Are Cities Completely Jeffed?

[Jane]

Hi,

I just wanted to conduct a small opinion poll of what others think about the viability of sustainable cities / sustainable urban design come PO?

I've half been thinking of doing a Masters, or similar, in something like the Kings College Sustainable Cities MSc https://wwwcache1.kcl.ac.uk/schools/ssp ... ties.html

I know the fate of cities is often lamented on here and I do see the problems with food growing, over-crowding, unemployment, etc. It just seems to me sometimes that if the cities don't work, a lot of the towns/villages will be over-run or caused further problems by the general break-down in city infrastructure spilling over into the rest of the country e.g. any remaining supply lines grinding to a halt. It seems as well, the transition towns are good but all it takes is for a few hundred/thousand people to remember when TSHTF ' I read somewhere a while ago about a community in X ready for all this, let's go!'. Can anyone comment on the viability of roof-gardens, micro-wind and solar in urban environments, etc? I know this would be a massive undertaking and time could prove too short.

I guess as well this stems from a sort of reluctance to accept I might need to 'knuckle down in the country', which for a 26 year old, breezy gal seems a bit of a leap at the moment! Maybe I'm having an ostrich-head-in-the-sand day

Input appreciated thanks.

[UndercoverElephant]

Can anyone comment on the viability of roof-gardens...

Non-starter in most cities. I live in Brighton, which is trying to be a transition city. Most of the houses, like mine, were built in the 19th century and were designed to have slate roofs. Since then, nearly all of the slate tiles have been replaced by concrete tiles and the additional weight causes all sorts of problems. Basically, the houses aren't built to take any more additional weight on the roof. If I tried to build a roof-garden, my house would collapse.

[clv101]

It just seems to me sometimes that if the cities don't work, a lot of the towns/villages will be over-run or caused further problems by the general break-down in city infrastructure spilling over into the rest of the country e.g. any remaining supply lines grinding to a halt.

Bingo. We simply HAVE to make cities work. If cities fail then it's game over and there's not much point in planning for that. An M.Sc. in Sustainable Cities sounds like one of the most important/useful things a 26 year old breezy gal could do. The mothership has landed.

[fifthcolumn]

Rural areas will fare worst in the beginning stages of peak oil.
Only those with farms will be able to get by.

Those who currently are able to live out in the sticks and commute to work will find this way of life untenable.

Only the close in suburbs (the old market garden ring) will be workable.
Those who live in "modern" suburbs with tiny little gardens will be screwed. Those who live in older suburbs which stilll have existing transport infrastructure like trains, along with large gardens will do fine.

Cities which are built on rivers or have large serviceable sea ports, good sewage systems and plenty of available WATER will do fine and as usual, this is where the jobs will be.

Cities which have no water will be screwed.

[chris25]

Cities can work but they have to be small in size. They need adjacent rural areas where farming is prevelant and sensible, sustainable transport networks to import this food.

They need green areas where veg can be grown.

Cities provide an excellent oppurtunity for grey water catchment areas- every house should collect its own water for garden use, for boiling/purifying and to store for times of drought/infrastructure collapse.

Sensible construction and insulation can rid the need of heating energy. Electrical energy could be gained from local hydroelectrical system on rivers (as most cities are built near rivers). Other methods such as solar crystal and wind electrical power are not to be trusted fully, as they are unreliable and unsustainable (maintenance issues) but glass solar panels for heating water is an excellent idea

Every street needs local jobs, shops and pubs.

In reality it aint gonna work. London will burn (8 million people anyone?) but smaller towns may in the long term flourish if they follow the above criteria.

[fifthcolumn]

Cities can work but they have to be small in size. They need adjacent rural areas where farming is prevelant and sensible, sustainable transport networks to import this food.

They need green areas where veg can be grown.

Yes, though the "small" I'd not necessarily agree with.
We're not going back to a "no electricity/no machinery" lifestyle any time soon. Looking at ancient Rome as a worst case scenario, the province of Italia had 10 million people with eight cities of a hundred thousand and Rome itself had a little over a million people. None of these cities had modern transports infrastructure but all of them had a decent supply of clean water and decent sewage.
London might be a little dicey given that the south east has water problems. Otherwise, the rest of the UK cities have a decent chance of being tolerable if not a whole lot of fun.

The only caveat is that we currently have sixty five million people on an island that should only be able to support around ten million if we were Romans. The positive aspect is that we have the ability to make fertiliser. There is also a very, very good possibility that with large scale use of composting and TERRA PRETA that we could conceivably feed everyone even if we didn't have industrial agriculture.

Cities provide an excellent oppurtunity for grey water catchment areas- every house should collect its own water for garden use, for boiling/purifying and to store for times of drought/infrastructure collapse.

Yes.

Sensible construction and insulation can rid the need of heating energy. Electrical energy could be gained from local hydroelectrical system on rivers (as most cities are built near rivers). Other methods such as solar crystal and wind electrical power are not to be trusted fully, as they are unreliable and unsustainable (maintenance issues) but glass solar panels for heating water is an excellent idea

OK. I'll quiblle with the "sustainability" of renewables but in broad sweep I agree.

Every street needs local jobs, shops and pubs.

Yes.

