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Originally Posted by freeweed
Stop breeding.
Growth fuels all of this, folks. I'm not sure why no one ever mentions this anymore. Cities and towns encroached onto farmland LONG before suburbs ever were conceived - where the hell do people think cities came from in the first place? Sorry, but that repeated mentioning of "OMG suburbs are taking over farmland" was a needless appeal to emotion. CITIES ALWAYS HAVE.
It's growth that drives all of this. Growth of the economy. Growth of the population. Growth of our cities. All that higher densities and less use of energy per capita will do is prolong the problem. At some point even the densest of city will still be expanding outwards, and you'll have the exact same problem. Stop making more of us.
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Well yes, that's absolutely true. Even high-density expands outwards. But they do so slower... it
is prolonging the problem a bit, and you are right, we need to re-think growth. A lot of people think that getting more migrants per year than someone else is a sign of achievement in itself, where it really is just a means to other ends. High-Density does at least have a negative effect on natural growth at least, as less people will have children. I think China's one-child policy will/has certainly help cut down on global overpopulation problems.
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The other thing I took from that film is what scares me the most - a return to these "local values" and "closeness with your neighbours" and "hey, in the 30s everyone knew their neighbours" and "globalism will disappear". Yay. Xenophobia and racism return! We can be just like Europe!
Sorry folks, but it's vitally important that we keep communicating with people 3000km away. Whether that's by SUV trip or an email over the Internet, the LAST thing human society needs is to become more insular and more locally-focussed. Tribalism is disgusting. Small little enclaves only worrying about themselves, and having minimal contact with outsiders - yeah, um, no thanks. That's the last thing I want to emulate.
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Both of these are big topics in the study of urban areas.
The ideal for the "closeness" is to try and bring back primary face-to-face connections between people that are much closer and personal. However, a lot of people in the field would disagree that this is even the ideal situation, as there are also benefits that people reap from secondary connections and virtual connections, such as increased privacy. Primary relations have a strong effect of increasing social control in the community and thus help cut down on local crime (by pushing it to other areas), but also have an equally exclusionary effect to people with different values and beliefs.
As for globalization, the effect is usually regarding both the political economy and the health of the city economy and community. There should be no doubt that the mom's and pop's stores of the past have declined due to big retailers such as Walmart, and the economic pundits celebrate this as the model is more efficient. Similarly, industries relocate their employees, or at the least threaten to do so. This gives businesses a disproportionate share of political power that supercedes the one-person, one-vote rule. Globalization also eliminates reinvestment into local areas, by funneling out the money and working off a model that is anti-urban in nature. Simply put, the manager at your local Walmart probably doesn't care what the sidewalks are like, what their contributions to the community are, and probably only care about degradation in the area as far as making sure there are no homeless people in the parking lot asking for change...
I think many people realize that we can't escape from the global economy and very much question the merit of such a sentiment. I certainly do, I value the global connections that Calgary is embedded in and wish for them to grow. But at the same time... you have to ask at what point we go too far and totally lose both the political-economic independence and integrity of our cities. If I can get the same job here, the same environment here, the same relations with people here, as I can get anywhere else, what's to stop me from moving?
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