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Shouldn't cities grow and fade though? If whatever attracted people is lost, it should shrink. The problem is it's really hard to shrink concrete. In Louisiana

Shouldn't cities grow and fade though? If whatever attracted people is lost, it should shrink. The problem is it's really hard to shrink concrete. In Louisiana after Katrina, the main solution was bulldozers. Think of them as the macrophages of the urban immune system.

Bartweiss 9y ago
> The problem is it's really hard to shrink concrete. A better summary in one line than most essays on the topic. We've put together a system that's unstable in the face of even modest shrinkage - and in some cases a mere failure to grow. The result is that even non-crisis change, like people moving to take better jobs, creates crisis results in shrinking cities. In the short term, promoting growth is probably an inescapable part of the solution. But if we keep up the pattern of debt-financing expansion by planning for growth, we're never going to do better than deferring the crisis. Long term, we need to build financially-stable cities and work out actual strategies for managed decline. 'Shrinking' and 'failing' are equivalent today, but that pattern needs to be broken if we're going to get out of crisis mode.
- ghaff 9y ago
  For that matter it's hard to grow concrete above a certain rate both for physical and political reasons. It's one of the problems causing the housing crunch in certain cities. Yes, in each case, there are specific issues. But, generally, when everyone and their dog suddenly wants to move into certain areas of certain cities that were actually declining in population not all that long ago, you're going to have issues.
rdiddly 9y ago
Yes, especially when a place has nothing intrinsically going for it, and is a sort of "nowhere" that people settle for, in order to be close (but ironically, not especially close) to an actual place, that they want to be in but can't afford. Unfortunately, the invention of the automobile didn't make geography irrelevant; some spots are just better than others. And far-flung exurbs that are solely bedroom communities for other places seem especially unsustainable/doomed. Another good oil-price spike, and they're once again cut off to a surprising degree, from any real, useful human economic activity. Survival of a place depends on finding & exploiting whatever it is that the location has uniquely. If society collapsed, Hemet could convert itself back to agriculture using some of your bulldozers. Though fuel might be hard to come by in that case. Plus, the people currently moving in in droves might be inclined away from that kind of hard work and more toward forming a roving band of predatory nomads based on ruthlessness, that raids other places. Mad Max!

Bartweiss 9y ago

> The problem is it's really hard to shrink concrete. A better summary in one line than most essays on the topic. We've put together a system that's unstable in the face of even modest shrinkage - and in some cases a mere failure to grow. The result is that even non-crisis change, like people moving to take better jobs, creates crisis results in shrinking cities. In the short term, promoting growth is probably an inescapable part of the solution. But if we keep up the pattern of debt-financing expansion by planning for growth, we're never going to do better than deferring the crisis. Long term, we need to build financially-stable cities and work out actual strategies for managed decline. 'Shrinking' and 'failing' are equivalent today, but that pattern needs to be broken if we're going to get out of crisis mode.

ghaff 9y ago
For that matter it's hard to grow concrete above a certain rate both for physical and political reasons. It's one of the problems causing the housing crunch in certain cities. Yes, in each case, there are specific issues. But, generally, when everyone and their dog suddenly wants to move into certain areas of certain cities that were actually declining in population not all that long ago, you're going to have issues.

rdiddly 9y ago

Yes, especially when a place has nothing intrinsically going for it, and is a sort of "nowhere" that people settle for, in order to be close (but ironically, not especially close) to an actual place, that they want to be in but can't afford. Unfortunately, the invention of the automobile didn't make geography irrelevant; some spots are just better than others. And far-flung exurbs that are solely bedroom communities for other places seem especially unsustainable/doomed. Another good oil-price spike, and they're once again cut off to a surprising degree, from any real, useful human economic activity. Survival of a place depends on finding & exploiting whatever it is that the location has uniquely. If society collapsed, Hemet could convert itself back to agriculture using some of your bulldozers. Though fuel might be hard to come by in that case. Plus, the people currently moving in in droves might be inclined away from that kind of hard work and more toward forming a roving band of predatory nomads based on ruthlessness, that raids other places. Mad Max!