China Planning For Sustainable Cities

TapeCutter writes "In a BBC article William McDonough says, 'The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.' The Chineese appear to agree with him and have commissioned McDonough's company to create an environmentally sustainable village as a pilot project for the more ambitious idea of sustainable cities. McDonough and chemist Michael Braungart have also written a book on the subject, Cradle to Cradle, previously reviewed here on Slashdot."

Comments

Book recommendation.

[crhylove]

The book was really dry, but very informative, and from an engineering standpoint fascinating. I recommend it.

Re:Book recommendation.

[Burz]

"Carfree Cities" by J.H. Crawford was an excellent read. In it, you can see there is a great deal to be relearned from pre-automobile cities, which were themselves solar powered. There are picturesque and quantative comparisons between cities like Venice, Italy and Los Angeles with the former being closer to the author's ideal. Crawford describes a new type of districting and city planning that includes emphasis on mixed-use residential areas, ubiquitous rail transport, and intimate pedestrian-only streets and squares characterizing each district.

I also find the website engrossing... It's full of information, images, links and there are regular updates including a newsletter.

Easy for China To Do

[Anonymous Coward]

China would have a much easier job of planning like this when the people there can't challenge the government.

In a free country that lived by the rule of law, the people have a right to object and challenge such reshaping of the land. Not in China, sadly.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[Freexe]

Chinese philosophy of not given its citizens many rights its one of the worst things about the country, but there ability to do good is also alot greater, I think that this is one of the examples of the advantages.

If we are all going to live on this planet I don't think we can all do what we like or the planet is going to run out of resources. Sometimes we need to be told/made to do things that we dont want to (Like polution and population control) and china have acted quickly and sensibly on both these issues.

We might see it as not having any rights or an abuse, but the same thing (just to a lesser extent) happen in the west anyway

Re:Easy for China To Do

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel helpless about my government's behaviour too. Voting doesn't seem to work (my choice being crushed last election). The only thing that demonstrating to express my dissatisfaction against the current administration does is summon police with tear gas.

I live in the USA.

I'm upset with my government, but do understand that it was indeed the majority choice. I think the majority were easily-manipulated idiots, but that's another conversation.

Anyway, the main hope that I have for China is that capitalism is alive and well there. People are free to earn and spend money, with all that entails. Western companies have invaded - including McDonalds and WalMart, in this case defining a new standard and experience for consumers and stimulating local competiton. China is open for business. Living conditions are the best ever, illiteracy is at an all-time low and life expectancy is at an all-time high. And it is beneficial for their society to generate consumers with disposable income.

If I had to live in a communist country, modern China doesn't sound so bad. Where communism turns miserable is when foreign trade, capitalism and consumer choice are excluded - see North Korea.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[Freexe]

Behind America?

Not to mention China is in the middle of a industrail revelution and is 'factory of the world' and has over 1 billion people in it.

America is so much worse than China it hurts

Re:Easy for China To Do

[demachina]

" Sometimes we need to be told/made to do things that we dont want to (Like polution and population control)"

Uh, China might have an advantage in population control now though they were way late in starting, but its my understanding China is a disaster on pollution control. Thanks to central planning and the desire to industrialize fast, they've massively overbuilt coal fired power plants and coal fired steel mills and put them next to pretty much every city. As they abandon sensible bicycles for cars in an effort to catch up to American's in wasting energy and pollution, I think some cities have air so bad its not just a long term health risk, it is an immediate health risk.

One reason they have so many mining disasters is they mine so much coal. They along with the U.S. are probably the two leaders at fueling CO2 buildup and global warming.

Problem with central planning is if the central planners make bad choices they can do a lot of damage fast. For example they have almost always opted for economic growth over environmental protection. Thanks to central planning they can grow their economy really fast and destory their environment really fast too. They can also insure no tree huggers get in their way, in contrast to the U.S. The fact enivornmentalist have clout in the U.S., though less then they did thanks to Republicans being in power, is one reason U.S. economic competitiveness is falling while our environment is improving some. Though environmental protection is just one of many, others being out of control health care costs, uncompetitively high wage rates, bad education, and workers lacking motivation.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[timeOday]

I do think you make one good point - we ship our dirty industries to China, in part to make an end-run around expensive annoyances like environmental law, then complain that China isn't environmentally friendly. Hmm.

Re:Easy for China To Do

[Chris Burke]

Anyway, the main hope that I have for China is that capitalism is alive and well there. People are free to earn and spend money, with all that entails.

Right, because Capitalism unfettered by a Representative Democracy would be awesome.

Take every abuse you've ever heard of in a capitalist system. Then take every abuse you've ever heard of in a totalitarian system. Then combine them, and multiply the capitalist abuses by the lack of accountability the totalitarian system provides.

Western companies have invaded - including McDonalds and WalMart, in this case defining a new standard and experience for consumers and stimulating local competiton. China is open for business.

Yes, a new experience as consumers but what about as workers? I already hate Wal Mart for their labor practices in the U.S. -- they are essentially creating a class of working poor by trying to work around minimum wage laws. They employ a plurality of people in the States, and these people are only going to have enough money to shop at Wal Mart.

What do you think WalMart is going to do in a country like China? You think they are going to raise the standard of employment practices, or are they going to scream with orgasmic joy at being free of those few restraints the U.S. had imposed on them?

This is my fundamental problem with the way our businesses are whoring themselves to China. We are selling them our fundamental production capacity, but requiring nothing in return except more money for the executives of these companies. Every dollar we send them without a demand for democratic reform is a dollar that just entrenches the current system in place. And the whore executives don't care at all. They just see the delta between U.S. labor and Chinese labor as dollars flowing into their pocket.

Here's my prediction: If China becomes the enemy that some fear it might, you will be able to look back and see the hand of the business elites of the capitalist democracies propping them up the entire way. If China does not become that enemy, it will be because we stop allowing this to happen.

Living

[mboverload]

If this were anywhere but China I doubt this would do anything but fail. Once people have tasted a style of living they do no want to go back down. As evidenced by bank robbers you need to keep on robbing because they are burning tens of thosands of dollars a week on drugs.

Re:Living

[Anonymous Coward]

As a bank robber, I take offense. I much prefer well-crafted wines to crude street drugs.

IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining traction

[rdean400]

Sorry to sound like a cynic, but it's this kind of innovation that our IP laws will obstruct. Someone in the U.S. and the E.U. will get a patent on the very idea of sustainable cities and cause the whole thing to get bogged down in licensing.

They'll need them

[winkydink]

seeing as most of there current cities are polluted beyond repair. Clean drinking water from the tap? I guess if you're cholera-resistant.

Re:They'll need them

[LadyLucky]

Hmm, I've just come back from China myself. The tap water is heavily chlorinated. I wouldn't drink it, but it won't kill you.

