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Cities Built on Fertile Lands Affect Climate
Devar writes "While cities provide vital habitat for human beings to thrive, it appears U.S. cities have been built on the most fertile soils, lessening contributions of these lands to Earth's food web and human agriculture, according to a study by NASA researchers and others. Though cities account for just 3 percent of continental U.S. land area, the food and fiber that could be grown there rivals current production on all U.S. agricultural lands, which cover 29 percent of the country. Studies like this one may lead to smarter urban-growth strategies in the future."
Cities grow up where people first settle, and people first settle where the land is fertile.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
My little town is build on a diver delta in the Pacific Northwest - it's some of the most fertile soil I've ever seen, and the fact that's it's low in elevation makes for great growing seasons.
Out 20x10' kitchen garden could produce almost enough colories for two people to live on for a quarter of a year. The potato yeilds are just nuts - and we're not even trying hard.
But Civilization has tought us that the best tactic is to build your cities on fertile ground, thus assuring a free bonus to food production.
Maybe NASA should investigate the effects of granary production, and in-city irrigation.
Of course, this research is of no consequence. Governments are not going to moderate their behavior in response to this knowledge when it's much easier to maintain the status quo and drag out that old line, "More study is needed."
How Politicians Lie: http://www.factcheck.org/
This has been known for a long time, in the early 19th century, Coleridge published a poem about Xanadu - see the following snippets:
:-)
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree,
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
So, we see early in the poem, beautiful, fertile ground. Later in the same poem, we read that:
It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice !
So, this research is not novel, such climate change has been known for almost two centuries
Studies like this one may lead to smarter urban-growth strategies in the future.
Right. In most places people know about smarter growth strategies. Rarely does growth hinge on anything but the perceived path toward the greatest short term wealth growth for the land owner. I'm guessing that maximization of soil production will be secondary to air quality, traffic, and many other concerns.
After we exterminate the native Martion population we will have plenty room to grow all of the steakfruit we can eat.
Their Mission Statement:
We help build communities from the ground up by promoting sustainable urban land and horticultural practices to grow food and reduce hunger. We carry out our mission by working with volunteers and community groups building community gardens and orchards.
Their website.
One would think that this would be something that it doesn't really necessitate a study to prove. Obviously cities are going to be built on fertile ground because in order for a city to grow, it must have food. It hasn't really been until this century until people could move places where there was no abundant source of food, or especially water.
Also, no one really ever sets out to build a big city, they just grown from smaller cities that grew from smaller settlements.
"We have deserts, we just don't live there. You wanna eat? MOVE TO WHERE THE FOOD IS!"
So, in light of this study, what should we do? Tear down existing cities and rebuild them where things don't grow? What about that minor issue of water supply?
Never mind that every year, we manage to increase our crop yeilds on the same amount of land because of superior agricultural technology and methods.
Sorry, but I see another scaremongering study to push one interest groups agenda here. Anti-growth, more than likely. And the notion that because our cities sit on fertile land we're contributing to world hunger when we outproduce just about everybody, well, that's just horseshit. We export quite a bid of food already. So what, are we still not doing our part? That's the tone I get from the article.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
By the way, this place where I live is called "poison water" -- yeah, that's it, "poison water."
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Check into Paul Soleri. He proposed high-density small-footprint city-buildings called "arcologies". His books even show how little room a city like L.A. would take if it were built as an arcology.
It does not seem feasible at this time: the one in the link above is very small and is being built at a snail's pace. Arcologies of the scale Soleri has envisioned have only appeared in the fiction Larry Niven has done in collaboration with other authors. ("Oath of Fealty" and the Dream Park novels)
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I know that here in NYC we used to have loads Long Island potatoes in the stores. Now we don't have any. I am not talking about 50 years ago, I am talking about 15 or 20.
Maybe the potatoes in in the store are from Long Island just not labeled as such. Maybe they have been out competed because of cheap transportation costs but mostly I think it is because as you drive out on I-495 (The Long Island Expressway) you see miles and miles of suburbs most of which used to be farms.
The lack of urban planning in America has been a major irritation to me since I moved temporarily outside of New York City. I lived in the Tidewater area of Virginia for a few years and in Stutgart Germany for a half a year.
Stutgart was laid out as little clumps of Urban areas mixed into farm, woodlots and vinyards. There were vinyards in the middle of the city. Plus you could walk or bike ride for miles on trails from one part of town to the other and there were trains everywhere.
New York City is very dense. The whole world should not be like that, but it definitely should not be like the miles and miles, 50+ miles of suburb that surround it. The worst is places like Raleigh Triangle that has no city, just urban sprawl alon highways. I haven't been to California, but I get the impression that large sections of it are like that also.
Cities and food production don't have to be mutually exclusive. We can live or work and grow food in the same place with RoofTop Gardens.
The last time I checked, the US government still pays people NOT to grow food because we have more than we need. When farm subsidies disappear, then I'll start worrying about urban sprawl affecting crop production.
The problem of world hunger cannot simply be solved by producing more food. You have to get that food to whoever needs it, before it spoils, and in a way that is cost effective. That's a much more difficult problem than just growing more corn.
Let's do the second thing first. The point of the article is not that people build on fertile land. The point is that in doing so, they affect the environment and the food supply.
Second, it's not as simple as saying, "that's where people want to live, too bad." Silicon Valley is built on the best farmland in California, possibly in North America. The early electronic factories didn't come here for easy access to food -- they came here to be near Stanford and the Moffett Naval Air Station. Later high-tech companies came here to be near existing high-tech companies, and to tap the labor pool. There were urban centers they could have built in, but farmland was cheaper.
