‘… unsustainable energy consumption will be stripped back… Given there is enough fossil fuels to last us until God retires, and then there is nuclear, the term ‘unsustainable’ is nonsense.
However. Less energy is used per capita in cities than spread out populations. Obviously, less need for transport of any kind if shops, businesses, entertainment, work, etc are nearby. Cities are warmer, requiring less heat energy during Winter. High rise buildings are cheaper overall in cost, resources and energy required for construction than scattered dwellings, ditto for services: electricity, gas, drainage, phones, water, roads, transportation.
Cities result in better and less land use leaving much more room for Homoattenborous to roam wild and Village Man to isolate himself.
And whilst it is the case that city-life is not everybody’s cup of tea, a lot of people do like to live in cities.
Andrew Best
4 years ago
Lovely leave the city, go to a town and spend thousands of your pittance traveling back to the city to work Another piece of lifestyle advice from a rich man
And complain bitterly that the taxpayer is not paying more to subsidise your season rail ticket.
Fraser Bailey
4 years ago
Good article to some extent, and I have been thinking much the same myself for some years now.
But surely this is largely a function of age. My godson was just as keen to get to London last year as I was all those years ago. I now do all I can to avoid the place, and the small towns of north Staffordshire and the Peak District seem to be a miracle of peaceful reason.
That said, there is a madness in the way that cities like London are growing in terms of population. I know Amsterdam very well and the same is happening there, although at least you are safe on a bike. And with the internet (assuming it works and is powerful enough) you no longer need to be in the city. I have worked largely from home for over 20 years and now consider commuting to be a form of utter madness.
Nicholas Taylor
3 years ago
Barney Norris refers to a mobile population driven by unsustainable economic forces, but what exactly are ‘forces’? I liken them to a head of water running downhill. To ascribe all economic behaviour to supply would be simplistic, but no more so than to ascribe it all to demand, as conventionally. The piece is unavoidably ambiguous about the role of mobility. Digital communications combined with infection risks might encourage what UWE social researcher Glenn Lyons terms ‘Global Locals’. In fact, over half his research community favour this prediction, while only a third expect a ‘Travellers Paradise’. However, one might have predicted similarly with the invention of the telephone, or after the ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic. Cheap oil, the low economic inertia and high leverage of motorised transport, and the inherent need for supervision under division of labour, have combined with inexorable logic to produce pressure on immobile resources and open-plan offices surrounded by acres of car-parks fed by expressways. Where risk is not immediate, moral rectitude around the virus is already wearing thin. Utopias tend to be static, and we all crave some stability. But the extractive socio-economics to which the author refers are dynamic. The task, when everything returns to ‘normal’, is to control a torrent when new lines of least resistance keep opening up. So I am not optimistic. But re-imagining lifestyles is good in itself, even if it only casts light on what underlies present behaviour.
‘… unsustainable energy consumption will be stripped back… Given there is enough fossil fuels to last us until God retires, and then there is nuclear, the term ‘unsustainable’ is nonsense.
However. Less energy is used per capita in cities than spread out populations. Obviously, less need for transport of any kind if shops, businesses, entertainment, work, etc are nearby. Cities are warmer, requiring less heat energy during Winter. High rise buildings are cheaper overall in cost, resources and energy required for construction than scattered dwellings, ditto for services: electricity, gas, drainage, phones, water, roads, transportation.
Cities result in better and less land use leaving much more room for Homoattenborous to roam wild and Village Man to isolate himself.
And whilst it is the case that city-life is not everybody’s cup of tea, a lot of people do like to live in cities.
Lovely
leave the city, go to a town and spend thousands of your pittance traveling back to the city to work
Another piece of lifestyle advice from a rich man
And complain bitterly that the taxpayer is not paying more to subsidise your season rail ticket.
Good article to some extent, and I have been thinking much the same myself for some years now.
But surely this is largely a function of age. My godson was just as keen to get to London last year as I was all those years ago. I now do all I can to avoid the place, and the small towns of north Staffordshire and the Peak District seem to be a miracle of peaceful reason.
That said, there is a madness in the way that cities like London are growing in terms of population. I know Amsterdam very well and the same is happening there, although at least you are safe on a bike. And with the internet (assuming it works and is powerful enough) you no longer need to be in the city. I have worked largely from home for over 20 years and now consider commuting to be a form of utter madness.
Barney Norris refers to a mobile population driven by unsustainable economic forces, but what exactly are ‘forces’? I liken them to a head of water running downhill. To ascribe all economic behaviour to supply would be simplistic, but no more so than to ascribe it all to demand, as conventionally. The piece is unavoidably ambiguous about the role of mobility. Digital communications combined with infection risks might encourage what UWE social researcher Glenn Lyons terms ‘Global Locals’. In fact, over half his research community favour this prediction, while only a third expect a ‘Travellers Paradise’. However, one might have predicted similarly with the invention of the telephone, or after the ‘Spanish’ flu pandemic. Cheap oil, the low economic inertia and high leverage of motorised transport, and the inherent need for supervision under division of labour, have combined with inexorable logic to produce pressure on immobile resources and open-plan offices surrounded by acres of car-parks fed by expressways. Where risk is not immediate, moral rectitude around the virus is already wearing thin. Utopias tend to be static, and we all crave some stability. But the extractive socio-economics to which the author refers are dynamic. The task, when everything returns to ‘normal’, is to control a torrent when new lines of least resistance keep opening up. So I am not optimistic. But re-imagining lifestyles is good in itself, even if it only casts light on what underlies present behaviour.