Yes, the cities are dirty, but no more so than European cities of 100 years ago. If they need to be cleaned up they can be. It just requires money and/or willpower, neither of which China has in abundance.

Sustainable cities?

[kc32]

You mean like the ones the Greeks had over 2000 years ago?

Re:Sustainable cities?

[Petrushka]

You mean like the ones the Greeks had over 2000 years ago?

The ones where somewhere between 70 and 90% of the population were slaves, where only free-born, sane, non-criminal, adult males were enfranchised, empires routinely extorted vast tributes out of their "allies", that is to say when they weren't enslaving them or committing genocide, foreigners had no rights, respectable women were rarely allowed to go outdoors, folks were happy to take water from cholera-infested public wells, and people sometimes got put to death for free-thinking?

Yes, those are the ones. I suppose I can see one or two similarities ... but I'd rather live in China than ancient Greece any day.

Further online information available for most of the above statements upon Wikipeding, Googling, or if all else fails, upon request (except for the figures on slavery: that's a rather specialised field).

Re:Sustainable cities?

[Roger_Wilco]

The Greeks are a bad choice of example. Here's what Plato had to say about a once fertile region, destroyed by the kind of irrigation now being heavily practiced in California, among other places:

What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away.... Mountains which now have nothing but food for bees ... had trees not very long ago. [The land] was enriched by the yearly rains, which were not lost to it, as now, by flowing from the bare land into the sea; but the soil was deep, and therein received the water, and kept it in the loamy earth ... feeding springs and streams running everywhere. Now only abandoned shrines remain to show where the springs once flowed.

(Quoted in A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. Go read it. A complete English translation of Critas is here.)

Has it never seemed strange to you that the area called the "Fertile Crescent", mostly Iraq and Israel, is now anything but fertile? It's that way because of too little long-term vision in farming practices. We have been stressing our environment for a long time.

Re:Sustainable cities?

[SQL Error]

The problem in Greece, the formerly fertile crescent, northern Africa (the bread basket of the Roman Empire) and similar areas is deforestation. Clear the trees for your pastures, and sooner or later you'll find that the land has degraded to the point that your pasture is too poor to support cattle anymore. So you bring in sheep, and they degrade the land even further. You end up herding goats, which can live on anything, but prevent the land from ever recovering.

The solution is to come up with something that does for goats what myxomatosis did for rabbits.

Re:Sustainable cities?

[PsiPsiStar]

The solution is to come up with something that does for goats what myxomatosis did for rabbits.

The solution is to come up for somthing that does to people what Calicivirus did for rabbits. I think the Australians are working on it.

Re:Sustainable cities?

[ozmanjusri]

The solution is to come up for somthing that does to people what Calicivirus did for rabbits. I think the Australians are working on it.

We call him "Steve Irwin".

"The affected rabbits show symptoms of depression, sadness, anorexia dysnea, incoordination, crying, shaking and other nervous signs just before they die."

Re:Sustainable cities?

[maxpublic]

I disagree with your statements, entirely

Disagree all you like, but it is indeed historical fact that the Fertile Crescent was covered in huge temperate forests, and that deforestation caused by humans dramatically reduced the rainfall the region received. Here are a few excerpts on the topic for ya:

"Along with its other distinctive qualities, the Epic of Gilgamesh is the earliest recorded story of desertification caused by the extensive destruction of forestlands. Lebanon went from more than 90 percent forest (the famous Cedars of Lebanon) to less than 7 percent over a 1,500-year period. Trees and their roots are an important part of the water cycle, so rainfall downwind of deforested areas decreased by 80 percent. Over time, millions of acres of land in the Fertile Crescent area turned to desert or scrubland, and remain relatively barren to this day...

"The result of this local climatic change more than 5000 years ago was widespread famine. The collapse of the last Mesopotamian empire happened around 4,000 years ago, and the records they left behind show that only at the very end of their empire did they realize how they had destroyed their precious source of food and fuel by razing their forests and despoiling the rest of their environment." This is actually just a summary of what you can find in any ecological textbook for undergrads, but is reprinted in "The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight" by Thom Hartmann, copyright (c) 1998, 1999, 2004 by Mythical Research, Inc. Used by permission of Harmony Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

Another:

". . .Fertile Crescent and eastern Mediterranean societies had the misfortune to arise in an ecologically fragile environment," writes Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. "They committed ecological suicide by destroying their own resource base."

Jared is referring to the fact that the societies in the Fertile Crescent cut down their forests for agricultural use and wood burning, which ultimately altered the climate and destroyed the land they were cultivating.

Another:

"A cautionary tale comes from the arc of land through parts of Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, and Iran -- the cradle of civilization known as the Fertile Crescent. In ancient times much of this land was forest. The area became a leader in food production as trees were cleared for agriculture, and cut for timber, firewood, and manufacturing plaster. Now the expression "Fertile Crescent" is absurd, because the land is largely desert, semi-desert, steppe-eroded and salinized terrain, unsuitable for agriculture." A summarization of another textbook article by Ann Hancock, who simplified it for a magazine article.

I can go on here. Any undergrad in ecological science will be able to confirm what I've said. It isn't an area of dispute where scientists are concerned.

I can't argue you this point, because it's simply not correct.

You can't argue with it because you've apparently never bothered to do a whit of research on the topic. But I suppose you're more learned than Jared Diamond, or just about any other ecological scientist on the planet?

Max

Re:Sustainable cities?

[lisaparratt]

It turns them into goths?! :S

Re:Sustainable cities?

[Moridineas]

I still disagree, and I even got modded down, ouch! :-p

No, I will not argue that there has been no climate change over the past ten thousand years--in fact I said that I wouldn't argue that point. I will strenuously argue as to the causes of the changes, and indeed the extent.

Point 1--the area is a STILL a fertile crescent. The entire region is a semi-arid zone. This is due not simply to the (lack of large amounts of vegetation) but ocean currents--among them, the monsoon winds, as well as physical geography. Mountain ranges that "bottle" up from the red sea (a plate boundary) north into Turkey, along the Zagros in Iran, etc. This makes much of the region lack rainful. However, you can view Satellite imagery--there are incredibly fertile areas. These are linked to water resources, and expanded by man through canals, irrigation etc.

I'll admit that I've never read (nor ever heard of) Thom Hartmann, however as I see other books he's written include "The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights" I immediately suspect that h'es more of an activist writer than an actual historian, and one should be careful with the average armchair historian. I can't say this with certainty though, as I said, I've never heard of him--but I can say I take his writings with a rather large, excuse the pun, grain of salt.

You can't argue with it because you've apparently never bothered to do a whit of research on the topic. But I suppose you're more learned than Jared Diamond, or just about any other ecological scientist on the planet?

