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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.
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.
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.
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.
Furthermore, the world as a whole alrady produces more than enough food for everyone to eat well. The real issue is food transportation and storage. It doesn't matter if you can grow billions upon billion tons of wheat in the Ukraine if you can't get it to the hungry people in Africa. There are a whole host of blockages in the way: physical difficulties of getting perishable goods to remote locations, the inability of people in said locations to pay market price, political trade limitations, regional warlords, etc, etc.
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.
One always needs a study to prove the "obvious." To a lot people, it's obvious that violent movies and videogames induce violent behavior in children, or that seeing an exposed breast on television is traumatic.
"Common sense" is the name we give to our personal prejudices.
"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.