CNN Perspectives - "Compact Cities"

dr_doom · Post by **dr_doom** » 21 May 2006, 13:59

I was watching this show on CNN yesterday where they seemed to be discussing peak oil solutions, without explicitly mentioning "peak oil". A lot of talk about how suburban development was unsustainable, and would likely become "unpleasant" if nothing was done to change it.

They quoted how 75% of the world's energy output was expended on transportation or running modern buildings. And a very large proportion of transportation is simply getting people from where they live to where they work.

What solution did they suggest? Compact cities, where seemingly people are forced to live in walking proximitity to where they work. They also made quite an interesting point that under-utilised mass transit systems can be just as wasteful as cars.

The compact cities idea sounded logical in so far as the 1-2 hours most people spend each day commuting, could be spent doing something more constructive or enjoyable. My only reservation was that they didn't go into too much fine detail about how exactly this would all be made to work in practice.

As an interesting sidenote, Alex Jones (conspiracy theorist), has been ranting for years that the elite have an evil plan to herd the masses into compact cities, and forcibly limit world population to 1 billion. First time I heard him saying this, it sounded crazy, now seeing respected planners and architects openly calling for "Compact Cities" in MSM, it seems a bit less crazy.

Would be interested to hear what people think of the idea of compact cities, it seems to me like a different spin on new-urbanism.

ToY · Post by **ToY** » 21 May 2006, 14:34

Compact cities tend to exacerbate social problems. Here is some covert footage taken in the compact city of Billund in Denmark.

skeptik · Post by **skeptik** » 21 May 2006, 15:34

ToY wrote:Compact cities tend to exacerbate social problems. Here is some covert footage taken in the compact city of Billund in Denmark.

Hmm.. Ive heard of the Camberwell Carrot , but the Billund Barge Pole is new one on me...

So wheres the problem?

(other than the physical difficulty of lifting a spliff that big?)

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'Compact City' seem like a 'back to the future' idea. It's just the city as it was for several thousand years up to the invention of the railway, which allowed the development of suburbs, and modern road transport which sent suburb development into overdrive and allowed for zoning. Before that everybody ( except the very rich who could afford horse and carriage) lived within walking distance of their place of work, shops, church, recreation.

Even Pepys who was the top civil servant in the Admiralty would walk to work (Eventually he became rich enough to afford a carriage which as far as you can tell from his diary was mainly used for joyriding outside London at the weekends.) I've always liked Pepys idea of breakfast - a flagon of 'small' (lowish alcohol) beer taken in some pub or other during the walk to the office.

What is needed is the abandonment of zoning laws and the relaxation of planning. housing, light industry, shops and parks/allotments/smallholdings should be allowed to mix organically. Green zones have to be preserved, but all other uses should be allowed to mix together in pedstrianised 'clusters' - fed by delivery roads. As the law currently stands if I wanted to set up a shop in my front room I would not be allowed to - and what ' business' activity Im allowed to conduct at home is severely limited. The only limitations should be environmental - e.g I should not be allowed to emit noxious vapours or cause so much noise as to annoy the neighbours

Obviously heavy industry and noxious/potentially dangerous processes have to be separated from housing - nobody would want a coal powered electricity generating station or petroleum depot on their doorstep - but all officework and much light industrial can be done in proximity to housing withouth any problem, so long as neccessary precautions are taken.

I live right next door (separated by a passage about 4 ft wide) to a large printworks. Apart from the occasional whiff of ink out in the road when they have their gates open, and a stangely pleasant whoosh whoosh sound a bit like a paddle steamer in the distance (Large offset printer running) which I can just about hear sometimes, it gives me no problem.

Why are such industrial premises and small shops not incorporated into modern housing developments? - both printworks and my flat date to about 1900. Ive no doubt things will move in this direction to an extent, even without any deliberate encouragement of revised planning laws - Inner city areas will become more desirable places to live purely because the cost of commuting long distances by car is going to become prohibitive. The commuter belt will gradually shrink from the outside edge inwards towards the center - or it will mutate, breaking up into small communities with new functions other than just being a dormitory for the city.