No I of course wouldn't make such a claim, but I am a Middle Eastern historian, so I like to think I have some basic knowledge of the region. As I've pointed out, we have no direct evidence of any human impact on the environment (and indeed, similiar changes happening worldwide--I'll especially note the case of Northern China) makes the argument that human civilization created one of the greatest semi-arid zones in the world utterly ludicrous. If you examine the types and methods of agricutlural developed in this region, it all falls into place--these are areas which NEVER (at least not within the "civilizational timeframe") experienced the amount of rainfall you claim. Herodotus--Egypt is the gift of the Nile. Likewise, Mesopotamia, etc.

Actually I think I just realized what you might be getting at--yes, human causes CAN have temporary effects on the environment that are quite nasty--actually, read my other post. the key is TEMPORARY. Salt in the soil may have been a problem 4000 years ago, but it's easily fixable, and indeed is. The BIGGEST reason it's a problem is that the rivers were the only source of water. After all, you don't get salty soil from rainfall.

and the expression Fertile Crescent is NOT at all ludicrous today.

Peak Oil

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess China is preparing for the peak oil event. We should be doing that same in North America.

Re:Peak Oil

[SQL Error]

There's good reason to believe that "Peak Oil" is already here. This is it. These are the painfully high gas prices we were warned about. (Historically speaking, gas prices today are horrifying. Ask your parents.)

The question each of us must ask is:

What will you do when gas reaches $5 per gallon?

Move to Alberta and get rich?

As of now Japan, China, and the EU are dumping tons of resources into this, but I've yet to hear anything about the US government acting on it.

There's one big problem: There is no viable alternative to oil, even at current prices. But if the price keeps going up, there will be. Gas will never hit $10 per gallon, because even without subsidies biofuels cost less than that to produce. We don't need to dump tons of resources into it, because the situation will correct itself automatically. From the perspective of biofuel producers, Peak Oil is just a business opportunity.

When we run out of oil, it doesn't mean we run out of fuel, it means we run out of cheap fuel. We use oil because it's cheap. When it's cheaper to use alcohol produced from corn, we'll use that instead.

This will slow economic growth, of course, but there's not going to be any economic collapse outside of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. In the big picture, oil doesn't really matter that much.

Re:Peak Oil

[viggo]

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/012805_n o_free_pt3.shtml abiotic oil is nonsense. There are hydrocarbons that are created abiotically, but they are nowhere near the complexity of crude oil. In other words, we might be able to create it in a lab somewhere, but not in enough time to stop the peak.

And even if you think the peak is wrong, it doesn't matter. Even if there's infinite oil, its consumption is still destroying the planet.

And if you think the peak doesn't matter globally, think again. The trade balance is dependent on the US importing foreign oil. US oil dollars prop up many nations around the world. And if you think the implosion of Saudi Arabia doesn't matter, think about how many terrorists come from there, and think about how many more will be recruited if the country is thrown into a depression that makes 1929 look like a dress rehersal.

There are so many scenarios for global destruction from the peak I don't want to think about them all. This is some serious stuff, and we can't take it so lightly that it's just another fad or something that can be ignored.

Re:Peak Oil

[llZENll]

Is replacing oil with biofuel even sustainable? I guess the market will work itself out, its not like we have a choice either, oil will be gone, its only a matter of time.

Actually the worlds oil supply running out is probably the best thing that could ever happen for the US, we have the best and biggest country in the world for producing corn. I'm glad GWBs plan to use up all the oil in the world as fast as possible it running so smoothly ;)

Once we become the worlds biggest grower and seller of biofuel in the world our national debt will be gone in a few years, wow realizing the future of our nation in one post, is there anything biofuel can't do?

Re:Peak Oil

[Sir_Real]

I guess China is preparing for the peak oil event. We should be doing that same in North America.

We'll get to it. Right after we're done converting to metric.

Re:Peak Oil

[WazzTheWizz]

It simply amazes me when Americans talk of gas (petrol) being expensive at $2.20. You guys are practically getting the stuff for free. Try comparing your price with the UK ($7.00 a gallon, pretty much anywhere in Europe or even Australia (where driving distances are also very large). At the ridicuolously cheap US prices, it's no wonder the stuff is wasted in big gas guzzlers.

Re:Peak Oil

[SQL Error]

In Australia, I think it currently works out at $3.30 a gallon. More expensive than the US, but far cheaper than Europe. (The difference is basically taxes. Fuel taxes in Europe are horrifying.)

Re:Peak Oil

[ArmorFiend]

There's good reason to believe that "Peak Oil" is already here. This is it. These are the painfully high gas prices we were warned about. (Historically speaking, gas prices today are horrifying. Ask your parents.)

In 1981 the cost of a gallon of gas was $3 in 2005 dollars. See "The Oil Uproar that Isn't."

So we pretty much know that the threshold for economic shit hitting the fan is between $2 and $3 per gallon in 2005 dollars, eh?

Re:Peak Oil

[dabigpaybackski]

It simply amazes me when Americans talk of gas (petrol) being expensive at $2.20. You guys are practically getting the stuff for free.

Sure, if you don't consider the 400-plus billion we spend annually on "defense." It's a collossal subsidy.

Re:Peak Oil

[Cro Magnon]

I couldn't get to that site. Either it's been slashdotted, or it ran out of oil.

Inevitable

[Bullfish]

If we are going to survive this type of development is what is required. The rate of development in the world with former developing countries not only approaching western levels of living, but western levels of consumption, in accelerating not slowing. While people make not want to "go backwards" in terms of how they live, it may be the only alternative if they want to live.

Whether or not this particular project will succeed, sustainable cities are coming and it's a good thing. Right now, it runs contrary to the type of lifestyle promoted in the west as the very economy is based on consumption.

Ultimately we are going to have to choose to control that consumption. That has only really shown up so far in the emergence of hybrid cars etc, though that is largely due to a desire to wean ourselves off oil controlled by hostile regimes. Fear of what the environment is going to become really isn't taken seriously yet.

Re:Inevitable

[SB5]

What is really annoying is 60% of a cities space is dedicated to cars.

That could be easiler utilized by small farms...

Sustainable cities have been dreams since the 60s. Even a half-assed one, but well done in existence, especially since it hasn't received much funding.

http://www.arcosanti.org/

Re:Inevitable

[SQL Error]

That could be easiler utilized by small farms...

No.

No no no no no no no no no.

This is a really, really, really stupid idea.

Small farms suck. We had small farms for about 8000 years, and they sucked. 90% of the population was trapped in back-breaking labour and poverty.

