World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural

biohack writes "A major demographic shift took place on Wednesday, May 23, 2007: For the first time in human history, the earth's population is more urban than rural. According to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia, on that day, a predicted global urban population of 3,303,992,253 exceeded that of 3,303,866,404 rural people. In the US, the tipping point from a majority rural to a majority urban population came early in the late 1910s."

Comments

Earth....

[zapwow]

Soon to be renamed: Trantor!

Re:Earth....

[Manatra]

All hail our psychic robot overlords!

Re:Earth....

[Eli Gottlieb]

Damn sight better than welcoming our hermaphroditic, anthrophobic, telekinetic overlords!

Re:Earth....

[BookeWyrmm]

Well, let me be the first to say, there goes the neighbor hood,...

Re:Earth....

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know about that, it depends on the quality of the hermaphroditic sex organs...

Stats all the way to the single digits

[Richard McBeef]

How do they calculate that? I mean, they cannot have that high of a confidence level in those numbers.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just bullshit, but they may think rounding up to millions would be less impressive. Even if you could have up to date census information of every single human being in the world, a minute after you published it, death and newborns would shake your numbers. And in this particular case, people moving from rural to urban or the other way round would also modify them. It always makes me mad when they don't round up numbers which are obviously not exact.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Anonymous Coward]

How do they calculate that? I mean, they cannot have that high of a confidence level in those numbers.

Does it matter? The population density between rural and urban is arbitrary. You could arbitrarily define any number for rural or urban. From one definition on the USDA website:

The basic concept remains intact, namely that rural includes open country and small settlements of less than 2,500 persons. However, there are many small towns and cities that have adjoining towns or suburbs, both incorporated and unincorporated aggregations. The Bureau has defined such urban clusters regardless of political boundaries. For example, a small town of 2,000 people with an adjacent densely settled suburb of 800 people would be designated as an urban cluster with a population of 2,800. Under 1990 procedures there would be no combination and the population would remain rural.

Conversely, the Bureau identified rural parts of incorporated towns whose city limits are very broad and include some thinly settled territory. Thus, if a town of 5,000 people has 500 residents living in thinly settled portions, the 500 are classified as rural and the urban population would be just 4,500. Does 2,500 people in a town mean anything special? How would the numbers change for the US is we went to 2,600? I came from a town of 30,000 and I thought that was Hicksville. The standards for this study are probably different that that of the USDA, but it doesn't matter. It will be arbitrary as well. You can pick your timeline for when the world became more urban than rural as you pick your definitions for rural and urban. And if you can get past that hurdle, then you can try to figure out your uncertainties in your numbers.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Anonymous Coward]

Death and newborns don't shake the number if it is defined to be the population at a specific date/time. A population census without a date is what should make you mad.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[MonorailCat]

I think someone snoozed through his high school lecture on significant digits...

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Richard McBeef]

Does it matter?

Not really. I guess I was naive in thinking that statisticians played some role in generating these numbers. No statistician would stand by numbers laid out to that degree of precision when dealing with a number so fluid.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[phantomlord]

So, the entire census is conducted at exactly the same second? If you take a full day, you're going to have people you already counted who died in that period, people you already counted who have since given birth in that period, etc. Factor in that most censuses normally take weeks and not only do you have births and deaths but you have people who have moved around, you have estimates (which can be completely bogus) of people that you didn't count (such as homeless people), etc. I don't think you can get a census precise to a single person in a sample any bigger than a small or medium sized business. Really, the best you can do is an educated guess and it seems a little silly to not imply any room for error in the guess.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[ag0ny]

So, the entire census is conducted at exactly the same second? If you take a full day, you're going to have people you already counted who died in that period, people you already counted who have since given birth in that period, etc.

Just take a snapshot before the census! Duh!

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[kc8apf]

Actually, Hicksville has only 5,003 people in it as of 2000 (http://www.epodunk.com/cgi-bin/popInfo.php?locInd ex=274281).

I grew up in a neighboring city (Defiance).

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Yvanhoe]

More plausible is that this is a projection : they know a rough estimate of the population at Jan 1st 2007 and they know the birth rate, death rate, the rate of urbanization, the differences in fertility and life expectancy in cities and countryside and they get a non-round number, not precise but that bears some information nonetheless.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Anonymous Coward]

Thankfully My Hicksville is more Urban with a population of more than 40k+
http://www.city-data.com/city/Hicksville-New-York. html

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[greenbird]

How do they calculate that? I mean, they cannot have that high of a confidence level in those numbers.

Yeah, I was visiting visiting relatives in the city that day so I know they're off by at least one.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[ZombieWomble]

Well yes, but isn't this exactly the point the earlier posts were making? These numbers are nowhere near exact, as any such projection is probably using base data months or years out of date, and extrapolating over a non-trivial time period, they quote a figure accurate to the person? It certainly raises red flags to anyone who's ever done any sort of error analysis, probably.

Of course, it does make for a better press release. "World population density becomes more urban than rural. Give or take a week" isn't quite as interesting.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I grew up in a neighboring city (Defiance).

Whence all the Geeks had fled.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Tickletaint]

Exactly. I'd consider a bustling town of 1,000 centered around a village square to be "urban." On the other hand, there are huge swaths of Houston that I'd hesitate to describe as anything but red-state East Jesus.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Aliriza]

I don't care about the calculation it is more or less significant , but we are getting close targets , LOL.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[sarahbau]

Whether they say 53,103,102 or 53,000,000, it's still to the person. Just because one number is a little more "neat" than the other, there's no way to know which one is more accurate. The actual number could be higher than the first number, meaning rounding down would just make it even less accurate. It makes more sense to me to give a result that's in the middle of the error range than rounding.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[zero_offset]

So, the entire census is conducted at exactly the same second?

Playing the Devil's Advocate here -- You don't have to conduct it in the present. Today is May 25th. So you decide we'll use data from May 23rd (at some particular time specified down to the second, if you care), and you work out the numbers for that point in time. Granted it isn't practical, but it also isn't impossible.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Anonymous Coward]

odd, I've got a computer named after Defiance (Ohio) -- we do research there... never heard of hicksville though!

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Asgerix]

Here is how: Add it all up.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[PMuse]

Whose bright idea was it to color that map in those particular shades of red and blue? Interesting how it makes the perennially urban areas pale into insignificance, isn't it?

If you're thinking, "It's not supposed to be a population density map, it's supposed to draw the eye to areas that are becoming more rural and less rural", then answer this question: why use the colors blue and red?

Politics much?

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[dajak]

The city of Veere in the Netherlands for instance has about 1500 inhabitants. It was already a walled city when Columbus discovered America, it has a busy harbour, and it is the administrative center for twelve other towns and villages, some of which have more inhabitants.

Most important qualifications for the predicate urban are in my view the type of economic activities that take place there, and the central function relative to the area around it. Rural means pastoral or agricultural activities. Suburbs are obviously neither urban nor rural: they are suburban. Nothing happens there. And wilderness is not rural as well. The notion that space can be neatly divided into urban and rural only ever applied to the Western European plains anyway, and has been past its sell by date since we tore down city walls and started using cars.

Population density has little to do with it. Even populations that survive on subsistence farming alone can reach impressive population densities: a family needs about an acre to survive. Take the fertile regions in Rwanda as an example. Rural areas in one country can have a higher population density than suburbs in another, and some urban areas have no inhabitants at all, only shops, offices, etc.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Wannabe Code Monkey]

Actually, Hicksville has only 5,003 people in it as of 2000

My Dad grew up near Hicksville, NY, and whenever he heard the common insulting phrases about "Hicksville" he always thought they were specifically about this actual town. It wasn't until later that he found out that "Hicksville" was a generic stand-in for the boonies (kind of ironic considering Hicksville's proximity to NYC). Hicksville, NY has Hicksville, OH beat out with a pop of 41,260.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Hatta]

not precise but that bears some information nonetheless.

It doesn't actually. Precision below your margin of error is meaningless.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[manWorkSucks]

Defiance, Ohio is one of my favorite bands.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Anonymous Coward]

I visited your link, and I like how the place is 97.5% white. There are 7 black people.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[zippthorne]

I suspect that that irony is actually part of the joke. Everywhere outside NY is "the boonies" to the people who live there...

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[Anonymous Coward]

Good God! They are lucky. How did the seven slip in?

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[amper]

Actually, in that direction, we refer to it as "out the Island"...of course, to the west and south, everything is "Jersey", and to the north, everything further north than Yonkers is "upstate somewhere"...

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[mazarin5]

I grew up in a neighboring city (Defiance).

You have my sympathy.

Re:Stats all the way to the single digits

[zippthorne]

You crazy dutch freaks. With your strange parochial cosmopolitanism and your silly phrases like, "I waited online for an hour to get those tickets" when you mean that you waited IN line and didn't use the internet at all...

Obligatory Civ reference

[MagicDude]

I guess we better get to building some coliseums, or the citizens will stop being productive.

Re:Obligatory Civ reference

[Kittenman]

I think we're ok as long we have two citizens outside for every city. And we have Agriculture :)

Re:Obligatory Civ reference

[elrous0]

I know it's a joke, any modern city (and even most towns) have many more coliseums than the Romans could have DREAMED up. Sports arenas, baseball stadiums, football stadiums, hockey arenas, and soccer stadiums dot the map of every city and town.

And yes, I know soccer is called football outside North America, so no replies from touchy limeys please.

Re:Obligatory Civ reference

[kabocox]

I guess we better get to building some coliseums, or the citizens will stop being productive.

Hey, it happens in real life! Look at New Orleans. The first thing they wanted was their modern coliseum rebuilt.

Re:Obligatory Civ reference

[CreatureComfort]

No, we solved that problem fifty years ago. Put a 'mini-coliseum' in every home.

Next week on American Idol watch two people compete for a meaningless prize while you sit in your easy chair saying "I could do better than that."

Early in the late 1910s?

[RedWizzard]

early in the late 1910s. WTF does that mean? Can we get an editor here, please?

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[Sparr0]

I am going to assume that it means "in the late 1910s, which is much earlier than the 2007 date for the world at large".

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[zapwow]

early in the late 1910s. WTF does that mean? Can we get an editor here, please? It means sometime likely between 1915-1919 inclusive. It makes sense if you think "the late 1980s" or "the late 1820s"... "the late 1910s".

