As designed, the city would be home to 45,000 to 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses, primarily commercial and manufacturing facilities specialising in environmentally friendly products. In turn, more than 60,000 workers are expected to commute to the city daily.
Oh, I see, that sort of sustainable. Like “not very� sustainable. Perhaps they learnt from Humpty Dumpty, “It means what ever I choose it to mean. Nothing more, nothing less.�
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with. Cass Sunstein
60,000 workers commuting per day doesn't help the sustainability of a city but much depends on how they commute and from where. If they're commuting long distances in private IC engined cars that is not sustainable. If they commuting in renewable electricity powered trains or buses that is a tad more sustainable.
The Brazilian city of Curitaba, which was one of my inspirations in the early 1970s when I was getting into environmentalism, is another candidate "Sustainable "city although in recent years is has suffered a few set backs as "modern" politicians took over .
It's all unsustainable Ken. Electric cars are merely slightly less unsustainable than ICE cars. But, they are both unsustainable. It's just a matter of timescale to collapse now. I know you know this. But, it's important to just say it straight.
In fact, I would go further and say that there is nothing that can now be done that might be termed "sustainable". Not while the world has 7+ billion people and rising. So, one could actually mount an argument that the more outrageously unsustainable we are right now, the sooner will be the collapse and the sooner will be the population correction. In turn creating conditions for the earth's wider eco-system and, perhaps, our own species to recover all the sooner and perhaps from a higher base than might be the case if we stretch the misery out with "sustainability" initiatives.
I do know that it's all unsustainable , LJ, but if you tell people that they are doomed unless they do something they are more than likely to say "Sod it, I'm just going to carry on enjoying myself while I can" and not do anything for their children's future "because whatever I do myself won't change that future."
If you can convince them that there is a future and that they can contribute to it you can start them on the process to making life better for those who do survive Armageddon.
That's current informed thinking on the matter, anyway. As you can probably tell from the variety of approaches in my posts, I'm not 100% sure on this at the moment.
I can pile on as much doom as anyone, but it's easy with no kids and my only younger relatives will do OK for a bit of security. I try not to be madmax all the time because people with kids can get really chewed about the future. I worry a little for my wife, but she has family about if I was toast. I never worry about the human race because I didn't cause it. I would live in a fair, centrally planned, reasonable, sustainable world and I usually choose the good path.
If I have to go down fighting, my only wish is that I take out 2 rsoles who deserve it. But in reality it would likely be just 2 victims slugging it out.
kenneal - lagger wrote:I do know that it's all unsustainable , LJ, but if you tell people that they are doomed unless they do something they are more than likely to say "Sod it, I'm just going to carry on enjoying myself while I can" and not do anything for their children's future "because whatever I do myself won't change that future."
If you can convince them that there is a future and that they can contribute to it you can start them on the process to making life better for those who do survive Armageddon.
That's current informed thinking on the matter, anyway. As you can probably tell from the variety of approaches in my posts, I'm not 100% sure on this at the moment.
Other than drastically and rapidly reducing our global population, I don't believe there is anything that can be done Ken.
"Masdar City will be the latest of a small number of highly planned, specialized, research and technology-intensive municipalities that incorporate a living environment, similar to KAUST, Saudi Arabia or Tsukuba Science City, Japan."
It's a tad exclusive at a cost of 440,000 dollars a head so is scarcely a credible candidate for widespread replication in areas not floating on a sea of oil.
I am inclined to agree with this comment in the wikipedia article:-
"Others have expressed concern that it may become just a luxury development for the wealthy.[12] Nicolai Ouroussoff opined in The New York Times that Masdar is the culmination of the gated community concept: "the crystallization of another global phenomenon: the growing division of the world into refined, high-end enclaves and vast formless ghettos where issues like sustainability have little immediate relevance""
You could ask exactly when issues like sustainability will have relevance for those in "vast formless ghettos" ?
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
About the only sustainable lifestyle in that area is going back to the old Bedouin way of life and population numbers but with global warming even that way of life may no longer be sustainable.
kenneal - lagger wrote:About the only sustainable lifestyle in that area is going back to the old Bedouin way of life and population numbers but with global warming even that way of life may no longer be sustainable.
....and places like Masdar City will fold as soon as the external inputs are cut off.
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
kenneal - lagger wrote:About the only sustainable lifestyle in that area is going back to the old Bedouin way of life and population numbers but with global warming even that way of life may no longer be sustainable.
Climate change may change the boundaries or the Mid east deserts and the Sahara but there will always be an edge with sufficient water and grazing for the Bedouin lifestyle. They are the masters of making do with very little and I've heard that the very name Bedouin translates to "having nothing". They have a good shot at being the meek that inherit the earth after the rest of us pampered gut sacks are melted away like snow in June.
The deserts have been changing for as long as anyone can tell, and they will continue to change. The Arabian and African deserts did this as a naturral process, in the US the grasslands have been changed into deserts-in-waiting. Once the mono-culture crops fail, the land will be deserts.
To become an extremist, hang around with people you agree with. Cass Sunstein
Masdar City is almost certainly a silly idea that won't amount to anything. The reason I mentioned it is that it is AN example of a 'city' designed an built from scratch. In a previous life I met some of the guys responsible for the Masdar concept, it seemed a silly idea at then too.
clv101 wrote:Masdar City is almost certainly a silly idea that won't amount to anything. The reason I mentioned it is that it is AN example of a 'city' designed an built from scratch. In a previous life I met some of the guys responsible for the Masdar concept, it seemed a silly idea at then too.
Maybe I asked the wrong question.
Overconfidence, not just expert overconfidence but general overconfidence,
is one of the most common illusions we experience. Stan Robinson