Now we have big farms. Big farms allow us to use big machinery, which makes farming roughly one hundred times more efficient. The result of that is that I can get paid (by comparison) a small fortune to sit at a desk and fiddle with databases, and never have to look at the rear end of an ox. Food is good, cheap and plentiful because we don't have small farms.

The reason people throughout the third world are heading to the city (even if they end up in shanty towns) is that small farms suck. Living in a slum on the outskirts of Bombay or Mexico City may suck, but living on a small farm is even worse.

Re:Inevitable

[pyat]

> Living in a slum on the outskirts of Bombay or
> Mexico City may suck, but living on a small farm
> is even worse.
Really?
Thinking about this, I doubt that can be true. I know small farmers, and I know that mostly it's a fairly ok way of life. Depends what farming you're doing, but often there isn't as much work as you'd expect. Mostly it's very seasonal, so there are periods when it's very hard, and other times when you're not doing much at all (at which time you start mending fences and doing work on your buildings and so on).

I think the problem that drives people into the slums in "Bombay or Mexico City" isn't that the alternative work open to them is farm-labouring. The push-factor that drives them to livein squalor is that they are landless and exploited. Small farming on a freehold of good land is fine. Small farming where you are paying heavy rent to a landlord, and may have been born into enough debt to effectively enslave you is a nightmare. Another factor driving people off the land is the limited divisbility of the resource (one son takes over the farm, daughters marry, rest have to seek a living elsewhere).

In fact, I wonder if many of these migrants to the 3rd world cities are actually former small farmers, or whether they in fact farm-labourers working for the owners of large unmechanised farms.

Finally, on the point of efficiency. Large farming is much more labour efficient (as you say). But in terms of yield per square-meter, I think you get better land-efficiency from smaller more labour intensive farming. Plus, the smaller-farming regime makes it easier to establish biodiversity in the food-supply and avoid risky monocultures.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[Scoria]

But the innovation will continue, as China is both influential and strong. They will simply move to disregard both American and European claims of intellectual ownership.

Boil water first...

[HockeyPuck]

I recently came back from China on a business trip... I stayed in a expensive hotel... and they warned me at the front desk that I should use bottled water for everything. Not just drinking, but brushing my teeth, washing my face etc..

If I needed more water for such activities all I had to do was call the front desk and they provide it free of charge.

Re:Boil water first...

[Feyr]

not to say that some sources are not contaminated with whatever, but that's not the reason most of the time.

that advice is usually given to all foreigners going anywhere but the most developped countries. the fact is, the water is not cleaned (if it is) the same way as what your system is used to.

locals can drink and abuse it without getting sick because they're used to it. your system, weakened by years of overtreated water, simply can't cope with it.

Re:Boil water first...

[jag2k]

Did you shower in bottled water too?

Re:Boil water first...

[king-manic]

I recently came back from China on a business trip... I stayed in a expensive hotel... and they warned me at the front desk that I should use bottled water for everything. Not just drinking, but brushing my teeth, washing my face etc..

If I needed more water for such activities all I had to do was call the front desk and they provide it free of charge.

I also recently came back from a visit to china. The only reason you do this is to prevent travellers diahria. Even brushing your teeth introduces foreign bacteria. The water quality was generally good everywhere I was, Beijing, Ghoung zhou, Toa San, and Xin Vua.

Re:Boil water first...

[PsiPsiStar]

I heard a really interesting theory that locals can cope with the local water because of the bacteriophage in their stomaches. If a local in an area with bad water moves to a far removed area with bad water, they get sick themselves since they don't have the right phage to protect them.

It offers an interesting, as yet unutilized solution for 'montezuma's revenge.' There's a clinic in N. Mexico on the border based on S. Georgian technology from Tblisi which is the closest I've seen to offering this stuff to the US. We really need a worldwide phage network and repository. It would solve so many problems so cheaply.

Separation?

[millennial]

Would such a society benefit from being separated from the outside world? Obviously a city can't be self-sustainable if its citizens wants things from outside the city. It seems to me that this concept just isn't practical, mainly because of the level of interdependence and globalization we've developed in the more modern nations.

Re:Separation?

[Jeremi]

Obviously a city can't be self-sustainable if its citizens wants things from outside the city.

It's not about what citizens want, it's about what they need. A city can sustain itself with or without access to neat gadgets from Japan. A city cannot sustain itself without water and food.

It seems to me that this concept just isn't practical, mainly because of the level of interdependence and globalization we've developed in the more modern nations.

Practical compared to what? Compared to the status quo, where there is plenty of fossil fuel to go around? Probably not. Compared to starving to death because you didn't plan ahead for clearly forseeable problems? Very practical.

What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[RyanFenton]

Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller's (Penn & Teller) great show Bullshit did a great show last season on recycling. In short, recycling does allow reuse of some resources, but does not appear to damage less environment, or use less energy, or even consume much less space than just throwing everything away.

As far as the pure basis for modern cities are concerned, would this lead to a truly successful competitive society as a first priority? I'd certainly hope so - and applaud China for looking into it, but I don't know if "sustainability" in this sense is necissaruly efficient, long-term compared to using the best resources for the circumstances.

Ryan Fenton

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[RobbieGee]

The problem I had with that particular episode of Bullshit! was that they seemed to miss the point that some recycling has to be done since the materials we use are non-renewable, such as plastic. I don't claim to be an expert, but plastic is a by-product of oil. When the oil runs out, no more plastic.

Sure, it's cheaper to throw it away _now_, but it will be more expensive to dig up old plastic later on than to recycle what we have now.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[QuantumG]

people who make the "when the oil runs out" argument always presume that the current known deposits of oil are the only ones in the world. That, of course, is stupid. Not only have we not tapped all the known oil wells, we havn't even begun to find the vast number of ocean located oil deposits. Finally, should we actually run dry all the crude oil wells, we can still make plastic by manufacturing plants.. just like we can make biodiesel and other hydrocarbons. Hell, with advanced genetic engineering we can make bacteria pump out plastic directly. People with no imagination see any change to the status quo as the end of the world. Thank god there's people who see change as an opportunity and a challenge.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[RyanFenton]

I certainly agree - I'm more than a bit of a liberal in terms of environment, and environmental policy (and almost everything else). But until the market will sustain the active recovery of used materials, a non-socialist capitol-based society just won't realistically reward such action. That makes it quite inneficient to recycle plastics and the like, even for the more socialist nations.

What would be probably most efficient, under those circumstances, would be to work on policy to limit the use of unsustainable materials, like with CFC's and the like. But if that ends up costing more than what people are willing to accept... then the only practical choice is to use up the cheap-to-use resources, until the environment will accept the use of the more expensive-to-use resources.

It does point to a certain blind consumption on the part of humanity - but such is what we as humans value socially before anything else. Energy (laziness) first, immediate gain next, then the more esoteric considerations like progress and betterment.