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[zapwow]

I just realized... I totally missed the point. Oops

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[mashade]

I think the concern is 'early' in the 'late' ... Which is it? :)

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[Anonymous Coward]

But they said "EARLY in the late 1910s". If it was in 1919 or 1918 they would have said "in the late 1910s". They mean 1915 through 1917.5.

And yes, it is a stupid way to say it.

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they mean : came much earlier as it happened during the late 1910s

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[Eddi3]

Um... Sometime in between the later part of the 1910s (1915-1919) and the earlier part of that (1916-1917)

I don't see what was so hard to understand about that...

Eddie

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[psaunders]

Reminds me of the beginning of Monty Python's Custard Pie Lecture:

"As early as the late 14th century or indeed as late as the early 14th century..."

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[Torodung]

early in the late 1910s. WTF does that mean? Can we get an editor here, please?

As in the "late" Dent Arthur Dent. It's a threat.

-- Toro

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[RedWizzard]

I am going to assume that it means "in the late 1910s, which is much earlier than the 2007 date for the world at large". What a difference a comma would have made:

In the US, the tipping point from a majority rural to a majority urban population came early, in the late 1910s." Punctuation: it's not just for making faces.

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[lawpoop]

I think the problem is that it's just redundant, or too precise for a year that long ago.

Really, what is the difference between 1916-1917, a 2 year range, and 1915-1919, a four year range? You could have either said "around the years 1916-1917" or just say "the later part of the 1910s". Combining the words 'early' and 'late' to describe the same time period borders on illogical. You're creating a precision with an awkward phrasing that really doesn't communicate any more than a much simpler phrase could.

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm told they can be very effective.

Happy International Towel Day, btw ...

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, 1919 would have been *late* in the late 1910s :P

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[ear1grey]

It means sometime between 1915 and 1920. It's like saying "in the mid 70s" or "in the early eighties".

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[19thNervousBreakdown]

No, it should have been, "early, in the late 1910s." See how the comma completely changed the meaning? That's what editors do.

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[name*censored*]

It means January or February somewhere from 1915 - 1919. Haven't you seen the above thread, statisticians are just too accurate!

(yes I am kidding)

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[elrous0]

Wait, are you singing Mixolydian scales?

Re:Early in the late 1910s?

[clacke]

early late 1910s... should be about the same as the late mid-1910s. Or the early 20th century.

Dangerous?

[iminplaya]

Could this put more people in a dangerous position of dependency on a fragile infrastructure run by people without your best interests in mind? I moved away from the city because that very thing makes me feel very uncomfortable. There are very many small family farms only a few hours away by bus(couple of days by donkey cart if need be)...just in case. Never know when Oscar Mayer might quit making my dinner for me. Good thing I like beans and tortillas. And some of the home made liquor is pretty tasty too.

Re:Dangerous?

[glwtta]

Yeah, great plan - visualize the worst-case scenario, then start living it preemptively. "They can't take away the benefits of society if I give them up myself!"

How about I go do the donkey cart and beans thing when the "fragile infrastructure" actually crumbles on me?

Re:Dangerous?

[khallow]

I think the idea is that the US will have trouble providing the donkeys and beans under such circumstances.

Re:Dangerous?

[Breakfast Pants]

But he isn't saying he is gonna own a donkey and beans. He's saying he lives near local run farms.. as if they will have some neighborly affection for him and load him with beans, when millions from the cities are trading their life's possessions for them.

Re:Dangerous?

[iminplaya]

How about I go do the donkey cart and beans thing when the "fragile infrastructure" actually crumbles on me?

I wouldn't know in your case. I see plenty of them. I can always hitch a ride out of town. No biggie. But you have just shown what I'm talking about. What is your plan? A bomb shelter with a cache of weaponry? Have fun. Haven't you already noticed how easy it is to completely shut down the entire air traffic control system? Or the post office? Did you notice how easy it is to knock out the power in almost 25% of the whole country? A little ice storm comes through and some places will go weeks without. Look what Katrina did. What more evidence do you need? Personally I find your energy situation quite humorous. I've been watching since 1973 how crazy that can get. Expect more of the same since you still have little alternative. No lessons learned there. 1979, same thing, different year. Again the message went unheeded. For me it was great back then. The streets of Los Angeles were finally made safe by the lack of traffic. So I was able to bicycle all around town without a care in the world. I could ride all the way from Inglewood to Malibu with out ever getting sideswiped. Man! it was nice! I hope you didn't get nailed by the E-coli in your spinach. Or your dog, if you have one, by the pet food poisoning. Your food situation is getting worse. I can see it from here. You should keep a more watchful eye. If you thought the gas lines were long...Well, let's just hope you don't need what's left of your national guard to airlift of few tons of rice. You won't have the luxury of tortillas, much less some good salsa. Now, I'm just talking about the states where at least you have sufficient space to grow food, but where getting it out can be a problem, but not an intractable one. The unfortunate part is now the family farm is almost extinct. So they will be at the mercy of Monsanto. Thing is they already are. Not good by any means. Where a nationwide crop can be wiped out by a single bug. Imagine what it will be like in a place like Malaysia, where everything must be shipped in. What's Japan going to do? I can guarantee it won't be pretty. Some of those things you consider "benefits", I don't. I have peace of mind. That overrules any desire for an iPod in a Humvee by a long shot. I don't need that stuff to get laid. I feel very secure and am living quite well. And the weather sure is nice.

Re:Dangerous?

[paulgrant]

by then it will be too late, declawed cat. All the farmers will be armed.
And they call *us* peasants.

Re:Dangerous?

[toddhisattva]

What will you trade the farmers for their food? Those green pieces of paper?

Re:Dangerous?

[tdwebste]

Where did you move to? the suburbs?

I am curious how the suburbs are less dependent on farms for food then cities? Unless you have a big garden or live on a farm yourself, you are still dependent of someone else for you the food on your table. My grandmother went through a very harsh experience, and as result always made sure that her garden was sufficient to live off. Do you a garden?

Ok, there are a few family farms a few hours away. Most farms produce enough of a food commodity to supply a large town, but do not produce a wide enough range of food commodities to live off. I think you are dreaming, go back to the city and reduce your environmental footprint.

By moving to the suburbs you have only taken farm land away from the farms that produce your food.

Re:Dangerous?

[iminplaya]

All those possessions will probably be stolen before they have any chance to trade with the farmers. And yes they are quite neighborly. Say all the nasty things you want. And as primitive as our infrastructure may appear to you, it actually is a bit more robust. I only need to point out the differences between Hurricanes Wilma and Katrina to make my point. Even most of the palapas withstood better than those fancy townhouses did when Wilma went whizzing through Florida, and it killed more people in Florida. Pretty obvious when you take into account that nobody died from that storm in Mexico. Now Chiapas was a completely different story. Their infrastructure is totally a "fair weather friend". But people came to their aid instead of just rounding them up. As nasty as it was, I consider it better than what happened to New Orleans. Truly inexcusable that was. But watching those rivers was truly impressive. You could feel the power just standing close by, just the noise was something you can't imagine, going on for weeks! And I bet it would have done just as much damage to an American town. It's really just an example of what can happen when people get complacent over a period of time, no matter where they are. Self sufficiency has its benefits, even if luxury isn't always one of them. Little by little I'm getting there, and I should be able to even keep my connection up in all but the worst of times. Having a couple of hectares sure would be nice though. Someday...

Re:Dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the idea is that the US will have trouble providing the donkeys and beans under such circumstances.

That is why we are looking into immigration reform, the mexicans will bring them :)

Re:Dangerous?

[iminplaya]

Few things are more worthless than money(of course not having any, I wouldn't know). And that paper stuff isn't even very good for butt wipe. I have a trade(with a license to practice it an' everything), a hammer and a screwdriver. And I know which end of the screwdriver to hit, unlike many of you city boys. I'm not the least bit worried.

Re:Dangerous?

[jmv]

Unless you don't depend on any other infrastructure, then the whole thing is pointless. Are you independent of electricity, oil, garbage collection, food (local production only), communications, ...?

Re:Dangerous?

[tdwebste]

I grew up on a family farm just like one of those farms near by. Only to see the land swallowed up by suburbs. I am sure you can fix a few things which is handy. I hope your job requires your move to the suburbs, and please ignore my comments.

If you have moved to the suburbs because you think you are avoiding a coming disaster, you are wrong, you are causing it. The land your house sits on and was paved over for you car, was farm land producing food for you to eat. This land can never be reclaimed for farming. It is gone forever. Remember that when disaster comes and you are looking for beens to eat.

I am not worried cause I am getting older. It is my children who need to worry, and your children too. The land paved over for suburbs is gone. As long as there is enough good land left it is no big deal right? But in Canada that means the best land in the country is gone or disappearing now. The remainin land is less productive.

Re:Dangerous?

[iminplaya]

...please ignore my comments.

Your wish is my command :-)

Re:Dangerous?

[Tickletaint]

Whaaat? I escaped the suburbs to the city precisely because I didn't want to depend on a fragile infrastructure run by others. In a city, the infrastructure supporting your life is much less fragile than it is in the countryside, where you're forced to use oil-hungry vehicles to get around, whereas here in the city, you just walk. And your food needs, for example, are more likely to be met in urban areas, since they tend to be hubs for goods and services. It was rural Ireland that starved in the potato famine, not so much Dublin.

Re:Dangerous?

[rsd-17]

Good thing I like beans and tortillas

Don't count on those tortillas because most of the corn will be used for ethanol production.

Re:Dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

Self sufficiency has its benefits, even if luxury isn't always one of them. Little by little I'm getting there, and I should be able to even keep my connection up in all but the worst of times. Having a couple of hectares sure would be nice though. Someday...

90% of all human endeavors is spent on exclusion with all the fences and walls and enforcement infrastructure involved. Such a waste. We are more territorial than the animals are. Really it's the same, we mark our territory like a damn dog, subconsciously for the exact same reason. Those reasons still apply to animals. For humans, it's completely irrational and purely instinctive.
To me, the right of passage precludes property rights. In other words, nobody has a right to block my way from Mexico to Canada and back. I have at least the same rights as a moose or any other migratory animal to follow the food.

I'm still waiting for your address so I can come over and help myself to your stuff... Eagerly awaiting your purchase of that land and for you to start growing crops so I can steal your food and self-sufficiency. Property rights are evil!

Re:Dangerous?

[Lord Ender]

My plan for the collapse of civilization is to use the last remaining gas in my SUV to drive out into the countryside to steal a farm from someone like yourself. Ah... living off the land...

