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1. Only something like 6% of the US is urban. The majority is pasture and forests, which arguably is almost entirely natural. The second largest use is crop lan

1. Only something like 6% of the US is urban. The majority is pasture and forests, which arguably is almost entirely natural. The second largest use is crop land. 2. Deciding where people can live is extremely tyrannical. Many people own this land, what’s the plan, take their ancestral home? That didn’t work out well any time in history. https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/december/a-primer-on-land-use-in-the-united-states/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2017/december/a-primer-... Every time I see comments like this I come to the same conclusion. My bet: you’re from a city, young, white collar, perhaps grew up in suburbs on a coast? Nothing wrong with that, but there’s a disconnect between those living in urban environments vs the country.

littlestymaar 5y ago
[flagged]
kiba 5y ago
2. Deciding where people can live is extremely tyrannical. Many people own this land, what’s the plan, take their ancestral home? That didn’t work out well any time in history. We are already deciding where people can live. It's called zoning, and zoning laws restrict how we can build our homes, where we live, and what transportation options we can use. My proposal seem tyrannical, yes, but I paired it with improving human welfare in the land we didn't cede to nature, and probably more freedom to build and live overall.
- octokatt 5y ago
  Crazy talk, what if we started tightening regulation so small communities stayed small, and were increasingly built and revitalized in ways that benefited both the community and the surrounding wildlife?
  - smegger001 5y ago
    you would create a horrible housing market where at first very few living in rural areas could aford a home there. killing the middle class in those towns, which would in turn cause the high earners (doctors lawers business owners)to leave as there would be no one that could afford their services, that would then drop the market after they left but all that would be left are the poor now with no jobs. essentially you would be creating a inverse-gentresizing where the middle class leaves then upperclass leaves creating a ghetto.
    - octokatt 5y ago
      I’m not sure where the leap from “create regulation” to “run-away housing prices” happens. That’ll happen in a growing city, but the effect tends to be a little lower in rural communities, particularly if regulation is tightened around expansion and lowered around densification.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > We are already deciding where people can live. It's called zoning, and zoning laws restrict how we can build our homes, where we live, and what transportation options we can use. Mostly in urban areas. You go to the rural places we're talking about, you might find the zoning is minimal to non-existent. Implementing zoning would absolutely be a new restriction on where people can live, what they can build on their property. People in those areas are often used to doing nearly whatever they like on their own property - short of things that'd be illegal wherever they did them. You're proposing to take that away?
- pdonis 5y ago
  > We are already deciding where people can live. It's called zoning Zoning is done in higher density areas, because it has to be. It's one of the tradeoffs you make when you choose to live in a higher density area. In rural areas, or even in smaller towns, you won't find much zoning. And people who choose to live in such areas are making different tradeoffs (for example, lack of easy access to many kinds of services that are easily available in higher density areas). Trying to command people who want to live in either kind of area to live in the other kind does not work out well. It's much better to just make sure that people who choose to live in each kind of area bear their share of the costs, and get their share of the benefits.
- AnthonyMouse 5y ago
  > My proposal seem tyrannical, yes, but I paired it with improving human welfare in the land we didn't cede to nature, and probably more freedom to build and live overall. Your proposal is upside down. We turn the suburbs into sprawl and take over nature because of restrictive zoning. People want to build a ten story building near the city, can't because it's illegal, so then they build ten one story buildings and use up ten times more land/nature.
titzer 5y ago
> 1. Only something like 6% of the US is urban. The majority is pasture and forests, which arguably is almost entirely natural. The second largest use is crop land. You have got to be joking, right? Just open Google Maps, switch to satellite mode, turn off labels and look at the US midwest, particularly Illinois. Any zoom level. Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, pretty much everywhere. It's a patchwork of farms. Basically all flat parts of the US look like this, except for extremely arid areas.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  654M acres pasture/range (35%) 538.6M acres forest (28%) 391.5M acres crop (21%) 168.6M acres special use (9%) 69.4M acres urban (4%) 68.9M acres miscellaneous (4%) Here is a discussion: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731823/the-u-s-has-nearly-1-9-billion-acres-of-land-heres-how-it-is-used https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731823/the-u-s-has-nearly-... Here is an article with a pretty graphic: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Combining pasture with range seems wrong, if "range" is open grazing land. That is wilderness, just with livestock on it keeping flammable undergrowth down.
xipho 5y ago
> The majority is pasture and forests, which arguably is almost entirely natural. The second largest use is crop land. "Natural" is a black hole for the purpose of debate. Pasture is natural if the number of livestock are controlled, otherwise look out. Monoculture forests (have you driven through the western mountains and seen the beetle damage) have issues. Crop land- a massive issue to consider, if you want to see the impact just surf the satellite views of the US on Google maps, huge swaths of land with not enough "natural" in between. It would take very little proportionally, but significant (impossible?) effort to build in true swaths of "natural" habitat throughout impacted areas.
wutwutwutwut 5y ago
> Deciding where people can live is extremely tyrannical. Can I live in your house?
matthewowen 5y ago
Over 40% of land in the US is public owned. The federal government owns almost half off all land in the western US. You don’t even need to turf people off the land they own - just choose to manage more of the land we already own as wilderness versus as a resource to be leased to ranchers and loggers.
- whiddershins 5y ago
  Ranchers and loggers make the land not ‘natural’? It’s still massive open space with lots of wildlife. Why let perfect be the enemy of good?
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    Moreover the lack of logging caused the last few years' massive, out of control wildfires.
    - ummonk 5y ago
      Loggers prefer to clearcut or cut down larger trees, which doesn't help with wildfires. Logging can be useful as forest management but it has to be properly regulated to achieve that.
- jakear 5y ago
  Have you seen ranching and logging land? In general it’s actually very well managed. I for one like lumber prices on the down low so a single digit percentages of managed forest land being clear cut per year in a sustainable growth cycle doesn’t concern me. And while I’m not one for beef myself, I love to watch cows graze and when cows are held at reasonable density the look and feel of the grazed land isn’t all that different from nearby “untouched” land (keep in mind animals are also grazing that “untouched” land!)
  - lettergram 5y ago
    We used to have bison and what not on prairie land. I personally view it as the natural state for much of the US. I am working on setting up my off-grid sustainable farm. Cattle are relatively easy to keep if you have some average for grazing.
ummonk 5y ago
"2. Deciding where people can live is extremely tyrannical. Many people own this land, what’s the plan, take their ancestral home? That didn’t work out well any time in history." I mean, most of the land ownership in the US was obtained by ethnically cleansing the native inhabitants from their ancestral lands just a couple centuries ago, so...