I wish China the best - they'll likely end up with a lot of pure research gains that will help the world with a project like this. I don't think they'll end up with their goal, however, of a truly sustainable city, without compromises that few would accept. I wish the US would try more things like this - a commitment to general research would help humanity as a whole a lot more than what we've seen in the last 20 years. It just won't ever really give us the answers to the questions we pose when we start - that's what makes it general research, and also what makes it unprofitable and fascinationg at the same time.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[bani]

I'm with P&T on most of their "Bullshit" episodes, but P&T missed some of the most important points of recycling. You really don't want to be dumping used motor oil, mercury thermometers, and lead-acid car batteries into landfills.

For the biodegradable stuff, fine. Dump it and let it rot. Or burn it as fuel. Whatever. But a lot of stuff isn't biodegradable -- plastics and glass for example.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[SQL Error]

I don't claim to be an expert, but plastic is a by-product of oil. When the oil runs out, no more plastic.

Nope, wrong.

We make plastic from oil because that's the cheapest way to do it. We can make it from coal instead (which we have in sufficient quantity to last hundreds of years) or from plants. It will just cost more.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[greg_barton]

Penn Jillette and Raymond Teller's (Penn & Teller) great show Bullshit did a great show last season on recycling.

You know, I really wish Penn and Teller would do an episode of Bullshit about themselves. Seriously doubt it, though. One common characteristic I see in self proclaimed skeptics is that they rarely apply their craft to themselves.

Sometimes I think they just have run out of ideas and just need to make filler shows. In the case of that particular episode, they were attacking a strawman the entire time. A ten year old could refute their argument. They constantly harped on the "recycling takes more energy" argument, while completely ignoring that lower energy usage is not the point of recycling. Not to mention that it's painfully obvious that, if you put effort into reusing a nonrenewable resource, you will expend energy in that effort. Duh.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[glaucopis]

And one nice thing about upcycling (McDonough & Braungart strongly object to current recycling models) plastic is that it frees companies from the variability of the oil market. Having a ready supply of pure and perpetually reusable plastics will help keep product costs down -- the grandparent can't possibly be suggesting that pumping from deep oceans or making bacteria produce plastic will be more efficient than melting and remolding pure, ready to use existing plastics. The key is just ceasing to churn out tainted plastics like PVC and turning instead to a model using purer technological ingredients from the start.

I had the opportunity to talk with McDonough at a design conference last year, and he pointed out that plastic futures were steadily rising. I don't know if that's still true, and I'm too lazy to check now, but regardless companies are going to be looking for steady plastics supplies, and upcycling makes the most economic sense.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[patternjuggler]

in my area if you want to recycle plastic bottles you need to take off the lids, remove the labels and make sure they are empty. What am I, the milk lady?... Who the hell has glass bottles? Can I put jars in here? Oh, only if I remove the lid and the label and clean out the jar. To hell with that.

Wasn't it you that said something in a grandparent post like: "People with no imagination see any change to the status quo as the end of the world. Thank god there's people who see change as an opportunity and a challenge." ?

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[quinto2000]

In the small town where I grew up, yes, the recyling program cost more money than it brought in. But it also saved money compared to dumping the garbage, and this is in a town where we had to pay for every bag of garbage that we wanted brought to the landfill.
There are many reasons that recyling makes sense. When calculating its cost, you can't just ignore the fact that there is a cost associated with dumping as well. At least with recycling, you recover part of the cost.

Re:What if sustainability isn't efficient?

[Headw1nd]

It takes more money, more time, more energy, and more effort to recycle anything other than aluminum cans - and there is no shortage of aluminum on this planet.

I'm not sure what you mean here, but you seem to be saying, "Aluminum recycling is more cost-effective than refinement of aluminum ores, but there are plentiful supplies of aluminum ores, so we don't need to recycle aluminum" You realize that doesn't make sense, right? I assume you meant something else.

Also, besides aluminum, even consumer level recycling is very efficent when applied to any metal, including copper, lead and steel.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[Jeremi]

Yup, you're a cynic. A realist would know that it's the vested interests (real estate developers, big box retailers, and purblind NIMBYism) that will keep this from happening in the U.S.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[greg_barton]

Profits drive innovation sadly.

In the case of sustainibility, survival drives innovation, not profit. Or, in the immortal words of Plato, "Necessity, who is the mother of invention."

Just checking

[mcc]

Would the "green"/"sustainable"/"quality of life" innovations of living in this city happen to include not being beaten when taken into police custody?

Just curious...

Re:Just checking

[king-manic]

Would the "green"/"sustainable"/"quality of life" innovations of living in this city happen to include not being beaten when taken into police custody?

Just curious...

Hmm.... China is bad for such things. But generally you have as much a chance of being beaten by the police in the US as in china. In china, if you follow the rules generally nothign happens to you. Very much the same for the states, except for the crime is worse.

I can imagine how it was

[fermion]

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

You know Barney, this working with stone tools is so ice age. I mean, we are settled now. We have shoes and clothes. We are modern men.

I know what you mean Fred. We are no longer uncivilized. My family does not have to eat whatever happens to walk or grow nearby. I have a farm and domisticated animals. I can't be using my father tools. I need more!

And howdy. Instead of using wood and stone, why don't we go down to the walmart and by those new fangled bronze tools. They will let us plow the land so much better.

Yeah, let's rethink how we live. We need to move into te common era with bronze, and even those really expensive new iron tools. And I can't wait until that Jaquard Loom lets us have really fancy patterns in the woven cloth that will be developed any day now.

Which is simply to say mostly we do not rethink how we live. We master new materials, and the processes to create tools from those materials, and society just tends to naturally reform aroun the advantages, making our lives more confortable in the process. Mostly this has involved allowing us to stay in one place without a flea infestation.

The most annoying part of our civilization is the emergence of the useless marketing talk and the related jibberish.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot patent ideas.

You can only receive a patent on an invention that:

1. is described in enough detail in the patent application so that others can build it without undue experimentation

2. does not have prior art

3. is not obvious or anticipated by prior art

4. and more...

Read the FAQ at www.uspto.gov to see why it is not possible to get a patent on an idea.

The entire premise of the patent system is that the FIRST inventor receive sufficient incentives to FULLY disclose ALL the details so that the general public can have access to the solution.

The incentive is the temporary monopoly that expires around 15 years after the patent is granted.

This means fewer trade secrets and reduced need to reverse engineer (because the 'recipe' must be fully disclosed).

Re:Sustainable City After Nuclear War?