Re:Dangerous?

[khallow]

And he's probably right. Establishing trust and a relation now would probably pay in such a scenario. I doubt anyone would refuse to trade with their neighbor under such circumstances. They probably wouldn't do a lot for free (just because they probably couldn't afford to), but I'm sure he can get preferential treatment. After all, those refugees will move on. But a neighbor sticks around and could help you down the road.

Re:Dangerous?

[iminplaya]

I'm still waiting for your address...

Not today..."but surely to-morrow"...

Re:Dangerous?

[shiftless]

What "benefits of society" are you suggesting the GP is giving up? I've lived in the country most of my life, and I love it. I've been to plenty of cities (big and small), and they are nice places to visit, but I damn sure wouldn't want to live there.

Out here in the valley, I could shoot assault weapons in the dead of night, have a big drunken bonfire, take a piss off my front porch, or basically do whatever the hell I want to do without anyone being around to know or care. I could paint my house pink, drive a rusted out Pinto, or have 18 cars up on blocks if I wanted to without some neighborhood nazi calling the cops. At this point you might criticize saying that only "low class" people do that sort of thing, but you're missing the point. The point is I can be low class, high class, middle class, or whatever the hell I want, and nobody can say a damned thing about it. That's freedom, buddy.

I've got 93 acres of forest land, which isn't much, but it's a hell of a lot more than I could own in a city without being fabulously wealthy. Plus there is no pollution: the sky is blue, the grass is green, the air is clear and my well water is the best water you've ever tasted. And best of all, when I walk outside all I hear is DEAD QUIET, or maybe some birds chirping. No trucks, cars, people yapping, construction noises, trains, horns, traffic, or anything, just peace and quiet.

I leave my house unlocked 24/7, leave the doors on my car unlocked with keys in the ignition, and have never had anything stolen from me.

I live in a cabin that I built myself, using trees from my land, sawing them into lumber with my neighbor's sawmill, all for less than $5k. No mortgage. I drive a Mustang that I built (including cost of car) for less than $2,500, which runs low 12s in the 1/4 mile. No car payment and cheap insurance. I have a $50/month power bill, $50/month cell phone bill, $30/month DSL, and occasionally I have to pay some (very reasonable) land taxes. Then there's misc. expenses like clothes and grocery, which aren't much because I don't live lavishly. I had a $34k/year job recently and I was living like a king on that salary, but I left it in favor of an $150k/year overseas job I'll be leaving for shortly. $150k ain't much in Seattle or Los Angelas, but here in the South that's enough cash for me to build one hell of an automotive business.

Having said all that, let me come back to the original subject. As you can see, I'm not doing so bad out here without all the "benefits of society". Now let's say some disaster befalls the nation/world which seriously impacts the infrastructure which supplies you with food, water, electricity, etc. If you're like many city folks, you might not even have a car to get out of town with. What are you going to do?

If the power goes out here, I fire up the old Lister diesel generator, and I've got enough fuel reserves to run it for a quite some time until I can secure more. If the grocery store closes down, I'm still eating steaks and drinking beer because I can grow and produce my own food. The water ain't going to go out as long as I have power, since I have a well with an electric pump, but if power fails I can still get water out of the creek. If someone attempts to threaten any of these resources I can stop them with deadly force. I can make my own clothes, I can build things, I can survive. And I know plenty of good ole boys who, while being as self sufficient as I am, would still be glad to band together to ensure our survival. Again I ask: what resources do you have available to you, and what are you going to do when the shit hits the fan?

That day might never come, but in the event it does, I am more than prepared, and it sounds like the GP is thinking along the same lines. I think it's pretty ridiculous of you to criticize him for thinking ahead and planning for the worst.

Re:Dangerous?

[dharbee]

"And I know which end of the screwdriver to hit, unlike many of you city boys. I'm not the least bit worried."

That's funny, because the first thing I thought when I saw this was "what kind of idiot hits a screwdriver instead of using the right tool, like a punch or chisel". Unless, of course, you want them to shatter and become worthless...

Re:Dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

I leave my house unlocked 24/7, leave the doors on my car unlocked with keys in the ignition, and have never had anything stolen from me. I take it you don't live near an international border.

Re:Dangerous?

[Grishnakh]

Sounds pretty good, except for the bit about leaving things unlocked. I've lived in rural areas on the east coast while growing up, and I have a lot of family that still does. There's a fair amount of crime in rural areas these days, unlike 20 years ago. Meth and other drugs have become a serious problem; rural places are popular locations for meth labs. And rural people jacked up on meth are running around breaking into houses to steal stuff to further their habit (they're doing this in urban places too of course). So don't get too comfortable in your cabin. Keep guns handy, and be ready to shoot any intruders.

I live in the city currently, building my family's savings. City live has its advantages; money is the biggest one because of the proximity of high-paying jobs. But it gets old quickly as you mature (I'm 34 now); besides all the factors you mentioned (HOAs, etc.), the crime rate in the USA has gone up a lot in the past few years because of illegal immigration. My wife and I are making plans to move to the northwest and buy a large lot in a rural area, hopefully away from any towns or cities, but still within an hour's drive or so of these. We want land for seclusion and privacy, to have a workshop for me, and to grow crops and be more self-sufficient. My biggest concern is getting high-speed net access. At that time, I plan to have a job where I work from home full-time. However, we definitely won't be copying you with the leaving doors unlocked bit. We'll have a motorized gate at the property entrance, and hopefully a long driveway. There'll be an alarm system, and perimeter security to detect any intruders on the property. We have guns and NVGs, and my wife trained for years in the military defending against Special Operations forces, so dealing with said intruders won't be a problem. Call us paranoid, but we value our safety and privacy.

As for your talk about "low class" people; I live in a subdivision where the houses cost about a quarter million. We're surrounded by very "low class" people; stupid people who have dogs outside which bark at nothing for hours on end, and then get mad when someone calls the police because this is against city law. (Remember, this is a subdivision, with postage-stamp size lots.) And then there's "low class" people across the street who are too stupid or poor (with a $250,000 house) to buy a garage door opener, so they drive up to the door at night and honk their horn for 10 minutes (no exaggeration) waiting for someone inside to come open the garage door for them. I could go on and on about other examples; suffice it to say this neighborhood feels like a ghetto to me.

There are "high class" subdivisions in town, but then you're looking at houses in the $700k - $1 million range. I have a good job, but that's just ridiculous that I need to spend that much to get away from the riff-raff. Plus, there's a whole new set of problems in those neighborhoods: overly restrictive HOAs namely. And anywhere you go in this city, violent home invasions are becoming a common occurrence. We now keep guns within arm's reach at most times while at home, if not carrying in a holster.

So I definitely agree with you on the benefits of rural living, and hope to go back to that lifestyle soon.

Re:Dangerous?

[ultranova]

Unless you don't depend on any other infrastructure, then the whole thing is pointless. Are you independent of electricity, oil, garbage collection, food (local production only), communications, ...?

Not to mention law enforcement to keep the desperate starving masses from stealing your food.

And if someone answers with "I've got guns and know how to use them", I'll point out that you'd better know how to make bullets too, and be sitting on a lead mine to put that knowledge into use.

The farmers are in more, not less, shitty situation than urban people if things go to hell, because their main resource (land) is non-movable and non-hidable. Besides, without modern civilization there aren't modern pesticides and nutrients (not to mention machines), so productivity once again drops to the point where you're facing starvation if anything goes wrong. Lack of ability to store food for long periods (no electricity, no cold storage) doesn't help, either.

The best chances you have in such a situation is being part of a large organization which can coordinate its actions effectively to get the resources it needs - such as a gang, for example. Self-sufficiency is simply not possible for a human being, not when you factor in the need for defense too. All disaster survival plans should take this into account and concentrate on maintaining the cohesion of local society, be it a small farm town or a biker gang.

Re:Dangerous?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the worst case scenario is *far* worse than what he has moved into.

Re:Dangerous?

[iminplaya]

I'm confident that you will run out long before you get there, Mad Max :-)

Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[zanderredux]

Oh my... this statement is killing me:

For the first time in human history, the earth's population is more urban than rural.

I really do not see that there'll be a second time when the earth's population will be come more urban than rural. This trend is pretty much irreversible and, unless a mega-disease wipes out major urban centers, there'll be no second, third, fourth time.

A better way to write that should be:

Finally, the earth's population is more urban than rural.

</rant>

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[heretic108]

Oh my... this statement is killing me:
        For the first time in human history, the earth's population is more urban than rural.
I really do not see that there'll be a second time when the earth's population will be come more urban than rural

Could happen. For instance, bird-flu or limited nuclear warfare, which decimates urban populations with much less impact on rural populations. This would leave the earth with more rural than urban people. Then, when the urban population bounces back, the 'earth's population will become more urban than rural' for the *second* time.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[Jarjarthejedi]

Wrong. Sorry, but that's flat out wrong. Saying the first time does not imply that you're assuming there will be a second time. All it means is that this has not happened before. For the first time is a perfectly reasonable way to say it, a little hyperbolic but that's actually reasonable in this case as this is a huge event, something that, quite frankly, changes the planet itself.

Normally I'm against any hyperboles but in this case it's expected.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[Anonymous Coward]

Could happen. For instance, bird-flu or limited nuclear warfare, which decimates urban populations with much less impact on rural populations. This would leave the earth with more rural than urban people. Then, when the urban population bounces back, the 'earth's population will become more urban than rural' for the *second* time. If we look into the recent history of Latin America, we would see that major conflicts tend to concentrate people in urban areas rather than disperse them to rural areas. Whether this would still be true for diseases or nuclear warfare is unknown. I would think that it would concentrate people in urban areas, though not the same areas that were destroyed.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[tfiedler]

I am so looking forward to that event... give us rural loving folk the planet back from the city dwellers. i'll take my motorbike over your mass transit any day, even in the rain and the snow. freedom isn't some mass produced, commoditized beast of a city, it's the sleeping on the porch without fear of some gang banger popping a cap in you.

Cities suck.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[heretic108]

If we look into the recent history of Latin America, we would see that major conflicts tend to concentrate people in urban areas rather than disperse them to rural areas. Whether this would still be true for diseases or nuclear warfare is unknown.

I can't speak for everyone here, but if there was a bird flu epidemic going down in the city, I'd certainly be looking to get out to the country for a while.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[Daniel Dvorkin]

freedom isn't some mass produced, commoditized beast of a city, it's the sleeping on the porch without fear of some gang banger popping a cap in you.

