7 ms·

> The sole political/military push toward "personal car free" society, concentrated in megacities serve the purpose to easier control people: People being conc

> The sole political/military push toward "personal car free" society, concentrated in megacities serve the purpose to easier control people: People being concentrated in larger cities is mostly an outcome that comes from the free market. Higher population levels helps bring about higher levels of economic productivity, and people go where there are jobs. Having decent public transit -- and walk and bike options, for that matter -- in urban areas is just good policy. No conspiracies necessary, it's just good to have more options, especially more geometrically efficient ones when space is at a premium. Trying to ignore transit just gets you to LA's position, where they built mountains of freeways and got the worst traffic in the country in return, with poor options to bypass that traffic for most of the local population.

xte 8y ago
Without conspiracy can you tell the name of a sustainable and evolvable magacity? I found exactly NO one, not only of existing one's but also hypothetical in some architect's published ideas. The first and most important reason is space: a city can't evolve because the lack of space. While it might be possible in theory grow the city and after have people moving from the old part to a new one to demolish and rebuild the new one no city I know of have ever being able to do so in practice. I do not know big not-crowded not polluted cities. I do not know any "safe" city in terms of various kind of possible events from floods to earthquake to terrorist attack to military attacks... I do not want to say that's there are conspiracy-like factors to push towards megacities but I only see a big prevalence of negative things than positive, so no reason to push nor want to be in even small cities...
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > Without conspiracy can you tell the name of a sustainable and evolvable magacity? What does this even mean? > so no reason to push nor want to be in even small cities... Well it's easy, cities are way more economically productive than rural areas, so they create more jobs. Creating effective businesses benefits from a larger local market both in terms of hiring specialists of various sorts, and also in terms of targeting customers (for local businesses like restaurants). If this wasn't true, you'd see more companies like Google dumping their HQ's into rural areas with cheap housing and cheap wages. They don't though, because their workers don't want to live out there.
  - xte 8y ago
    My English is poor so sometimes I write convoluted sentences since I do not know how to construct them, sorry, I mean did you know ANY sustainable reasonably big city? I do not know any. Cities might seems to be more productive since our developed countries switch from production to tertiary sector but that's thanks to the rest of productive world that's now in easter Europe, Asia, Africa, South America etc. So in general cities are not more economically productive, it only offer more options per land area since there is more concentration but with the exception of tertiary sector you simply can't have industry, agriculture, breeding, ... in cities and well... We all need to eat, we all use industry-made product from bottom up. The problem of "countryside" is the concentration of alternatives per land area, you may have nearby a sole productive and attractive activity, if something happen to it you might have to go far away to found another option. In cities being concentrated you normally have more options nearby. However this is most a matter of economic organization that's still do not understand to much how to use territory than a mere thing from being in the countryside itself. Perhaps the most sustainable model we actually have in place is the Riviera one's with enough space to evolve and enough concentration of opportunities. Google HQ is a tertiary sector activity and require hi-speed connections so a city is a nice place for it, however did you know where most data centers are? Did you know where we produce electricity for them? Concrete, Steel, Plastic, ... that is needed for them? That's a big point that many today forget but in case of real crisis that's represent a real and dangerous problem because if producer are not anymore in your country and are not anymore willing to work/commerce with you, you are TFU. That's a thing USA and even more UK should have learned from China, we western Europeans should have learned from Easter EU...
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      > I mean did you know ANY sustainable reasonably big city? Big cities are more sustainable than suburban or rural areas, not less. Per capita energy usage in those cities is lower. > in general cities are not more economically productive Yes, they are. You can't just handwave away that their economic output is higher because you don't like the particular sectors that are more popular in cities.

xte 8y ago

Without conspiracy can you tell the name of a sustainable and evolvable magacity? I found exactly NO one, not only of existing one's but also hypothetical in some architect's published ideas. The first and most important reason is space: a city can't evolve because the lack of space. While it might be possible in theory grow the city and after have people moving from the old part to a new one to demolish and rebuild the new one no city I know of have ever being able to do so in practice. I do not know big not-crowded not polluted cities. I do not know any "safe" city in terms of various kind of possible events from floods to earthquake to terrorist attack to military attacks... I do not want to say that's there are conspiracy-like factors to push towards megacities but I only see a big prevalence of negative things than positive, so no reason to push nor want to be in even small cities...

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> Without conspiracy can you tell the name of a sustainable and evolvable magacity? What does this even mean? > so no reason to push nor want to be in even small cities... Well it's easy, cities are way more economically productive than rural areas, so they create more jobs. Creating effective businesses benefits from a larger local market both in terms of hiring specialists of various sorts, and also in terms of targeting customers (for local businesses like restaurants). If this wasn't true, you'd see more companies like Google dumping their HQ's into rural areas with cheap housing and cheap wages. They don't though, because their workers don't want to live out there.
- xte 8y ago
  My English is poor so sometimes I write convoluted sentences since I do not know how to construct them, sorry, I mean did you know ANY sustainable reasonably big city? I do not know any. Cities might seems to be more productive since our developed countries switch from production to tertiary sector but that's thanks to the rest of productive world that's now in easter Europe, Asia, Africa, South America etc. So in general cities are not more economically productive, it only offer more options per land area since there is more concentration but with the exception of tertiary sector you simply can't have industry, agriculture, breeding, ... in cities and well... We all need to eat, we all use industry-made product from bottom up. The problem of "countryside" is the concentration of alternatives per land area, you may have nearby a sole productive and attractive activity, if something happen to it you might have to go far away to found another option. In cities being concentrated you normally have more options nearby. However this is most a matter of economic organization that's still do not understand to much how to use territory than a mere thing from being in the countryside itself. Perhaps the most sustainable model we actually have in place is the Riviera one's with enough space to evolve and enough concentration of opportunities. Google HQ is a tertiary sector activity and require hi-speed connections so a city is a nice place for it, however did you know where most data centers are? Did you know where we produce electricity for them? Concrete, Steel, Plastic, ... that is needed for them? That's a big point that many today forget but in case of real crisis that's represent a real and dangerous problem because if producer are not anymore in your country and are not anymore willing to work/commerce with you, you are TFU. That's a thing USA and even more UK should have learned from China, we western Europeans should have learned from Easter EU...
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    > I mean did you know ANY sustainable reasonably big city? Big cities are more sustainable than suburban or rural areas, not less. Per capita energy usage in those cities is lower. > in general cities are not more economically productive Yes, they are. You can't just handwave away that their economic output is higher because you don't like the particular sectors that are more popular in cities.