[Anonymous Coward]

China, peaceful? Perhaps you've never heard of the Chinese EMPIRE. They've had several of them. China was a brutal conqueror long before Japan took their own shot in WW2. What always shocks me about the mindset of people coming out of China is that they don't seem to care about truth, or human rights, or even justice really, they have been so brainwashed by their government. Mostly, they're just afraid to stick their necks out, while their leaders bluster on threatening people right and left while they work on assimilating or exterminating ethnic minorities in order to make room for more Chinese people. (For example, look at what happened to Manchuria, as well as China's policies in Tibet.) Lucky for the Vietnamese, they drove out the Chinese while they had the chance. (Vietnam was actually a quasi-province of China for a long period of its history, in fact.)

For all the criticism of Americans, it is the Chinese who really take the cake for cultural insensitivity, imperialism (in the old-fashioned sense, not neo-colonialism because they're not rich enough for that yet), and disregard for the rights of all people, both within and outside their country. Oh yeah, they're also way more racist than we are, too.

If China is peaceful now, it's because they know that they will lose if it comes down to a confrontation with the USA. They don't actually have the capability to nuke the USA (they still lack the long-range missiles), they could hit Taiwan but that would be self-defeating; meanwhile they would risk having everything that they've built up in the past 100 years completely destroyed.

No doubt their space program largely aims at developing ICBM technology, so perhaps a greater threat is on the horizon. One might think that the value of trade would restrain China, but that didn't rein in Germany or Japan, and the Chinese seem quite capable of the kinds of abuses perpetrated by those powers back in the 1940's.

It's a beginning...

[userlame]

This is the first time I've seen anyone really discussing this. I'm glad to see it. This is going to be an extrememly important issue in our lifetimes.

Good reading: http://www.ishmael.com/Education/Writings/The_New_ Renaissance.shtml

And some great books: http://www.newtribalventures.com/ntv/market/catego ry.cfm?Category=11#72

Peanuts, soybeans, corn aren't renewable?

[jmichaelg]

I don't claim to be an expert, but plastic is a by-product of oil. When the oil runs out, no more plastic.

Plastic can be made from lots of different oils, not just petroleum. George Washington Carver managed to convert peanut oil to plastic.

Ages

[Boronx]

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones.

No, but the Age of Democracy might.

Re:Sustainable City After Nuclear War?

[ThaFooz]

Quite a misleading post. The headline of the article actually reads: "A senior Chinese general has warned that his country could destroy hundreds of American cities with nuclear weapons if the two nations clashed over Taiwan". Generals always have that hawkish attitude, but really they're just playing the same game as the Russians did in the cold war - conflict is avoided because both sides know it would be mutual destruction. we should keep in mind the lengths to which the Chinese would be willing to wage war against us Americans Just garbage. There is zero motivation - they are far too dependent on the US economy to want to destroy it, and the younger generation is pushing hard for US-style education & human rights.

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[mboverload]

Survival drives nothing currently.

People are too apathetic and see our extinction as too far off to warrant changing their lives.

!read

[slashdotnickname]

The Stone Age did not end because humans ran out of stones. It ended because it was time for a re-think about how we live.

Nothing turns me off faster from reading an article than idiotic profoundness.

The Stone Age gradually faded away as more humans discovered/invented better tools that increased their chances of survival. No caveman sat around thinking much about it, it was a slow natural process.

You insensitive clod...

[TERdON]

What will you do when gas reaches $5 per gallon?

...I'm a european. $5 per gallon would be considered cheap over here...

Re:The most important step:

[Chris Burke]

I have more karma than God.

That's because God posts anonymously.

They have the experience...

[BobandMax]

The present Chinese regime certainly has the experience when it comes to brutally relocating their population and forcing them to live in places and ways they do not want. Maybe they can make it happen, or kill them trying.

Either way, problem solved!

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[interstellar_donkey]

I think it's that kind of reasoning that has kept the bulk of American city development going in the wrong direction. People don't just make decisions based on total cost. If that were the case, nobody would buy steak when a perfectly acceptable and much cheaper soy based meal is available.

People make decisions based a lot on perceived value, as opposed to outright cost. Many Americans live in a city with mass transit available to carry them wherever they need or want to go, yet they'll still choose cars. The cost of monthly transit passes is significantly lower then the cost of purchasing a car, buying insurance for it, filling it with expensive fuel and having routine maintenance performed on it.

Despite being cheaper, the perception most Americans have is that mass transit is something beneath them (only poor people take the bus, right?). They see the automobile as a symbol of freedom and independence, and in their minds auto ownership has a much better value despite the higher costs of a car compared with utilizing transit systems.

It's because of this perception that American city expansion and development is done almost exclusively to accommodate the automobile, leaving alternative means of transport like walking (which is both cheaper and better for you then driving) forgotten or a cursory afterthought.

New housing developments are laid out in such a way that it becomes very easy to quickly and efficiently take your car to the market to pick up milk, but incredibly difficult to walk or bicycle to the very same store. Is it any wonder why Americans are so fat?

If we started building cities with pedestrians and mass transit in mind, ultimately the cost savings would be huge for the typical household. But it would fail unless work was done to modify the popular perception that traveling by a car is better then walking or taking the bus.

So when someone says "People will never switch to environmentally friendly hybrid cars because they're too expensive, so we're going to stick with the internal combustion engine for a long time", they would be better off saying "owning any automobile is too expensive. Let's start building our cities with non-car owners in mind".

Re:Those crafty "Chineese"

[Subrafta]

Stop pulling my Chan...

Re:IP Laws will keep the idea from gaining tractio

[greg_barton]

Survival drives nothing currently.

I suspect that the average Chinese villager is a bit closer to survival mode than you.

Re:We've seen this utopian horse-hockey before

[be-fan]

Do you actually have any idea what this guys ideas really are? He's not trying to shove anything down anybody's throat. He's doing exactly what you're suggesting, taking new technologies (and some old ones) to make our current way of life more sustainable. Eg: designing factories that have natural light and airflow to reduce cooling and heating costs, as well as to make workers happier. Formulating chemicals specially so the factories that produce them produce environmentally-safe "wastes". There is nothing "utopian" about it. His basic idea is "people should have what they have, and more, and it can be done sustainable with improved technology".

If you're taking exception to the "sustainable village" bit, use your head. Much of China's population lives in villages. Making a better village fits right in with "living as you are now, except better and more sustainably".

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[Zibblsnrt]

(If that's not good enough for you, then freedom really isn't your thing. You're more into tyranny -- making peoples' choices for them, because you've decided you're better than them.)

Actually, yeah. When it comes to people who see the idea of any obligations to anything other than themselves as evil, I do consider myself better than them.

Most of those people seem to have trouble realizing that there is such a thing as cost aside from what they pull out of their wallet. And yet they continue to make their glorious, "free" decisions, despite happily fettering themselves in their own ignorance, something which seems to be the rage these days.