Freedom is living your life how you like. You like sleeping on the porch. I like having a bunch of stuff to do within walking distance. If you think the city is just a "mass produced, commoditized beast" then you're just as prejudiced as the stereotypical urban dweller who thinks everyone in the country has three teeth and marries their cousins.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[khallow]

My take here is that those conflicts tend to concentrate people because of looting from militaries and bandits. If you have nothing (because your home was burned down) then you'll run anywhere you can get some protection and there is some security in numbers. Disease would have the opposite effect. Cities become deathtraps in such times. There's a long history of people fleeing the cities in such times.

My take is that nuclear war will tend to disperse urban areas that are in danger. Ie, most people aren't fatalistic enough to stay in a city when a nuclear war is ongoing. And of course, if a lot of cities are destroyed in a large scale nuclear war, then there will be a sharp drop in population.

One interesting aspect is that famine used to be another disaster that hurt urban areas more than rural. My take is that rural areas are harder hit these days due both to urban areas being better connected to global trade networks and sometimes because the political systems forcibly transfer food from rural to urban areas.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[mnmn]

It does not have to be a disaster. Just as technology changed things to allow people to live in the city, it can change things to allow them to live in the country.

If all jobs move online, no one would want to pay 30% of their salaries for cramped apartments in the city. Everyone wants to own a house with a big backyard, heck an acre of forest and raise big dogs/horses.

Allow the transport of food and purchased goods to anywhere real fast and people will start leaving the city. Another catalyst will be much improved transportation, allowing people to work anywhere without having to live close to work.

In fact seeing how cramped some cities get, I'd almost swear urbanization will be reversed.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[finity]

What bugged me was the line that said:

A major demographic shift took place on Wednesday, May 23, 2007

My first instinct was that they meant this happened very suddenly. I can just imagine how packed the highways must have been Tuesday night.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[Guy Harris]

Everyone wants to own a house with a big backyard, heck an acre of forest and raise big dogs/horses.

Speak for yourself.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell are you talking about, I know almost no city dwellers that would move to the country and raise dogs/horses if they were to win the lottery tomorrow.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[Paulrothrock]

I am so looking forward to that event... give us rural loving folk the planet back from the city dwellers. i'll take my motorbike over your mass transit any day, even in the rain and the snow.

I also prefer my scooter to mass transit.

freedom isn't some mass produced, commoditized beast of a city, it's the sleeping on the porch without fear of some gang banger popping a cap in you.

I live in the city and I would feel perfectly safe sleeping on my porch. Not everywhere in every city has high crime. I leave my scooter parked in front of my house with no fear of it being stolen.

Interestingly, there has been a crime wave nearby. In the suburbs. Kids just walking into homes and killing people. IN THE SUBURBS. And the best part is nobody knows who did it because they're all inside when it happens. I know nothing like that could happen in my neighborhood because there's almost always somebody I know outside at any given time.

Cities suck.

Spoken like someone who's never lived in one, and only believes what he hears on Faux News. I bet next you'll say that if you go into a city you'll turn gay and they'll hold you down and give you an emo haircut.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[Pfhorrest]

I really do not see that there'll be a second time when the earth's population will be come more urban than rural. This trend is pretty much irreversible and, unless a mega-disease wipes out major urban centers, there'll be no second, third, fourth time. I read that passage to mean "now [approximately, i.e as of a few days ago] is the first moment in history in which Earth's population is more urban than rural". Many, many more moments when that is the case will follow; and as you say it's likely that that will continue to be the case indefinitely, barring some horrible disaster. But this is still the first point in time where that is true.

Re:Hyperbolic Slashdot text

[drsquare]

Ask Tony Martin how peaceful it is in the countryside.

Who is gonna milk the cows

[ozphobia]

If we all move to the city (I already am an urbanite) we are going to have some serious food issues. I know that it isn't as labour intensive as it used to be in the 'ol days, but we don't have robots to do this stuf. Yet.

I personally think that this flow to the cities needs to be slowed down or the whole world is gonna be in deep doo doo.

Cheers
John

Re:Who is gonna milk the cows

[catbutt]

Learn a bit of economics. Supply and demand and stuff. Not enough people to milk the cows, the price of milk goes up, more people want to stay in the country and milk cows. It all works out.

Re:Who is gonna milk the cows

[Smight]

Don't worry. Soon we'll be so efficient all the physical labor can be done by a single Australian man.

Re:Who is gonna milk the cows

[Fengpost]

Yes, that is why they invented the "Voluntary Milking System." Yes, it runs on Linux!

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS4275702675.html

Re:Who is gonna milk the cows

[Cerium]

Hard to believe a Futurama reference went unnoticed here...

Re:Who is gonna milk the cows

[Lord Ender]

No. Robots will milk the cows. Robots will plant the seeds. Robots will harvest the crops.

See the writing on the wall--The "family farm" just is not going to be able to compete with incredible efficiency of industrial agriculture as automation technology plummets in price and skyrockets in ability.

Re:Who is gonna milk the cows

[sethstorm]

Unfortunately you havent heard of illegal immigration then. It has done wonders for the fields, why not the cows too?

Re:Who is gonna milk the cows

[bill_mcgonigle]

No. Robots will milk the cows. Robots will plant the seeds. Robots will harvest the crops.

Robots or Chinese...

Actually the robotic cow milking methods look quite nice - the cows get milked when they want to - they can be inside or outside, according to their whims, they get rub-downs on demand, and the milk is automatically analyzed for disease, disposed of if so-found, and reported for veterinary intervention. The barns are also kept very clean, robotically.

The family farmer is just doing worse and worse each year as his taxes increase. He's either going to become bankrupt or hire on some droids in the next couple decades.

Another way to look at it.

[crazyjeremy]

For the first time in history urban areas are over 70% minorities. Thus America is one of the few lands where you can be outnumbered but THEY are considered the minority. I love math... It's so... flexible.

Re:Another way to look at it.

[Drakonian]

For the first time in history urban areas are over 70% minorities.

I believe this is impossible, by definition.

Re:Another way to look at it.

[pipingguy]

That was rated insightful? Maybe my math is poor, but I found it to be confusing.

Does "urban"="non-white"? (I understand that "urban" is a code word for black or hispanic in the US)

Re:Another way to look at it.

[jayratch]

For the first time in history urban areas are over 70% minorities.

I believe this is impossible, by definition.

No, by no means is it impossible.

If group A comprises 30% of the population, while groups B, C, D, E, F and G comprise 15, 15, 14, 13, 12, and 11% respectively, then while the majority of the population are part of minority groups, they are still minority groups, as each group comprises less than half of the population.

However to assume in this case that the remaining group (let's just call them "white males" for argument sake) then constitutes the majority would be a logical fallacy, though a commonly accepted one. In a political sense this does in fact constitute a simple majority when comparing the discrete groups, but often people think of these things in a sense of "most people". "Most people" in this case actually associate themselves with some defined "minority group" hence disturbing the distinction.

To further complicate things, consider that these concepts of majority and minority are defined and displayed in different scales, and will inherently represent differently in any demographic modification. Enter certain areas of business or society and "white male" is actually a majority. Enter another one and "white male" is an aberration. IE, Donald Trump is, in his field, a member of a relative majority, while Marshall Mathers represents, in his field, a minority.

Race relations are complicated? As a member of a (racial) group that has been generally discredited in this area, I can make no claims to expertise or Clue (TM). I can only speak about simple things like math.

Re:Another way to look at it.

[Semptimilius]

Wouldn't "group A" be the largest minority group? Majority implies over 50% to me. However, the reason that 30% might be considered the majority is due to the population of the rural section of society.

Re:Another way to look at it.

[Anonymous Coward]

What you've described is a plurality, not a majority. So in your example, group A is the plurality group. However, it is still a minority group, because it doesn't constitute a majority. It seems to me that any population can either be made of less then 50% minority groups, or exactly 100% minority groups. The stated number, that a population is made up of 70% minority groups, is silly. The largest group, the plurality group, is in that case a minority group itself, and thus all groups are minorities: the population is made up of 100% minority groups.

Re:Another way to look at it.

[BigDukeSix]

Your population goes to 11.

Let's hear it for urbanism!

[JanneM]

The 50/50 tipping point doesn't have much other than symbolic value, of course, but it is another signpost on the road forward for humanity. Cities can be - and are - miserable hellholes, of course, but remember that even a bad slum is often a substantial step up compared to a life of rural landlessness.

A city is also quite a lot more efficient than having the same number of people spread out in small communities over a vastly larger area. This goes both for providing seeded services and for pollution - it's far easier and more efficient to process the concentrated waste water from a million people in one set of facilities than try to process the same amount spread out over many small, disconnected systems. Critical services like high-quality health care, communications infrastructure and so on is also much more efficient - or only doable at all in some cases - in an urban environment. Having 200k people taking public transport to work every morning (and an equivalent number walking or bicycling) is a lot better for everybody than having those same people take individual cars. Osaka is a good example, with just about a quarter driving, a quarter using public transport and a quarter walking or bicycling (the last quarter is split up into combinations of more than one mode). By contrast, in a rural environment, the vast majority would list car or motorbike as their mode.

So stop playing in the mud and come to the city! We're open all night!

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Eccles]

Agreed. New York CIty might seem like an ecological nightmare, for example, but when you consider just how many people are living in that relatively small space, it's per-person impact is so much less. I live in the 'burbs, and couldn't imagine living without driving every day. I have relatives who live in Boston who own one car. The wife hasn't driven in years. She will occasionally take a taxi.

But cities just naturally make everything more expensive. For the cost of my house, land, etc., I could get a couple of small apartments in Boston. Give me a living situation where I can have a 2,000 sq ft apartment for $250K, with shopping, gyms, schools, playgrounds, etc. in easy walking distance, and I'd want to move.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then why do rural places have better air quality and water quality? I get sick off of most urban city water but can drink from most rural town water and well water easily.

Sure cars make sense but how many people in cities actually use public transportation. A nearby city is trying to build a rail system but is having lots of protest on the grounds that few people will use it. And in many rural areas people work at home (farms/teleworkers/mom-and-pop-stores-with-apartme nts-on-top) as well as travel to work. Add into the fact that rural communities probably use less artifical light (nighttime is dark where I live even in the main shopping areas).