littlestymaar 5y ago

[flagged]

kiba 5y ago

2. Deciding where people can live is extremely tyrannical. Many people own this land, what’s the plan, take their ancestral home? That didn’t work out well any time in history. We are already deciding where people can live. It's called zoning, and zoning laws restrict how we can build our homes, where we live, and what transportation options we can use. My proposal seem tyrannical, yes, but I paired it with improving human welfare in the land we didn't cede to nature, and probably more freedom to build and live overall.

octokatt 5y ago
Crazy talk, what if we started tightening regulation so small communities stayed small, and were increasingly built and revitalized in ways that benefited both the community and the surrounding wildlife?
- smegger001 5y ago
  you would create a horrible housing market where at first very few living in rural areas could aford a home there. killing the middle class in those towns, which would in turn cause the high earners (doctors lawers business owners)to leave as there would be no one that could afford their services, that would then drop the market after they left but all that would be left are the poor now with no jobs. essentially you would be creating a inverse-gentresizing where the middle class leaves then upperclass leaves creating a ghetto.
  - octokatt 5y ago
    I’m not sure where the leap from “create regulation” to “run-away housing prices” happens. That’ll happen in a growing city, but the effect tends to be a little lower in rural communities, particularly if regulation is tightened around expansion and lowered around densification.
generalizations 5y ago
> We are already deciding where people can live. It's called zoning, and zoning laws restrict how we can build our homes, where we live, and what transportation options we can use. Mostly in urban areas. You go to the rural places we're talking about, you might find the zoning is minimal to non-existent. Implementing zoning would absolutely be a new restriction on where people can live, what they can build on their property. People in those areas are often used to doing nearly whatever they like on their own property - short of things that'd be illegal wherever they did them. You're proposing to take that away?
pdonis 5y ago
> We are already deciding where people can live. It's called zoning Zoning is done in higher density areas, because it has to be. It's one of the tradeoffs you make when you choose to live in a higher density area. In rural areas, or even in smaller towns, you won't find much zoning. And people who choose to live in such areas are making different tradeoffs (for example, lack of easy access to many kinds of services that are easily available in higher density areas). Trying to command people who want to live in either kind of area to live in the other kind does not work out well. It's much better to just make sure that people who choose to live in each kind of area bear their share of the costs, and get their share of the benefits.
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> My proposal seem tyrannical, yes, but I paired it with improving human welfare in the land we didn't cede to nature, and probably more freedom to build and live overall. Your proposal is upside down. We turn the suburbs into sprawl and take over nature because of restrictive zoning. People want to build a ten story building near the city, can't because it's illegal, so then they build ten one story buildings and use up ten times more land/nature.