'Cause, see, thinking of anything other than yourself (like, for example, the neighbors, or your grandchildren's ability to hit middle age in their forties rather than their twenties) must be tyrannical communistic doom, false dichotomies also being the rage these days. If it involves any sense of non-personal responsibility, it's bad bad bad!

Do I have contempt for that attitude? Yes, I do. Am I better than people who trumpet it? Yes, I am.

-PS

Re:Stone age?

[mooingyak]

The "wood" age starts at around 12 or 13 and can last indefinitly thanks to viagra.

Re:The most important step:

[Chris Burke]

Then who was it who told me to kill my family?

Damnit...

Re:The most important step:

[YHWH]

That was me, I was just testing your loyalty to me. Had you gone through with it, a goat would have appeared just before you actually killed them. It would then be your job to kill the goat. I don't know why, but a dead goat really floats my boat. If you'll excuse the rhyme and get my drift.

Re:Ramp-up time is key for energy infrastructure

[maxpublic]

Ethanol is a fool's fuel. It takes nearly a gallon of oil to produce a gallon of ethanol. How exactly does that help anyone, other than farmers in the Midwest who're take government subsidies to produce the appropriate crops?

Ethanol has been a sham from the get-go.

Max

Some ideas sounded good.

[tmortn]

I think more than anything a modern city needs to find someway to manage multiple means of travel and keep them seperated. IE have a pedestrian system that does not impinge or become obstructed by vehicle travel.

I would like to see a system that could allow for 4-5 types of right of way. Say

1- Pedestrian. Except for residential there would be no mingling of pedestrian right of way and vehicle right of way. The pedestrian right of way would be non-powered only. Foot/pedal etc... Maybe powered in the class of segway/electric bike/scooter. Say 20/mph limitation.

2- Light vehicle. I mean Golf Cart light. Strict HP/speed max limitation on the vehicle but not on the paths themselves. Use elevated and sunken tram ways as much as possible to avoid intersecting traffic. max of 40mph

3- Regular Vehicle traffic. Highway through traffic, right of way to parking lots etc... Max 100mph. Again avoid intersecting traffic as much as possible.

4- Frieght. Transfer trucks busses etc... access to industrial and commercial areas for delivery or perhaps central unloading zones that utilize lighter vehicles for last mile pallet delivery.

5- Mass Transit. If mass transit were isolated and designed from the begining to have its own right of way then scheduling can be far more consistent and if designed from the get go far more possible to solve the point to point travel inefficiency most systems face.

You would have to pretty much build a city from the ground up to manage something like this as it would require multiplane usage to enable roughly equivalent access to almost all points. You could probably have pedestrian and light vehicle more or less in the same plane and use tunnels and light strcutures for elevating the traffic out of each others way. Then utilize deeper/higher structures for the other. Mostly I would suggest burying the heavy/transit/regular vehicle traffic which would allow you to route the exhaust fumes for management. Require electric or other non-polluting method of power for light vehicles and keep it above ground.

Regulate speed largely via hardware limitations rather than operator limitations and do as much as possible to avoid intersecting traffic. By this I don't mean regulators on the equipment. I mean keep like vehicles in similar zones of travel and keep them headed the same direction. If you have roughly equivalent vehicles together traveling at similar speeds and rarely if ever encountering intersecting traffic then speed isn't much of a concern.

The primary idea would be to make light vehicle traffic the primary means of personal transportation around a city. Cars as we think of them would become more of a long distance/rural solution for personal travel essentially limiting them to primary arteries and as possible off ramps into common areas of commerce (ie the mall/grocery store etc...). The design limitations and requirements of the light vehicles would be the ability to survive most any concievable wreck possible. IE the intersection of technology to protect passangers in Head on/T-bone collisions. This should drasticly reduce the amout of traffic deaths. No more pedestrian/vehicle interaction. NO more massive inequality of mass interactions and largely reduced chances of intersecting traffic creating worst case scenario crashes. Also with keeping the light vehicles cheap and that much safer would reduce insurance and maintenece costs.

Freight keeps the craziest mix of vehicle classes apart. No more massive 18 wheelers and honda civics mixing it up. Also should allow again for tighter schedules and create less congestion. Also having them on specific roadways would mean not having to over engineer general right of ways to handle their level of stress. Mass Transist systems almost HAVE to have their own right of way else they are useless (see most buss systems in any congested metropolis)

Sustainable housing has been done...

[KlaymenDK]

...both by Hundertwasser and by South American engineers. It's good to see scaling-up attempts.

There was this Austrian chap (he's dead you see) who called himself Friedensreich Hundertwasser (his real name was Friedrich Stowasser) who had all sorts of wonderfully wonky ideas about how to design living spaces in synergy with nature.
An absolute lack of square angles is definitely a trademark of his, along with an abundance of colours. There are a number of exhibits and presentations about the man and his works -- here is the home page of the official museum in Vienna, which is definitely worth a visit.
http://www1.kunsthauswien.com/english/mainindex.ht m
As you can see, Hunderwassers ideas were revolutionary (perhaps too much so), but it has set a trail for other people to follow.

"Other people" recently turned out to be architect Shah Jaafar and professor Kamaruzzaman Sopian of the Advanced Engineering Centre at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, who have shown (sorry, no link available) that it is indeed possible to make housing that gets by exclusively on solar power and hydrogen, both of which are natural and infinitely renewable resources (okay, maybe not infinitely, but I'm sure you'll agree it's close enough). This is interesting reading, and sheds a positive light on the future. Maybe there's a way around the current energy- and pollution-related problems of our world after all?

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[QuantumG]

It's pretty obvious why he's pissed off. Your original post summed it up. Everything is built with the motorist in mind, and therefore not being a motorist has costs that equal or exceed being a motorist. As such, these people who have chosen not to minimize costs have taken the option away from others.

Re:The most important step:

[sillybilly]

This is one point that I utterly disagree on. When the chinese prime minister was here, during the Clinton years, and was asked about human rights violations in China, you know what his answer was? He said, yes, freedom and liberty are important, but he believes, to a chinese person, even before he gets his full freedom, he'd rather have an education. That sentence struck me very much, at the core of my belief system, which was freedom above all. But he's right - after all, what is freedom good for without wisdom, what is freedom good for if you don't know what to do with it? I personally witnessed the fall of communism in the eastern block countries, and the fingerpointing, blaming and lynching of each other that starts whenever people free suddenly "free" and run rampant without self control, because there is no longer a secret service that's watching and comes takes you away. Remember the french revolution and guillotines? A temporary fix could be freedom+religion, fear of God, God is watching instead of the secret service, but the Chinese don't have Gods. Yet their culture is the most outspoken preacher of self control - wax on, wax off - remember? Wouldn't inner self control be a much more dignified way to be a human being, than an external self control, such as secret service or God?