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Rotten168]

Yeah but not everyone wants to live "efficiently". Were we put on this earth to live "efficiently"? Someone might think that we were put on this Earth to maybe enjoy life and stuff, and not everyone enjoys life in a city.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Mr2001]

Give me a living situation where I can have a 2,000 sq ft apartment for $250K I hope you mean a 2000 sq ft condo... if you're paying $250k a month to rent an apartment, you'd better get a lot more than 2000 sq ft!

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Talgrath]

Depends on what you think of when you think of a city. Almost any city on the east coast will have public transportation, it isn't even second guessed; same with California. Midwest "cities" tend to be more car-oriented. As for why rural places have "better" air quality, it's simple take 1,000,000 people who burn, let's say 10 lbs on average of carbon a day to move about and compare it to say...1,000 who live in the same size area but burn 50 lbs on average of carbon a day to move about. Which burns up more carbon total? The 1,000,000 of course. These are made up numbers, but I think you get the point.

As for water quality, well I think that may be a matter of taste; I've never gotten sick from any water from a tap, so I can't answer that one for you.

And finally, artificial light, in the modern day, burns up the least amount of energy of our various electrical appliance. Things like computers, washers, dryers and others burn up 100 times or more the electricty in an hour than the average modern day light.

Also, take note that since more city dwellers use mass-transit, they drive fewer vehicles per capita than rural livers. Also, fewer work at jobs that require motorized vehicles; if you live on a farm, not only do you burn fuel driving when you need supplies (usually a gas-guzzling truck, though you do need it) but you burn it when you run your tractor or the variety of other gas-powered farm equipment that you may have.

Finally, generally I've found that opponents of mass-transit tend to be opposed to it more due to the fact that they don't want to pay for it, with "it won't be used" as an excuse, rather than a solid argument. Take, for example, the TRAX light rail system put in Salt Lake City, Utah a few years ago; many said it wouldn't be used, but I've found that the route I regularly ride is packed in each car when I use it. What's more, a variety of studies have found that public transporation unclogs highways that those who don't use public transportation.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[achurch]

So stop playing in the mud and come to the city! We're open all night!

Which is exactly the problem. I like to, you know, sleep at night--not listen to cars zooming around, people getting stabbed, ambulance sirens blaring, that kind of thing.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[JanneM]

Sounds like you just need a better class of city. ^_^

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Jon Kay]

when you consider just how many people are living in that relatively small space, it's per-person impact is so much less.

I keep reading that, but it looks to me like density is more expensive. Yeah, the commute, a small part of the equation, is more efficient, just because the traffic's so bad transit is no worse than car. But the taller an apartment building is, the more expensive / ft^2 it is, and houses are alot less expensive to build than apartment buildings. Lots of resources gone there.

And people in dense places tend to spend more on other things, too (both high supply and demand). The commute savings might be overcome by the import costs of Belgian beer alone.... You tend to spend on a bigger safety net than smaller cities (IMHO good, but it has a cost).

And I never seem to see a link supporting it (not attacking you, personally, it's a dime a dozen).

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[JanneM]

Depends on what you think of when you think of a city

Wasn't thinking of North American cities. As far as public transportation and car dependency goes, they are often pretty dysfunctional. Just because you _can_ make a city come out well doesn't mean that all cities necessarily do.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[symbolset]

The urban environment is also an excellent vehicle for denying benefits of an advanced society to vast numbers of people, like the US where millions have less access to medicine than their impoverished Mexican neighbors because they have no 'coverage'.

This leads to 'medical tourism' where people leave the US to a go to a more rational country where doctors take 'cash'.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Cadallin]

"Yeah but not everyone wants to live "efficiently". Were we put on this earth to live "efficiently"? Someone might think that we were put on this Earth to maybe enjoy life and stuff, and not everyone enjoys life in a city."

Yeah, I mean, you can live out in the Country, shucking corn and fucking your sister. Why would you want to live in a city, where you could walk to hear a live Symphony Orchestra. Or an excellent theatre. Or a museum, or art gallery.

There is nothing to do in the country. You can't even find a place to buy any of the equipment required to do any of the fun stuff all that open space makes possible (paragliding, light aircraft, spelunking, hell even fishing and hunting really)

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[bhtooefr]

I live in the country... and at least for hunting, there's a place 8.4 miles from me. You lose. (8.4 miles IS close, when the nearest gas station is 2.5 miles, and the nearest grocery store is about 3 miles.)

And, I don't shuck corn OR fuck my sister (I don't even have a sister.) Also, I don't feel the need to drive a gas guzzling pickup truck, I instead drive a fuel-efficient diesel compact car.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Delkster]

Yeah but not everyone wants to live "efficiently".

"Living efficiently" has an unpleasant tone to it because it suggests that you have to be somehow particularly effective yourself, and that sounds stressful. That's not exactly what is meant when urban life is said to be more efficient than rural life. Urban life is just naturally more efficient in terms of energy and work, and I'd say that at least the former is definitely quite important a factor nowadays. We clearly want to conserve energy while at the same time few people seem willing to have their standard of living improve, or at the very least not decline. Add to that the growing population and you need to increase energy efficiency to have any of that work.

On a large scale you don't have to place energy efficiency and enjoyment against each other. Assume that there are three kinds of people: those who prefer to live in the country rather than in the city, the opposite kind that prefers urban life, and those who consider the two options equal.

Obviously urban life is preferable for those who prefer it. Taking into account the efficiency benefits brought by urban life that affect us all -- even those living in the country -- urban life is probably a better option also for those who otherwise see no great difference. For those who prefer rural life (for reasons other than economy or ecology, because those factors are in favour of urban life, as mentioned earlier) it may be a better option to live in the country, but assuming that they don't form a great majority, it would seem that urban life would indeed be better for most people.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[master_p]

So stop playing mud and come to the city! We're open all night!

fixed it for you...

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Johnny5000]

Were we put on this earth to live "efficiently"?

All forms of life live efficiently, as did humans for the first few million years of our species' existence.
We weren't born civilization-builders, you know.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Woldry]

I've lived in both the city (8 yrs. total) and the country (36 years total). I far prefer the country. Contrary to your assertion that "you can't even find a place to buy" all that stuff, there are places aplenty in my area where you can buy all of that except maybe the aircraft (I haven't looked into that. Yet.)

What's more, during my eight years in the city, I was robbed at gunpoint once, and gay-bashed by random thugs on the street, and had my dog stolen, my car keyed, and stones thrown at the windows of my house.

In more than four times that span of time in the country, not one of those things, nor anything comparable, has happened to me. I'm an out gay man whose friends and family are all at least tolerant, and mostly downright supportive.

I've never had any lack of things to do. Swimming, hunting, a thriving local community theater that rivals the best professional productions I ever saw in the city, choirs to sing with, many good friends to share these things with. There are excellent theaters and a world-class symphony only an hour's drive away (admittedly, in urban areas). I walk a mile to work; when I do drive, it's only a five-minute drive. There is an excellent farmer's market that supplies most of the produce I could need about as far away.

So, yeah. I'm sticking with rural life.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[jsight]

There is nothing to do in the country. You can't even find a place to buy any of the equipment required to do any of the fun stuff all that open space makes possible (paragliding, light aircraft, spelunking, hell even fishing and hunting really)

Do you have any idea how many private runways there are out in the country? You know, for all those paragliders, and light aircraft that you say are not available?

Back when I live in the country, I was a few miles from a ultralight airpark (of course, those were more numerous back then, too, it seems).

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Lumpy]

And finally, artificial light, in the modern day, burns up the least amount of energy of our various electrical appliance. Things like computers, washers, dryers and others burn up 100 times or more the electricty in an hour than the average modern day light.

You are right if you are talking from 1980's you are wrong about today.

Incandescent lighting uses more power in your home than the appliances, IF the appliances are modern and not 1980's crap because you cant afford to buy anything.

My new fridge uses 24 watts of electricity. Yes the Fridge. The new washer and dryer I got my wife uses less than a Kilowatt when running and heat is set to high. If set to normal it uses 250 watts. Add up the 50 or so 60 watt lightbulbs in the house and you get that the lights use a crapload more power than the fridge and washer and dryer. Electric heat and electric cooking is incredibly inefficient, get gas. Also Air conditioning during the summer uses far less than it used to. Window air conditioners are down to 5 amps of draw. A decent quality whole house AC unit draws only 10 amps, and if the house is decently insulated, Only runs for a total of 1 hour when it's 86 degrees outside and I dont forget to pull all the blinds during the day to keep the sunlight out.

My highest electricity consumer is my lighting AND the 60 or more damned wall-warts charging cellphones, cameras, camcorders, remotes, wireless headphones, etc.... Even my home server and Security camera recorders use very low power cince I switched to Via C7 processor based systems (Server went from 270watts to 28)

If you cant afford modern appliances, yes, lightbulbs are your least worry. but when you have a large home or even a standard home those bulbs add up fast. Specifically when you get high ceilings and have to have 15 100 watt bulbs in the can lights that are 16 feet off the floor like many people are doing now in their houses.

I abandoned my lighting control system and switched to CF bulbs and some LED bulbs and lowered my electric bill by $100 a month. (Note, LED bulbs still suck right now. the best are the same as a 15 watt light bulb in brightness)

So if you are the typical poor urbanite that lives in a dump near central park and your fridge is from 1979 as well as your other appliances, then yes, lightbulbs are not your biggest power problem.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Don853]

Welcome to Slashdot, where half the people are batshit crazy making baseless statements to one extreme or another.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Lord Ender]

The cities in Ohio are surrounded by "luxury" apartment complexes. These are, essentially, little nature preserves surrounded by city. They only have one road in/out, so no ambulances or fire trucks ever drive by, and there is NO traffic noise. Everyone has lakeside property (man-made lakes, though). They are totally surrounded by trees, so you can't see the rest of the city when you are inside. On a short walk from your apartment to your car, you are likely to pass rabbits, ducks, squirrels, and other naturey things. Despite this, you can be almost anywhere in the city in 10 minutes.

Living in the city does NOT imply any of the things you mention, if you are willing to pay a little extra for it.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Rotten168]

Right, there's nothing to do in the country. Thanks for the info. Personally, I like day hiking... I guess it's a shame I won't be able to find a shoe store in the country.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[clydemaxwell]

Haha, living in the city, paying even more to pretend you're not.

