to the greater populace which is not correct.
I had a pleasure to live in village, small city and big city.
I feel I use much more resources in bigger city. Distance to the mall is similar, but all the free-time activities in the city consume energy. While in the village I mostly just walked the forest and worked on the garden.
It is also much more easier to manage waste. Food waste goes to the garden. Cardbox goes to fire place. Also, water travels only few meters from the well before it is used.
Anyways, kudos for recognizing that your behavior may not be typical. For me, the main attraction of rural living would be the ability to have a hobby machine shop, multiple cars (sorry, am enthusiast). And I’d probably drive in to the city in the absence of transit.
1.
One alternative is to revitalize the tons of walkable second-tier cities that are sitting there rotting, and to connect them with intercity transit.
I love NYC, but the problem with concentrating everyone there and in SF, is that it drives up real estate prices and creates a desperate crush to acquire property. Yes, you can say "YIMBY", but even if that were politically feasible, it couldn't keep up with in-migration if there were only those few choices (NY and SF). It would badly bifurcate society, between those who had managed to secure a toehold, and those who hadn't.
(In fact, it creates a culty Bitcoin-like dynamic, where those who have sunk the cost to be inducted (by buying property) are then incentivized to preach the benefits and keep the values up.)
Then, because people would be so desperate for money to live in these places, they'd waste their lives on corrosive professions like surveillance advertising, instead of doing work that actually helps people. That may sound familiar.
And, most importantly, geographic concentration would, arguably, go hand-in-hand with economic concentration -- with the formation of economic "chokepoints" and the concentration of monopoly power.
2.
Even the medium-urbanist decentralization of (1) would however leave people dependent on monopolies for the provision of basic ecological services.
What good is it to concentrate in cities, if all food is produced by one or two huge agricultural conglomerates? This is a condition of total dependence.
As an alternative to urbanism, Permaculture-type people do have interesting ideas. But they require land. Their methods also -- let's be honest -- come with a dramatic reduction in what we call "living standards". But if "degrowth" can come from an increase in autonomy, then that might be a trade worth making. It's one I think young people would consider.
We would probably see some amount of homophily among people, if they reorganized along these lines. There are many incompatible tribes:
- The Colorado ski-bro kombucha-chick tribe.
- Various Black Israelite and Egyption-religion back-to-Africa tribes.
- The Kanye West cult of vaguely Trump-sympathetic heterodox permie stuff.
- Indigenous revival movements. They're likely to have different language but similar interest in the environment.
- Various trad-religious tribes, like the Mennonites and Amish, but you could totally see Benedict Option Catholics or even Evangelicals going this way. Again, they'd just talk a little differently.
They wouldn't combine as a single "diverse" community, but you could see any and all of them borrowing permie ideas from one another.
In the past I have spoken in favor of universalist ideologies (I like that they help me to get along with more people), but they might be at odds with this kind of pluralism. That would need to be worked out.
3.
A natural answer is to say that there can be "gains from trade", and that not everyone needs to live in the same way. That there can be both cities and rural areas. But,
a. I am doubtful of permaculture's ability to create the kind of surplus needed to sustain urban populations, and
b. we would have to be very careful with the introduction of too much financial intermediation, lest we simply recreate the conditions we now have today.
I'm not sure what the punchline here is, except --
- that issues of political economy need to be factored in here, because they ultimately determine how nature's resources are distributed;
- that power is best when not concentrated; and
- that I'm looking for ways beyond the dichotomies implied by these posts ("dense" vs. "not dense").