I like cities (depending on the city). I like the rural life too, I
really don't know which I prefer. Both, I suppose.
Some comments below...
Pannir,
I feel the same as you. The big cities ruin the ecology. The whole
premis that millions of people should live jam packed in a city is
wrong.
Cities artificially compensate for the massive overtaxing of the
ecology by building waste water treatment plants, storm water run
off systems, concrete covered streets, and centralized energy
distributions systems.
The air stinks, the water has to be clorinated to be made safe,
citizens must travel miles to get a gallon of milk or a loaf of
bread.
The total cost of living in a city is subsidized by taxing non-urban
residents. The sole benefit to mankind for living in a city is
incorrectly identified as efficiency.
More jobs, more resources, less transportations costs, less fuel
burned, less air pollution, but that is all bull. Everything needed
to live in a city must be transported into, and within, the city.
I have lived both in big cities and in the countryside. I now live
one mile outside of a small rural town in northern Wisconsin. My one
and only trip to New York city left me wondering why anyone would
live there. It was filthy, noisy, crowded, most of the streets were
in disrepair, the subway trains seemed to drag themselves along the
tracks, facades were falling off the buildings (and killing
pedestrians below), the only good thing I found was the ability to
get great food at any hour of the day or night, but that is little
compensation.
Big cities are artificially sustained entities. Take Chicago for
example. Of all the tax revenue collected by the state of Illinois,
90% goes to Cook county (Chicago). The rest of the state must live
off the remaining 10%. If cities are so efficient, why must they be
so heavily subsidized? The reality is they are not efficient; they
are really inefficient public works projects.
I don't think they necessarily have to be inefficient. In this thread
we've been discussing food supplies for cities, among other things. I
think cities can supply very much more of their own food than they
currently do, and there are a lot of cities that can demonstrate that
- or, perhaps more often, the cities themselves can't, but the
inhabitants can, the community itself rather than officialdom. I
pointed at our City farms pages at Journey to Forever:
http://journeytoforever.org/cityfarm.html
City farms
http://journeytoforever.org/cityfarm_link.html
Resources for city farms
I was also talking about urban farming in Japan - very extensive! Or
widespread, rather, actually it's very intensive.
I'm not the only one who thinks this, a lot of people do. They've
just been discussing chickens over at the COMFOOD group, which deals
with food security:
From: Sympa user [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of HERBERT DREYER
Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2005 10:58 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: [COMFOOD:] chicken
You know, I once read that LA eats 7 to 8 million chickens a
weekend! Of course that was a few years ago.
From your way off target comfoodie (w apologies to my friend Michele)
Herb Dreyer
----- Original Message -----
From: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Chicken is the most popular meat consumed in America. I am just
guessing but probably 99% of the population eats it.
Ken Hargesheimer
From: "Hank Herrera" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 11:39:48 -0500
Subject: RE: [COMFOOD:] chicken
Using the latest available population estimates and per capita
consumption estimates:
In the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana Metropolitan Statistical
Area the population in 2002 was 12,694,396.
The US per capita consumption of chicken in 2003 was 82 pounds.
If one chicken weighs out at 4 pounds, that is 20.5 chickens per person.
Thus we can estimate that the residents of the Los Angeles MSA
consume 260.2 million chickens per year, 5 million chickens per
week, and 715,000 chickens per day.
In terms of pounds LA MSA residents buy 2.9 million pounds of chicken daily.
If chicken sells retail at $1.99 per pound in LA, then LA residents
spend $5.7 million daily for chicken.
How many small chicken farmers will that daily expenditure support?
Hank
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 14:22:55 EST
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [COMFOOD:] chickens per day
Hank,
Great thinking. I sincerely believe that one day in the future,
small farmers will be providing a very large percentage of the food
to a city. The truth is, most cities have the land to produce much
of their food right now. The problem is that most people can not
think in terms of farming. People are so removed from agriculture.
When I was young my mother would telling me that if I ever used a
"four-letter dirty-word" she would wash out my mouth with soap. In
the 21st century, there is an 11-letter dirty-word. It is spelled
A-G-R-I-C-U-L-T-U-R-E. Even some agriculture colleges are ashamed
of it. Look at the name changes.
Ken Hargesheimer
I discuss this in my workshops and tell the farmers:
People must understand that being a farmer, granjero, fazendeiro,
campesino, fermier, is honorable.
Ken's right!
This is his website by the way, well worth a look:
http://www.minifarms.com/
Minifarms Network - Organic, Biointensive, Raised Bed Agriculture
Once you start looking at it that way, a lot of other city
inefficiencies could be made more self-reliant and independent. And
friendly. Transport and energy are surely among them.
Best wishes
Keith
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