I hope you can see the absurdity (:

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[thestreetmeat]

That's just it. Many people who don't use public transit are opposed to paying for it through taxes, believing that only the users should have to sustain it. What they don't see is that without using tax money for transit, ridership would decrease drastically with increased fares and lower quality service. People would then drive their cars instead, adding to overall commute times, requiring road widening, thus increasing everyone's taxes anyway.. not to mention pollution and land use. Everyone benefits from public transit, not just the users.

What's sad is that a car is a necessity for most north americans. Why should each person need their own giant metal frame and complex piston engine just to get from point a to point b?

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Eccles]

I admit I haven't looked into overall building costs, and that might be the damper on more urban dwelling. A fair bit of construction in the suburbs is devoted to cars: streets, bridges, garages, parking lots, etc. All the space devoted to cars means things are even more spread out, leading to even more streets, etc. devoted to cars, making walking impractical and leading to yet *more* usage of cars. Cars are also one of the major expenses for a family, especially when insurance, consumables, and repairs are factored in.

New York et al, also aren't my perfect design. I'd like to see a very large building with no interior roads (perhaps some sort of access tunnels with electric transport vehicles), surrounded by playgrounds, ballfields, parks, bike trails, etc. Even in most cities, you have a lot of space devoted to automobiles.

And people in dense places tend to spend more on other things, too (both high supply and demand). The commute savings might be overcome by the import costs of Belgian beer alone....

Would you rather have a small lawn you spend more time mowing than using in any other way and crappy beer, or no lawn and beer you like?

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Lord Ender]

More like: paying extra to have the best of both worlds.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[SaDan]

As someone who has been running CFLs for a few years, I can definitely say they save a boat load of money on the electric bills.

But a 24 Watt fridge? That's gotta be either a tiny Peltier based unit, or the number is way wrong. The one I have isn't old, and was one of the smaller units available (freezer up top, fridge on the bottom), and it still draws quite a bit of juice. I'm interested in what kind of fridge you have, if it does in fact only draw 24W.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not that we dont want to pay for it. Ill come out and say it I love having my own piece of Realestate on the highway that goes WHERE I want. WHEN I want it to.

and you dont have to put up with other People - THIS is paramount.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Anonymous Coward]

I never go anywhere except to get corn to shuck and to my sister's place of course! and i live in the city.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Lumpy]

Peltier systems are horribly inefficient. I have an energy star rated fridge from one of the companies that makes appliances for solar homes. I also removed and rebuilt the cabinet where the fridge goes so that I am able to have an extra 2 inches of foam insulation inside the cabinet against the fridge as well as ducting to put a cold air return directly behind the fridge pulling air across the coils underneath. (why houses are not built this way by default is weird) The fridge works beautifully. in the winter the small amount of heat is recycled in the house heating system, in the summer the warmer temps during the day when I dont have the AC on do not affect the fridge internal temperature. I have a Conserve Eco Fridge. It cost less than a high end Side by Side fridge most people buy, and it's smaller in cubic feet than most people get (chest freezers are far more efficient to own and use, it's stupid to own a giant cavern fridge.) My fridge uses under 190Kwh per YEAR, the factory states it uses 250 per year in a standard installation. the Extra insulation in the cabinet it goes into coupled with the constant air draw across the coils to increase efficiency makes this fridge incredibly efficient making it draw an average of about 24Watts.

Honestly, if people actually learned about the appliances and shopped around they can really reduce their costs.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Grishnakh]

A fair bit of construction in the suburbs is devoted to cars: streets, bridges, garages, parking lots, etc.

You think most people use their garage for parking their car?
A garage is just a convenient name for "big storage room with big door".

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Grishnakh]

High-density cities sound good in theory, but in reality they just don't work. The problem is the other people: they're loud, they're rude, they're careless, and they don't care about anyone but themselves. Anyone who lives in an apartment should know that apartment life sucks unless you're deaf, because of the neighbors who have blaring stereos at all hours, and barking dogs. Move out to a subdivision with a yard, and loud stereos aren't a problem any more, but you still have all the barking dogs at all hours. Add to this all the crime; these days, home invasion is becoming very commonplace.

The reason people like to live away from other people is because so many people cause problems and make living around them miserable.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[ultranova]

And, I don't shuck corn OR fuck my sister (I don't even have a sister.)

In corn production deficient Soviet Russia, your nonexistent imaginary sister virtually fucks you!

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Eccles]

Some of this might be ameliorated if you're willing to go the extra distance on construction. Build for soundproofing and for security. (Of course, that raises the cost.) Have HOA rules and meaningful fines for violations. one thought, if a lot of the apartments are structurally similar, is to make it fairly easy to move somehow.

I admit I've never lived in a downtown area.

The problem is the other people: they're loud, they're rude, they're careless, and they don't care about anyone but themselves.

Is this endemic to people or to people who tend to rent? Do condos have fewer of these problems?

While I'll grant you the mass of humanity doesn't always make me happy, I can go to the mall and be in the vicinity of hundreds without it being much of an issue. Assisted living places are also something like what I've described, though granted they've self-selected a less boisterous crowd.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Grishnakh]

Some of this might be ameliorated if you're willing to go the extra distance on construction. Build for soundproofing and for security. (Of course, that raises the cost.) Have HOA rules and meaningful fines for violations.

There's problems with both of these. For the first, most people buy houses after they're already built, so soundproofing after-the-fact is quite expensive. Plus it only does so much good: you have to have windows, after all, and even the best windows still transmit far more noise than any wall (this is assuming a standalone house, with no shared walls). There's no way you're going to get most builders to spend lots of money on soundproofing, when they can cut costs and increase their profit instead; for most homebuyers, soundproofing is far down on the list when house-hunting. Location, location, location, and square-footage per price are more important.

For the second, there are existing neighborhoods with restrictive HOAs like this. The problem is that they always go overboard, and make freedom-loving people miserable for other things. Sure, they may be quiet, but leave your trash can on the curb too long and you get a ticket. A burnt-out lightbulb gets you a ticket. They pay too much attention to your yard. Everyone has different ideals; for me and my wife, quiet is the most important thing, so all the barking dogs and such drive us nuts. But we really don't care if people have weeds in their yards, leave their trash containers out, have ugly cars parked on the street, etc. After all, we're too busy to bother keeping our yard perfectly-weeded too. Other people probably have different ideals, like wanting everything to look perfect in everyone else's yard. It's not exactly feasible to look for a neighborhood with 1) good location, 2) good home design, 3) affordable price, and 4) HOA that enforces the rules you are interested in enforcing, but doesn't enforce rules you don't care about.

Is this endemic to people or to people who tend to rent? Do condos have fewer of these problems?

Renters generally seem to bring a lot more problems with them. They're poorer, and for some reason, poor people seem to have more problems in their lives: domestic disputes, crime, etc. Condos aren't much better, though, I think, because these tend to be less expensive as well (unless they're luxury condos), but they're better than places with renters because at least they're connected enough to have good credit. Then again, many condos are rented out, so they might not be any better than apartments.

While I'll grant you the mass of humanity doesn't always make me happy, I can go to the mall and be in the vicinity of hundreds without it being much of an issue.

I think there's a big difference here. At the mall, all people have to do is walk around and spend money. You don't have to live near the people at the mall, so you really don't know what they're like up close. It's the same at work: you might work with people that seem perfectly fine and normal, but you haven't been to their house, or had to live next door to them for a month. People can have very different personas in public than at home.

If I could live in a totally secluded wilderness area, but get up and go to work everyday by stepping onto a transporter pad and be immediately teleported to my cubicle, that would be ideal. Unfortunately, we haven't developed that technology yet, so for many jobs, physical proximity to other people is necessary.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[SaDan]

OK, average of 24 Watts. I didn't pick up on that. ;-)

I get what you're saying, though. Nice setup you have there.

Re:Let's hear it for urbanism!

[Eccles]

Sorry I haven't responded sooner, esp. since you were responding presumably long after the story disappeared. Alas, /. isn't always conducive to long discussions.

There's no way you're going to get most builders to spend lots of money on soundproofing, when they can cut costs and increase their profit instead

The assumption I'm making is that someone with a forward thinking view sets out to build this community, in the same way that planned communities like Columbia, MD, and Peachtree City, GA were built. Perhaps someone like Richard Branson, who has shown an economic contribution to reducing CO2. The idea is that by going the extra mile, you attract the middle class and even some upper class, rather than targeting lower class and LMC.

The city/condo design basis means that individuals don't have much of an exterior to maintain. The idea is that there may be shared gardens outside, with some private areas for individuals who want that and are willing to maintain, but nothing much more than a large deck/porch/balcony area for outside as part of one's home.

or is it urban sprawl

[grapeape]

I wonder how much of it is really the rural people heading for the city versus the city inching towards the rural areas. The town I live in had around 12,000 people when I moved here around 15 years ago. Its around an hour from the city. Around 5-6 years ago the cost of living in the cities suburbs started getting out of hand, builders starting buying up farms and wooded areas and building these huge "communities" where all the houses are the same shape and color...they advertised it as a quaint getway from the big city and shortly after started building WalMarts, Mega grocery stores, starbucks, etc and now its just like the area they all left.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[Gyga]

Same where I live. I moved into a place where my neighbors property measures in the hundreds of acres of woods. Now developers are clear cutting them and building ugly cookie cutter homes which are bringing city problems. You can see it clearly with the public utilities: sewer lines use to be nonexistant (all wells), now sewer lines are everywhere. Power lines have doubled in the amount (which confuses me). Roads have been widened. Three new schools in 5 years (better than over crowding)

It is 12 I don't give a damn about my spelling.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[himurabattousai]

It's urban sprawl, at least around Chicago. There's a little town called Pingree Grove on U.S 20. The town is about 50 miles from the Chicago City Limits. Five years ago, the population of this town was 150 people; now, it's over 2000. All the other towns by the Illinois 47 corridor (Marengo, Hampshire, etc.) are seeing the same thing. This invasion of cookie-cutter mansions--starting price is mid-three hundred thousands--makes me sick.

I liked being able to find something resembling open country so relatively close to home. It was nice to get away from all the overhead lamps and stoplights and Wal-Marts and all those other suburban staples that lurk around every corner. Seeing the sun rise over a Wal-Mart parking lot isn't majestic. It doesn't inspire awe or wonder. All it does is remind me that I'm living in the wrong place. I like open spaces and quiet nights, and I know that those things are being pushed out for more 24-hour this-and thats.