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 21 May 2006, 16:30

you could always build something for about 10 000 with work leasure and homes in one area. This is an old idea but might find more relivance in tomorrows world.

Post by **mikepepler** » 21 May 2006, 20:14

isenhand wrote:you cold always build something for about 10 000 with work leasure and homes in one area. This is an old idea but might find more relivance in tomorrows world.

But do we have the energy to do any new building....?

Pippa · Post by **Pippa** » 21 May 2006, 21:18

mikepepler wrote:
isenhand wrote:you cold always build something for about 10 000 with work leasure and homes in one area. This is an old idea but might find more relivance in tomorrows world.
But do we have the energy to do any new building....?

I agree mikepepler, we are going to have to live with what we have now, forget choice (as we know it) reality is "we have no change - get used to it!"

Do your best every day, life is going to change faster than we can imagine, courage and acceptance will help (somewhat) as will friends (they will be rare) - trust in yourself and what you know is true. etc etc etc

skeptik · Post by **skeptik** » 21 May 2006, 21:36

mikepepler wrote:
isenhand wrote:you cold always build something for about 10 000 with work leasure and homes in one area. This is an old idea but might find more relivance in tomorrows world.
But do we have the energy to do any new building....?

Personally, I'm knackered but...

In England during the first quarter to March 2006 there were:
* 48,200 housing starts, up 19 per cent on the same period in 2005.
* 37,600 housing completions, up 12 per cent on the same period in 2005.

During 2005/06 in England there were:
* 184,700 starts, up 6 per cent on the figure for 2004/05
* 163,300 completions, up 5 per cent on the figure for 2004/05
* Comparing 2005/06 with 2004/05, all regions saw increases in completions except London where they fell back from the high level in 2004/05.

source:
http://www.gnn.gov.uk/Content/Detail.as ... wsAreaID=2

What our capability will be when we are definitely post-peak is entirely a matter of taste. At the moment I'm inclining towards a slow rather than a fast decline. I dont expect, like many (almost with gleeful anticipation in some cases) , to be knawing on Granny's shin bone by next Tuesday. I do see it as more as a, to steal a phrase, "Long Emergency".

As well as new building there is also the possiblity, currently ruled out by red tape, of re-purposing. I expect a lot of office blocks to be repurposed if the social pressure becomes great enough.

Pippa · Post by **Pippa** » 21 May 2006, 21:47

Appoximately 60 million people in the UK at the moment (according to concenus) and 20 million house standing now (plus god knows how many currently in constuction). Add to that the number of houses having extensions blar blar blar ...... just how many more buildings do we actually need for living in ........ what has happened to all the shoe factories and coton and wool mills and cloth factories and tanneries and bra and underware manufacturers and machine manufacturers and cow barns and milking sheds and ...........

skeptik · Post by **skeptik** » 21 May 2006, 22:03

Pippa wrote:Appoximately 60 million people in the UK at the moment (according to concenus) and 20 million house standing now (plus god knows how many currently in constuction). Add to that the number of houses having extensions blar blar blar ...... just how many more buildings do we actually need for living in ........ what has happened to all the shoe factories and coton and wool mills and cloth factories and tanneries and bra and underware manufacturers and machine manufacturers and cow barns and milking sheds and ...........

The main problem is that half of Poland and everybody in the UK who doesnt currently live in Notting Hill...wants to live in Notting Hill. ( I exagerate for effect, but you get the idea Im sure)

All those buildings you mentioned are gone because the jobs have been exported to Guangdong province and we can currently afford to knock the empty stuff down and build executive Barrett Homes instead - if the demand is there. But there are places oop North where they cant give old terraced housing away - nobody want it because there are no jobs. It's boarded up and rotting away.

Its a bubble thats bound to burst, eventually. Housing is always cyclical. It burst at the end of the 80's and its bound to again in the next few years, I guess. There's already a hissing sound coming from across the Atlantic as their housing market is starting to deflate.