In reality it aint gonna work. London will burn (8 million people anyone?) but smaller towns may in the long term flourish if they follow the above criteria.

OK Here we part ways. But only a little.
I think London COULD work if they built the necessary infrastructure to keep it in fresh water. Otherwise the other cities are capable of working assuming we can get enough food to sustain our large population on this little island.

[Adam1]

There are cities and there are cities of course. I think London will contract in population because there will less work here; particularly because the City dominates the economy so much.

Even if the population drops to (plucking a figure out of thin air) 4m, it will still be a complex entity to sustain. I imagine that a lot of effort will be put into keeping the show on the road.

As always, it depends on how fast the post peak decline is and how well we respond when the peak oil penny finally drops.

Jane, if the course interests you and the stuf they are teaching isn't completely divorced from the reality of limits, then go for it. Even if the biggest cities get into difficulties, most houses are situated in urban settings and your course material will still be relevant.

[clv101]

One point to remember is that even in really bad situations - think Baghdad, New Orleans, Mogadishu, San Francisco after the earthquake, Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombs... the city survived. They are tough, it takes a lot to kill a city (Pompeii).

Also, in some of the poorest and harshest countries in the world, areas totally dominated by resource shortage and overpopulation, the cities are growing not shrinking.

If I had to bet the future of mankind on cities or rural communities, I?d bet on the city.

[Miss Madam]

Just putting my old archaeologist hat on for a second, when you look at the Roman collapse and the so called 'Dark Ages', population moved to cities because they were easier to defend. You can even see farming moved to within the city walls by the unexplained 'black layer' of humus (is that spelt right? I mean organic matter not chickpea puree ) on formerly paved areas. Of course, in them days cities had walls. But what little down the line trade continued from afar, was conducted in large urban centres - it was just too risky for merchants to venture too far out in the hinterland, I can certainly see this as being plausible, potentially, in a darker future. I'd go for the MSc, we are crying out for people with training like that, where I work. There is a lot of money in regen', and I think that will continue for a few years yet, especially in the Olympics areas of London.

[Blue Peter]

Just putting my old archaeologist hat on for a second, when you look at the Roman collapse and the so called 'Dark Ages', population moved to cities because they were easier to defend.

Were there no villages?


Peter.

[RenewableCandy]

Hmm. York has walls...

[Miss Madam]

Just putting my old archaeologist hat on for a second, when you look at the Roman collapse and the so called 'Dark Ages', population moved to cities because they were easier to defend.

Were there no villages?


Peter.

They appear to be, in what is a wonderful euphemism for 'we're buggered if we can find them' - largely "archaeologically invisible" (don'tcha love academic language ) during the period. I.e. mainly constructed from organic matter, and with little in the way of metal goods and traded items which could have survived in the archaeological record. So they probably existed, but would have been dirt poor. Anyone with significant money was holed up behind the city walls, or a rural warlord....

[Erik]

Non-starter in most cities.

Roof-gardens are a non-starter for houses with slanting rooves, but there is plenty of flat and structurally sound roof space in cities which is currently used for nothing. I have 160 m2 of flat roof above my flat which is looking greener by the day

Apart from the weight/structural issue of the roof, some problems I have either had with roof-gardening or could envisage, are:
- Purchasing, transporting and lifting all that material up to the roof. I've been building up slowly, growing everything out of containers, and I haven't had to make any large scale changes to the terrace, such as improving the existing water-proofing.
- Water supply. Rainwater collection means using up valuable space, but can be integrated into a greenhouse/shed arrangement. We don't get a lot of rain round here but I have a riser from the water supply which goes up to the terrace. If that ever gets cut off then I'll just have to resort to pillaging and marauding around the local countryside along with everyone else.
- Wind. Gets pretty windy four floors up, enough to cause some serious damage to your plants.
- Difficult to set up any serious composting arrangement - not enough space or raw materials, so I'm dependent to some extent on local organic compost suppliers.

Advantages:
- No ants or snails or rabbits or rodents. Yet! (plenty of birds though)
- Even if the space is limited and the annual "harvest" from one roof is only enough to keep 1 small child fed for a week , every little counts, and it can provide a city dweller with valuable food-growing experience which may come in handy later if cities do fail and we have to move out into the country.

Link to a great roof-garden project in Reading that someone once recommended on another thread:
http://www.risc.org.uk/garden/

[Vortex]

Cities simply HAVE to survive or the game is over.

I envisage industrial scale farming a la 1984.

Note that by this I do not necessarily mean farming as today - just very organised and controlled farming using whatever resources - including human labour - that are available.

This means that there will be at least two social classes in the countryside - the bosses/officials & the field labourers.

Maybe the locals will form a third class providing services to the other two.

No doubt food quality & quantity will fall, so city gardens will attempt to provide nice extras.

The rural dwellers will probably be OK for food 'tho!

Modern authoritarianism with the associated support of communications & firearms etc might allow this sort of system to work ... unlike in the Roman era.

[phobos]

- Difficult to set up any serious composting arrangement - not enough space or raw materials, so I'm dependent to some extent on local organic compost suppliers.

Erik something you may be interested in

http://www.wigglywigglers.co.uk/shop/fo ... JiWT4FA608