I also know that I'm not the only one who wants these quieter places. The sad irony is that trying to escape the busy city nightlife only drags it out further. I imagine that quite soon, the Chicago Metropolitan Area will extend halfway across the state, not because Rockford and everyone else on I-39 wants to be absorbed by that growing urban area, but rather because of people who only want to sleep at night without halogen lamps blinding them at midnight. Unless one picks someplace that really is the middle of nowhere, escape is impossible. Eventually, even that might not be enough.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[Rotten168]

That's the problem: YOU moved there. It wasn't you who contributed to urban sprawl, it was everyone else. Urban sprawl always begins after someone else moves in.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[bogjobber]

I find it supremely hypocritical that you are criticizing other people for moving to your town when you did the same thing, just a few years earlier. I see this same type of thinking from a lot of people near where I live (rural Colorado). People move into a small town and want that town to retain the exact same character that it had at the time you moved there. I'm sure there were people in the town 15 years ago that didn't want *you* to move there. Either way, it's a waste of breath. Just be happy that you live in a place where growth is happening and people actually want to live. If you *really* hate the way development is going try and get into local government and make some changes. It's hard, but many towns have retained their rural character instead of just turning into a suburb that's 50 miles away from the city.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the fact that I run a small farm (livestock) makes my household very rural. Urban sprawl is where everyone starts building houses closer and closer together. When someone starts a new farm it is not densely packing the population.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[grapeape]

I left the booming metropolis in the foothills of North Carolina with a population of about 800 last time I was there and moved to much bigger town in the midwest. I moved here so my wife could be near her family who has lived here since the town roads were first paved. The problem I have isnt with growth its that the folks that are coming now seem to want to bring whatever they liked from the city with them. I would be completely happy with it if the local government did try to protect the towns integrity but there has been nothing but scandal ridden development deals and over inflated property taxes for those of us in the older neighborhoods. Main street used to be full of mom and pop eateries and shops now its empty the only thing left there is an antique store, city hall and an appliance store owned by the mayor. I might not have to worry much longer though, they are now trying to build a small arena in the woods behind where my house is located, my street and the next one over are according to current plans destined to be parking lots. There doesnt seem to be much point in fighting it though, they get them using imminent domain. The only folks that fought it so far won but now have a house parked oddly between a home depot and a walmart.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[lawpoop]

I think that's largely the case in America, but in the third world, it's largely poor migrants moving from a village to an already sprawling metropolis, looking for work and education for their kids. Mexico city has some 12 million people and they come from villages all over Mexico.

Problem is, that creates a lot of slum and ghetto areas.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[pimpimpim]

This is why in some/most european countries there is such a thing as area planning. Even if you buy larges pieces of ground by yourself, what you do with it still has to comply with the destination for this area planned by the (local) government. Now in practice this is also a fight against big money, and often lost to the latter. One tactic is to start building before the decision of the govenrment is made, and by the time they have voted against it it is already built, and breaking it down doesn't make sense. But still it can be used to make sure that a new housing area actually has a real city center, contains a pleasant ratio of houses/(small) shops/offices. I think that is the best way, not everyone wants to live in the city, so areas with one family houses are needed, but instead of creating a suburb it is much nicer to create a small urban area that has all services at hand.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[CmdrGravy]

We have this problem in the UK as well now, people move from the city to countryside because they're fairly wealthy and want to "escape" the city to a beautiful idyllic life in the countryside.

When they arrive the house prices rise so the children of the original inhabitants of the village can no longer afford to live there, they oppose new housing estates being built because it ruins their view, they don't want agricultural factories built near them because of the smell. Essentially what they're after is a rural idyll frozen in time without any of the irritating poor people who used to live their around to interfere.

An example is a village in Cornwall somewhere where the local fishermen are having a hard enough time surviving anyway are trying to build a wharf to protect their boats and an access way to get their vehicles down to the boats to unload them etc. This is being blocked by the wealthy, new arrivals because the wharf will ruin the picturesque quality of the beach.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[TheRaven64]

This is a big problem in North Devon, not so much from rich people moving to the area, but from rich people buying second houses there. In the UK, property is taxed based on the resale value, and this money ('Council Tax') goes to the local authority to provide services such as rubbish collection, schooling and healthcare. Unfortunately, the rules are seriously broken for second homes; people only pay half council tax for their second property. This means that property prices are such that people working in the area can't afford to buy houses, and the local council is poor because many home owners are paying half tax.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[grapeape]

That is seriously broken, you would think someone would wise up and see the second home as a luxury and subject it to more tax not less.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[TheRaven64]

I believe the rationale is that people spend less time in their second home (less than half the year, otherwise it is classed as their first home), and so make a smaller demand on the council services. This ignores the fact that a lot of services are a fairly fixed cost; dustmen have to pass your house and be able to collect your rubbish even if you don't actually leave any out, doctors still have to be paid a salary, even if you aren't injured, etc.

I agree, however. If you can afford a second home, you can afford to pay more tax on it.

Re:or is it urban sprawl

[AncientPC]

aka Not In My Back Yard syndrome. Another example: Most people aren't against beach property development until after they get their own beach front property. Afterwards they point out how development is killing the environment and ruining the beaches.

Obviously the only solution-

[FlyingSquidStudios]

is rooftop farming. I call the Sears Tower.

vast cities

[bit trollent]

I often marvel at the civilization we live in.

Millions of people drive to work at 65 miles per hour on giant freeways only one wrong move away from dieing an unexpected death. These freeways are spectacular monuments to our society. They are closest most of us will ever get to flying under our own control and they are what make a giant city possible. Crossing a large city takes over an hour at freeway speeds. The scenery of giant buildings and thousand of other buildings and residences rushing by seemingly endlessly is beautiful in a way.

I'm glad the world's population is more urban than rural. cities rock.

Re:vast cities

[servognome]

I'm glad the world's population is more urban than rural. cities rock.

On the other hand, over urbanization means u wake up from a horrible sleep because the couple in the house nextdoor(6 inches away) was fighting all night. Then you have the choice of taking an overcrowded train or crawl along the highway in your car at 6mph to get to your cubicle at work. After a hard day you can walk along dirty streets on your way to a bar, look up at all the grey buildings with no possibility of seeing 90% of the sky, let alone the sunset on the horizon. When you get to the bar you can enjoy ordering a pint of beer that costs 2x what it would in a less urban environment. After a few drinks, head home, grab the mail and realize when you see the bill for your mortgage you could buy a nice 4 bedroom house with a big backyard in the country for less than what you pay for your tiny 2 bedroom city shack.

Re:vast cities

[Quiet_Desperation]

Millions of people drive to work at 65 miles per hour on giant freeways only one wrong move away from dieing an unexpected death.

Wow. The traffic actually moves on your freeways? Where do *you* live?

The scenery of giant buildings and thousand of other buildings and residences rushing by seemingly endlessly is beautiful in a way.

I heard modern day pot was more intense, but this is ridiculous! :)

I'm glad the world's population is more urban than rural.

Me too. More rural land for me, and at lower prices.

cities rock.

Yeah, sure, why not. Just do me a favor and stay there.

Re:vast cities

[freeweed]

After a hard day you can walk along dirty streets on your way to a bar, look up at all the grey buildings with no possibility of seeing 90% of the sky

Someone's been watching Blade Runner too much. :)

Not sure what city you live in, does it have Atari logos everywhere too?

Re:vast cities

[LordPhantom]

Well.... I live in Denver, and aside from the occasional major accident, well, the freeways move. Sadly there are lots of folks coming here from California bringing ... well... California (yuck, sorry Silicon Valley folks) here. I can't really complain since I originate in Michigan, but still.

Re:vast cities

[The One and Only]

I'm sure you enjoy living in a town with 5,000 people, one Wal-Mart, and a gas station. How does it feel to only have things like roads and electrical services because people who live in cities decided to subsidize your lifestyle?

Re:vast cities

[rohan972]

How does is feel to only have food because people who live on farms work effeciently enough to provide for you?

There is a reason cities subsidize rural areas. It is because they are totally dependent on efficient rural production. Without technology and efficiency in primary industries, very little else is possible, as everyones time is taken up in survival instead of progress.

Re:vast cities

[Anonymous Coward]

Nicely said. You know those beautiful and exciting sweeping shots of CG futuristic cityscapes in sci-fi movies? Guess what, to geeks living one or two hundred years ago, our real current cityscapes would have been viewed in the same awed way. It's good to remove the jaded blinkers and appreciate the grandeur, beauty and sheer spectactle of the technological masterpieces we humans have created.

Re:vast cities

[Paulrothrock]

These two stories, of course, depend on the city.

Let's take my adopted home town: Lancaster, PA. Low crime, good neighbors, safe streets, nearby bars (that don't cost an arm and a leg), and my house cost me $117,000. It's a 1200 square foot, 4 bedroom, 1 bath with a nice sized backyard that's within walking distance of, well, just about everything. There's tons of good paying jobs in the area, even in IT, and the sense of community I get from being able to name everyone who lives on my block is wonderful.

Really, the only problems I have are the occasional noise disturbance and parking when the local college is in session.

So, you see, not all cities are horrible, nor are they expensive. If you can't find one that fits you, move. They've each got their own distinct personalities.

Re:vast cities

[Lumpy]

I have a friend that lives in Chicago where his bedroom window is 5 feet from the Redline Train that will strongly disagree with you.

He hates it, but it's the only decent apartment he can get within bike distance of his job that was less than $1200.00 a month.

Re:vast cities

[Anonymous Coward]

You raise a good point (and several pretty silly ones: you wouldn't complain about dirty streets if you'd grown up on the mud-and-cowshit tracks I did).

Urban environments would be really good if builders would just put some fucking soundproofing around every apartment. The fact the people who design, build and pay for houses in cities don't actually live in them is IMO what leads to this absurd cost-cutting measure - abandoning it would make a pretty major quality of life difference. Not only will the neighbours having sex no longer be a distraction, but it would also free you to crank up your sound system.

Re:vast cities

[Hatta]

Cities are awful. They smell, they're dingy, there's no privacy. There's nothing like being able to sleep with your window open breathing fresh country air, hearing nothing but birds in the morning. Then waking up and drinking a cup of coffee on your deck and seeing nothing but trees. Then going for a walk in the afternoon, in any direction you want for as long as you want, seeing nothing but nature. Rural living is freedom, you can keep your cities.

Re:vast cities

[rrkap]

So, I take it you don't like New York.

Re:vast cities

[Quiet_Desperation]

Oh, I'm in California and won't disagree. :) I want to get away from other Californians.