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 22 May 2006, 06:22

mikepepler wrote:
isenhand wrote:you cold always build something for about 10 000 with work leasure and homes in one area. This is an old idea but might find more relivance in tomorrows world.
But do we have the energy to do any new building....?

Not really at the moment. We would need to do other restructuring before we get to that point. Minimise our energy usage, localise our production and more renewable for a start. It?s a case of laying the foundations first and then building up from there.

When the idea was first put forward we could have done it but we have wasted what we have had.

Post by **mikepepler** » 22 May 2006, 07:29

I suppose another problem is that all the builders and their machinery are going to be busy preparing for the Olympics, or at least that's what we're told. So, not much chance of starting any sustainable new buildings until about 2012..... unless we convince the people not working on the Olympics to stop building the things they normally do....

Pippa · Post by **Pippa** » 22 May 2006, 08:02

When I first realised the implications of Peak Oil I was very upset. I couldn't get my family to understand why I was so emotional so I decided to talk to my neighbour about the issues and get him "on my side". He has a very senior job (the exact title of which I can't remember). Anyhow, basically, using maths he works out the financial risks involved in all sorts of large projects and then gives huge companies reports on what they should do. Anyhow, I was discussing the whole issue and said during the conversation that in my opinion two projects in the UK currently in construction would soon be hailed to be the biggest follies of mankind - T5 (the new heathrow air terminal) and the Olympic village. It turns out he has been instrumental in advising on both these projects!!!!!!

What we discussed could be a 5 page essay but basically he takes no notice of resource depletion - its rubbish (apparantly) - whats that great PO saying - energy in, garbage out - couldn't agree more!

You will be glad (not!) to know that he is now happily getting involved in a new wind farm project and advising about the risks of that.............

isenhand · Post by **isenhand** » 22 May 2006, 10:36

Pippa wrote:He has a very senior job (the exact title of which I can't remember). Anyhow, basically, using maths he works out the financial risks involved in all sorts of large projects and then gives huge companies reports on what they should do.

Oh, now let me guess ?

Pippa wrote:
he takes no notice of resource depletion - its rubbish (apparantly)

He?s an economist?

skeptik · Post by **skeptik** » 22 May 2006, 11:02

Pippa wrote:
What we discussed could be a 5 page essay but basically he takes no notice of resource depletion - its rubbish (apparantly) - whats that great PO saying - energy in, garbage out - couldn't agree more!

Of course. He has to operate within the current paradigm or nobody would employ him. They'd regard him as a nutter. To an extent he is just telling these companies what they want to hear - that its ok to go ahead with their projects. He is also beiing paid to be their expert 'comfort blanket' or 'fall guy' - if anything goes wrong the company directors can duck some responsibility, point the finger and blame him.

The reason he 'takes no notice of resource depletion', is that it has been possible till now to offset the lowering of available resource grades (copper is now mined at hundreds of parts per million) via the use of improving technology and increasing ammounts of cheap energy.

Copper is currently produced from huge open caste pits employing gigantic diggers and 400 ton dumper trucks. The grade of copper ore being mined would not even have been recognised as copper ore a few hundred years ago - when the energy employed was what a man could exert with a pickaxe.

The question he's not asking is what happens to raw materials costs when the energy cost of producing them increases. I think the consensus in the peak oil community is that we are now past the peak of production of sweet light crude, so the days of ultra cheap crude (barring a global depression) are never coming back. Oil is going to become progressively more difficult and expnsive to produce, and it will increasingly be of the type which is difficult and expnsive to process into petroleum products. This will inevitably ripple through commodities pricing, especially effecting those (e.g. copper aluminium cement) where energy forms a high proportion of the production cost.

I imgine he's looking at the price of commodities like copper marching ever upwards and sweating slightly over the advice he gave about the Olympic Village and Heathrow - I imgine he's thinking... "Just a blip in the markets, surely. What goes up must come down"