titzer 5y ago

> 1. Only something like 6% of the US is urban. The majority is pasture and forests, which arguably is almost entirely natural. The second largest use is crop land. You have got to be joking, right? Just open Google Maps, switch to satellite mode, turn off labels and look at the US midwest, particularly Illinois. Any zoom level. Nebraska, Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, pretty much everywhere. It's a patchwork of farms. Basically all flat parts of the US look like this, except for extremely arid areas.

rootusrootus 5y ago
654M acres pasture/range (35%) 538.6M acres forest (28%) 391.5M acres crop (21%) 168.6M acres special use (9%) 69.4M acres urban (4%) 68.9M acres miscellaneous (4%) Here is a discussion: https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731823/the-u-s-has-nearly-1-9-billion-acres-of-land-heres-how-it-is-used https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/745731823/the-u-s-has-nearly-... Here is an article with a pretty graphic: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Combining pasture with range seems wrong, if "range" is open grazing land. That is wilderness, just with livestock on it keeping flammable undergrowth down.

xipho 5y ago

> The majority is pasture and forests, which arguably is almost entirely natural. The second largest use is crop land. "Natural" is a black hole for the purpose of debate. Pasture is natural if the number of livestock are controlled, otherwise look out. Monoculture forests (have you driven through the western mountains and seen the beetle damage) have issues. Crop land- a massive issue to consider, if you want to see the impact just surf the satellite views of the US on Google maps, huge swaths of land with not enough "natural" in between. It would take very little proportionally, but significant (impossible?) effort to build in true swaths of "natural" habitat throughout impacted areas.

wutwutwutwut 5y ago

> Deciding where people can live is extremely tyrannical. Can I live in your house?

matthewowen 5y ago

Over 40% of land in the US is public owned. The federal government owns almost half off all land in the western US. You don’t even need to turf people off the land they own - just choose to manage more of the land we already own as wilderness versus as a resource to be leased to ranchers and loggers.

whiddershins 5y ago
Ranchers and loggers make the land not ‘natural’? It’s still massive open space with lots of wildlife. Why let perfect be the enemy of good?
- nitrogen 5y ago
  Moreover the lack of logging caused the last few years' massive, out of control wildfires.
  - ummonk 5y ago
    Loggers prefer to clearcut or cut down larger trees, which doesn't help with wildfires. Logging can be useful as forest management but it has to be properly regulated to achieve that.
jakear 5y ago
Have you seen ranching and logging land? In general it’s actually very well managed. I for one like lumber prices on the down low so a single digit percentages of managed forest land being clear cut per year in a sustainable growth cycle doesn’t concern me. And while I’m not one for beef myself, I love to watch cows graze and when cows are held at reasonable density the look and feel of the grazed land isn’t all that different from nearby “untouched” land (keep in mind animals are also grazing that “untouched” land!)
- lettergram 5y ago
  We used to have bison and what not on prairie land. I personally view it as the natural state for much of the US. I am working on setting up my off-grid sustainable farm. Cattle are relatively easy to keep if you have some average for grazing.

ummonk 5y ago

"2. Deciding where people can live is extremely tyrannical. Many people own this land, what’s the plan, take their ancestral home? That didn’t work out well any time in history." I mean, most of the land ownership in the US was obtained by ethnically cleansing the native inhabitants from their ancestral lands just a couple centuries ago, so...