Don't write off the Chinese so easily - they somehow put a stop to the explosive population growth, in a culture that values huge families. As far as sustainability goes, they hold the record - they have maintained a continuous existence for almost longer than any other culture - though heavily violent at first, the philosophies of Confucius and Lao Tzu from millenia ago, that still dominate today, sound very nonviolent and sustainable, even if not perfect - e.g. father as an absolute "tyrant." The Chinese were also not perfect in the sense that they too had an emperor until very recently, corruption, etc., but still, it's worth paying attention to what they are saying. They are not convinced the Taiwanese system that we pump so full of cash and resources to showcase it to them as bait, will lead to good. After all, they know what kind of opium-plague the free market can lead to, that scar in their memory is still very recent. When I see internet censoring stories about them, I'm not fully convinced that it's done simply out of a need to maintain corrupt power, or to keep China from succumbing to the inflow of miseducation and sex-opium-n-rocknroll that you get from the liberated, freemarket, human-rights promoting Clearchannel-RIAA western media.

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[curious.corn]

Such as this?. Move along, the Far West is gone, get it over. There's a lot to gain in teamwork (not the corporate football rethorical tripe) and being part of it doesn't mean you'll die a terrible comunist death. You're paranoid...

This is All Wrong

[tjstork]

The reason China's economy is growing really fast is because they stopped centrally planning it. Yes they do have a lot of state sponsored works but the real dynamo of China's economy is that a lot of a generals in the Chinese army took their military contract funds and opened up factories to produce goods bound for America. Chinese banks now underwrite this production dramatically, so that, anyone in China can get a loan to start a factory if they can convince the bank they have a buyer in America for the goods that it produces.

Sustainable for how long?

[DahGhostfacedFiddlah]

We're not talking about "perpetually sustainable" cities that will last until the end of time. Yes, there will be natural disasters - glaciers will appear at some point and wipe out a lot of the earth's surface. But in the short (human-lifespan) term, there's no reason to think we can't design sustainable cities that can survive all of the short-term disasters that will be thrown at us.

And if we ever want to get off this rock, we're going to have to design the technology anyway. You honestly don't believe a moon-base is possible, regardless of advances in technology?

Cheap Oil

[amightywind]

It simply amazes me when Americans talk of gas (petrol) being expensive at $2.20. You guys are practically getting the stuff for free. Try comparing your price with the UK ($7.00 a gallon, pretty much anywhere in Europe

We in the US are equally amazed that you in Europe are willing to pay 80% fuel taxes to your rapacious socialist governments.

Re:Cheap Oil

[Knuckles]

Because, you know, it might actually be better to not change your whole life and culture to confirm to the needs of cars, car culture, and car economy, but the other way round

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[vidarh]

Funny. I prefer my one hour commute by walking or bus to the station + train + walking the last distance over the one and a half hour (at best) drive that would end up costing me more. That's what it's like here in London.

The very reason it is faster for you is exactly that US city planners almost exclusively focus on making it convenient to get around by car vs. public transport.

Mass transit works well even in countries like Norway (average population density: 13 per square kilometer) - they just don't work everywhere. I don't think anybody suggests that someone living in a rural area should rely entirely on public transport. But vast areas of major population centres in the US consists of out of control sprawl because public transport hasn't been given priority.

The times I've visited the parts of Virginia near D.C. for instance, I've constantly been shocked at how hard it was to get around even by foot. I stayed in a hotel what should have been a 15 minute walk away from a restaurant, and we were faced with having to cross several 4-6 lane roads and several sections where there was no proper sidewalk.

This was an area with a population density far higher than anywhere in Norway (where I'm originally from), yet so pedestrian unfriendly and with such a useless public transport system that the typical 5000-10.000 inhabitant village in Norway would have more people using public transport on a daily basis.

I've never owned a car or gotten a drivers license, because I've never had a reason to. Perhaps I'll get one whenever I get kids, but for now public transport serves 95%+ of my transport needs, and the rest is solved with cabs, and I end up saving both time and money that way. However it always makes it interesting whenever I visit the US (going again this weekend, and will be staying in Palo Alto).

To be fair, some areas are quite good - the D.C metro was quite nice when I went there, and SF has a reasonable transport system, though it's still slow and inefficient if you want to go out to any of the smaller towns that don't have rail links.

But to claim that you need "very high population densities" for mass transit to work is bullshit, as anyone who has visited some of the European countries with lower population densities can tell you. Once density drops down you may need to have access to a car now and again, but there's a huge difference between having a transport system you can easily use for 80% of your journeys and not having one at all.

I also find it interesting that in Europe, most families will own a car, but will still take train/buses/undeground etc. into account when deciding how to get somewhere, while in large parts of the US (outside some of the major metro areas like NYC) it seems that the assumption is that if you have a car it will be your sole mode of transport apart from planes, regardless of whether a particular trip might be just as convenient or faster or cheaper with public transport.

That unwillingness in many areas to consider public transport unless you are forced to by not having a car fascinates me - it's very clear that there is a social status consideration in what mode of transport you consider in the US, which is much less pronounced in Europe, and that is more important than whether or not public transport is convenient, cheap or fast.

Re:These kind of initiatives are pointless

[Eric S. Smith]

everyone should be free to drive to the supermarket while I'm "free" to inhale their car exhaust.

One possible choice you might make is to tone down your obsession with minor pollution.

Minor, eh? Let's just claim that pollution is good for you. Your "how dare you make decisions for others" position is spoiled by the fact that those saintly "others" are cheerfully injuring the rest of us. Maybe we should all choose not to breathe.

Could be worse, though. They could all decide to be clever and save money by riding around on two-stroke scooters. God forbid that we should require better emissions standards, though, because that might restrict choice and some Good Thing or other.

Re:The most important step:

[bigpat]

He said, yes, freedom and liberty are important, but he believes, to a chinese person, even before he gets his full freedom, he'd rather have an education.

Sure and that is why we don't give full legal freedom to children. But at some point children must grow up and take on responsibility for their own lives and choices. That is what freedom is about.

You, communism and many western politicians present us with a false choice, between freedom and other things.

But freedom as it concerns a government is seperate from material things provided to people, but rather it is the concept that people have natural rights that the government will not take away. Freedom is that people are not arbitrarily interfered with by the government when they communicate with one another. Freedom is that people are not forced to perform work for others or by the government. Freedom is that people are not prevented by the government from moving or relocating from one place to another nor are they forced to do so. Freedom is that people be secure in their person and property and not be forced by the government to do anything to their bodies or give up their possessions.

Freedom is not about what a government can do for people, but what the government can't do to people.