The huge growth that followed was inevitable, and even desireable. But it could have been a lot better managed. Swathes of orchards could have been set aside, which would have made the Valley a nicer place to live, helped recharge the water table (lots of droughts here) and fought smog (trees suck up a lot of air polution). Instead of building willy-nilly, housing could have been concentrated in logical locations connected by heavy-duty transit corridors, including mass transit (the traffic jams are horrendous, and even if there were money for more freeways, there's no place to put them).
Back in the 60s and 70s, when things started to ramp up, the County government tried to do something like the above. But county-wide planning would have eliminated the huge profits of real-estate developers. So they persuaded various little towns, some of them little more than railroad stops, to annex huge patches of land, exempting them from county planning.
There's a street that runs on a rise at the side end of the valley, called Blossom Hill Road. The name comes from the fact that driving their in the spring brought you face to face with a shocking amount of floral color. Now all you see is urban sprawl. I never go there.
People in the world aren't hungry because evil Americans build cities on fertile land. People in the world are hungry because they live under the thumb of brutal dictators. You want to feed the world? Promote freedom and capitalism around the world.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
The essential problem on Long Island is that farmers cant afford to grow there, or the incentives for them to sell their farms is just too great. Say you have a 20-30 acre farm in the middle of LI. Your taxes are going to be extremely high, and you are growing potatoes or corn or whatever on it, most likely just eeking out a living. Bob the builder comes along and says he will give you $100,000/acre for your farm. Are YOU going to say no? 2 mil at 5% interest still nets you 100k/ year.
Urban planning policies in this instance would have to give the farmer pretty hefty incentives to stay a farmer. My area (36 miles from NYC near the nassau/suffolk border) had a few farms around it and a bit of undeveloped land when we moved here about 8 years ago. Now there are houses everywhere, with one farm left standing. The change is remarkable. Property values have skyrocketed, but the cozy charm the area once had is quickly diminishing, and traffic has increased noticeably. In 20-30 years im fairly certain that you wont be able to live w/in commuting distance of manhattan for less than a million dollars.
"Urbanization follows agriculture -- it's a natural and important human process," said Imhoff.Throughout history, highly productive agricultural land brought food, wealth and trade to an area, all of which fostered settlements.
This has little to do with Silicon Valley. In fact, the entire concept is a no-brainer to any civilization that ever settled anywhere on the planet.
In fact, I wonder why NASA wasted money on this study in the first place.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Thanks for listing some additional sources. I did not mean that Arcologies appeared only in Niven.
One major weakness with arcologies is vulerability to terror/war or such catastrophe.
In the 1950s, Clifford D. Simak wrote his "City" stories after being inspired by the vulnerability of cities to nuclear attack. Turn the city into an arcology, and the problem (such as it is) increases.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
(Not saying that they are, I have no expertise in this matter; I'm just saying that this is one way in which the truth could be obscured.)
To the extent that those deficits come from a bunch of amateurs (politicians) playing the energy markets with the taxpayer's money under rules written and approved by the legislature, those problems are entirely home-grown and do not deserve a bailout. The huge spending run-up during the dot-bomb era does not justify a bailout either.Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
If you think about all the refuse and biological waste that winds up on the ground every day, wouldn't this contribute to the fertility?
I don't think that even if we could convince all the people to move to a less fertile area that the ground would produce all that much. Because with all that humans drop, we also pollute. So even if we could farm it, I seriously doubt that it could produce as much as they are saying it would.
Actually it was the reverse. With minor exceptions western agriculture out-produced the native American crops and techniques by large margins (until western crop-breeding practices produced things like modern maize)... and if you actually care about the facts, here is a good introduction which explains why this was, among many other important factors.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
..just so happens to be build in the middle of the freakin' desert! Not exactly fertile.. So, though this may hold true for a lot of cities, there are many exceptions.
What is your penile percentile?
While we can always hope for smarter urban growth strategies, their widespread adoption isn't likely, at least not in the near term.
Every year, all throughout the Southeastern United States, there are people who live in a town built on the Mississippi River flood plain who, when the river floods (as it does every year), instead of moving to a better place, decide to try to control the river's flooding by building levies. The levies, of course, are preventing the Mississippi from carrying as much silt as it used to, which is causing erosion. Never mind that the land is more useful for irrigation farming.
There are people in the midwest who, despite living on land so unbelievably flat that you can't see a single hill or Mountain, and despite the area being known as "Tornado Alley", act surprised and heartbroken when their towns are ripped apart by tornadoes year after year.
All throughout American history, people just built their towns on the first, most immediately convenient place they came across, with little or no regard as to whether or not it was actually a good place for a town. A great many years later, despite the technology for advanced climatological and ecological studies being available (that would tell these cities' current inhabitants that their town is situated in the worst possible place), people continue to live in these places. After each disaster, people keep coming back.
Idiots.
Two comments:
Firstly, there are large swathes of the US where fertile land is neither urbanised nor farmed, but simply left to grow back into forest. I'm thinking of New England. Outside the main cities (and often surprisingly close to them) there are acres and acres of new-growth forest that used to be farmland. What happened was local farmers were priced out of business by big midwestern producers, and the land was just left fallow. (if you've ever been to Walden Pond -- where Thoreau went off to retreat from the world -- you'll notice it's surrounded by dense forest. But when Thoreau lived there it was all farmland.)
Secondly, it may be a no-brainer that cities tend to grow around fertile land, but it doesn't mean it's a good idea. (Indeed it's the sort of idea only someone with no brain would consider good.) Especially since once that fertile land is concreted over, it's gone for good.
The author of this post asserts his moral rights.