And the illegal alien problem is exactly as bad as talk radio makes it out to be, if not worse. There won't be any functioning emergency rooms in the entire Southland within a few years, much less freeways. An economy simply cannot sustain an influx of millions of unskilled people in order to save 10 cents on a head of lettuce.

But, oh, I'm a big racist for even thinking that it seems. (rolls eyes)

Re:vast cities

[waveclaw]

On the other hand, over urbanization means u
Urbanization is an abstract concept, like the boundary between urban and rural. It doesn't make you do anything. All you complaints derive from poor implementation (shoddy construction by sub-standard builders) and bad planning.

For instance:

• wake up from a horrible sleep because the couple in the house nextdoor(6 inches away) was fighting all night.
  Set building codes that include walls thicker than paper-thin. Learn to report your neighbors for noise violations. Such behavior can be tied to one or more people with problems that need jail-time or medication to solve. This is not caused by 'ubanization' but can be found out in the sticks whenever those dreaded 'other people' are.
  
  
• taking an overcrowded train or crawl along the highway in your car at 6mph
  
  Proper public transport is do-able. The U.S. highway system is more about siphoning your dollars into the hands of automakers and oil tycoons than providing quality service. See Europe, with better public transport and higher urban density than the U.S.
  
  
• walk along dirty streets
  
  If you dropped any trash on that street then you are responsible for that dirty. Yes, enough money can buy the sanitation crews to wipe your butt as you walk along the sidewalks. Or just jail fools that can't use a trash can. My solution is to let cops take out any frustrations on litterbugs. Beat the crap out of anyone in an Armani or tattered rags if they get caught on camera littering, spitting or not cleaning up after their dog. Oh, and it's not like rural roads are used as dumping grounds.
  
  
• look up at all the grey buildings with no possibility of seeing 90% of the sky
  
  Not all cities were build during the modernist 'must be a cube' fad in architecture. Just google pictures of La Palomas in Mexico City. Light pollution is just that. If you can penalized people for not properly reducing glare or give incentives for not wasting power lighting up the sky, that will go away.
  
  
• ordering a pint of beer that costs 2x what it would in a less urban environment.
  
  I assume you meant 'in a rural' environment. But you don't want to know that the high cost is largely due to either a sin tax from your religious neighbors (who just want to make you less-sinful in that neighborly way) or from a farmer that got a subsidy and tariff to protect his crops. You want cheep food? Don't tax imports. Just be prepared for all the local (expensive lifestyle) farmers to go out of business within the year.
  
  
• see the bill for your mortgage you could buy a nice 4 bedroom house
  
  Architects demonstrated cheap, high quality modular urban housing in the 50s. It's almost a conspiracy that people focus on home ownership to the point of penalizing renters. There is only so much land around, and most of it is worthless.
  

Re:vast cities

[servognome]

All you complaints derive from poor implementation (shoddy construction by sub-standard builders) and bad planning.

The complaints arise from just the natural problems of living in a densely populated area (also why I mentioned over-urbanization). I would argue that much of the US isn't really urban, it's really suburban in terms of population density.

Set building codes that include walls thicker than paper-thin. Learn to report your neighbors for noise violations. Such behavior can be tied to one or more people with problems that need jail-time or medication to solve. This is not caused by 'ubanization' but can be found out in the sticks whenever those dreaded 'other people' are.

Sure you can change the building codes, but it's going to further increase housing costs in areas that are already high. It still won't stop the annoyance of the kids upstairs jumping up and down, or the guy next door who decides to start nailing pictures to the wall at 3am. You can report the noise to the police, but for the most part there is nothing they will really do, or even want to do.
As for locking up the neighbors, everybody from time to time has a heated argument. Sure if it happens for one couple everyday there are problems, but remember you don't have just 1 or 2 neighbors, you have many, and they don't all time their yelling to occur at the same time. In the sticks it happens, but they are far enough away that I don't have to listen to it.

Proper public transport is do-able. The U.S. highway system is more about siphoning your dollars into the hands of automakers and oil tycoons than providing quality service. See Europe, with better public transport and higher urban density than the U.S.

Proper public transportation is done in the US where there is high density populations similar to Europe. Public transport doesn't work in most US cities is that the population density is too low. The reason there is urban sprawl is because people want to avoid very high density living conditions as I mentioned and they want things like backyards.
Still a good public transportation system doesn't alleviate the crowding, that's why I mentioned overcrowded trains. I've had to take the light rail during morning "rush hour" in Tokyo. There's nothing like seeing the train roll in with somebody's face literally pressed against the window, and knowing you have to get onboard.

If you dropped any trash on that street then you are responsible for that dirty. Yes, enough money can buy the sanitation crews to wipe your butt as you walk along the sidewalks. Or just jail fools that can't use a trash can. My solution is to let cops take out any frustrations on litterbugs. Beat the crap out of anyone in an Armani or tattered rags if they get caught on camera littering, spitting or not cleaning up after their dog. Oh, and it's not like rural roads are used as dumping grounds.

I agree it would be nice for the cops to stop litterbugs :)
At least in rural areas you can drive by the dumping and ignore it, rather than having to walk by or through it.

Not all cities were build during the modernist 'must be a cube' fad in architecture. Just google pictures of La Palomas in Mexico City. Light pollution is just that. If you can penalized people for not properly reducing glare or give incentives for not wasting power lighting up the sky, that will go away.

I agree with you, modern architecture has come a long way, as well as city planning in more recently developed cities that ensure there are open park areas.

I assume you meant 'in a rural' environment. But you don't want to know that the high cost is largely due to either a sin tax from your religious neighbors (who just want to make you less-sinful in that neighborly way) or from a farmer that got a subsidy and tariff to protect his crops. You want c

Re:vast cities

[Grishnakh]

After a few drinks, head home, grab the mail and realize when you see the bill for your mortgage you could buy a nice 4 bedroom house with a big backyard in the country for less than what you pay for your tiny 2 bedroom city shack.

Hey, shut up!

We don't want the secret to get out and have too many city-dwellers move out and drive the rural land prices up.

Re:vast cities

[Grishnakh]

Learn to report your neighbors for noise violations.

Then your neighbors will be vandalizing your house or finding some other way to get back at you. Been there, done that with barking dogs. The law isn't very useful for dealing with people who continually cause very small, but chronic, problems.

Or just jail fools that can't use a trash can. My solution is to let cops take out any frustrations on litterbugs. Beat the crap out of anyone in an Armani or tattered rags if they get caught on camera littering, spitting or not cleaning up after their dog.

Yeah, like this is a workable solution. 1) The civil rights groups would have a field day. 2) Cops can't be everywhere; people always act up when the cops aren't around. 3) Give too much power to cops, and they end up abusing it, like by beating 70-year-old crippled black men. 4) Municipal politicians aren't interested in devoting police resources to stuff like this. They could have the cops doing something that generates revenue instead.

Re:vast cities

[The One and Only]

No doubt there's some interdependence, but rural areas (and farming for that matter) are still oversubsidized, at least in the United States, for two reasons: the disproportionate political power of sparsely-populated states (to wit, Alaska has several hundred-million-dollar bridges to nowhere and is building more to service towns of less than 10,000 while transport infrastructure is literally breaking down in urban areas) and the political power of the agriculture lobby (the corn lobby, for instance, has managed to get the right mix of tariffs and subsidies for some crap they call "high fructose corn syrup" to replace real sugar in tons of mass-produced food products, a major cause of the obesity epidemic--to say nothing of enriching spoiled farmers in Iowa who want to continue their rural middle-American lifestyle while running third world agriculture out of the market).

Condescending and Elitist

[Nymz]

FTA

"But given global rural impoverishment, the rural-urban question for the future is not just what rural people and places can do for the world's new urban majority. Rather, what can the urban majority do for poor rural people and the resources upon which cities depend for existence?."

What can the "urban majority do for the poor rural people"? That sounds awfully condescending and elitist, and assumes not only whether they should run the lives of others, but how to.

Instead, why don't we consider systems that have worked successfully. Those of the Electorial College and US Senate, where rural states are represented and protected from exploitation, from the larger populations of urban states.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Eli Gottlieb]

You mean those things that let flyover country force a right-wing government on the urban and coastal populations?

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[AuMatar]

Funny, when I think successful systems, not only is the electoral college not on the list, its on the opposing list. The idea that a rural citizen's vote is worth more than mine, because we have an system of government that dates back to when we were really 13 different nations instead of 1, is a travesty and ought to be gotten rid of. The fact that the president of the country can lose the population gives us things like... well George Bush.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[bit trollent]

Instead, why don't we consider systems that have worked successfully. Those of the Electorial College and US Senate, where rural states are represented and protected from exploitation, from the larger populations of urban states.

I would like to thank you, the undernumbered, overcounted rural voters for the last 6 years of a Republican President and a Republican Congress. We have clearly benefited greatly from it.

I don't know what I have liked more, the mindless tax cut mentality that will run up the national credit card for the sake of cutting taxes, or the bizarre combination of biblethumping and killing that has resulted in the deaths of over 3000 Americans and hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals. I'd really like to thank you for that, rural voters.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Smight]

They should base votes on land ownership like they used to. Makes sense to me that the more of the country you own the greater your interest in the country's success.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Alsee]

They should base votes on land ownership like they used to. Makes sense to me that the more of the country you own the greater your interest in the country's success.

It would take about 20 minutes for Hollywood, L.A., N.Y.C., and the rest of the BlueStateRich to buy up 75% of the square miles in the US.

-

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Breakfast Pants]

Nope, because in that situation land would become the new money, and the dollar would crash.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Greg_D]

Perhaps you stupid city people should actually show up to the polls and vote instead of expecting someone else to do it for you. I mean, I know you get someone to do your dry cleaning, your finances, and even your daily transportation, but if you'd actually have the fortitude to VOTE on the rare and oh so inconvenient days that the polls are open, you wouldn't have this problem.

You know, when your education centers aren't rotting from the foundation upward while you build giant towers to act as weekend getaways for the rich elite that you like to claim as your own and when your neighbors aren't murdering each other like it's going out of style.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[servognome]

The fact that the president of the country can lose the population gives us things like... well George Bush.

Fact is both lost, they both got less than 50% of the popular vote. In terms of pissing off people, no matter who won half the country would be upset and complaining. Though electoral college overall is a worse system when it comes to electing a single leader like president, it isn't completely without merit.

- In popular vote we'd probably still be counting votes from the 2000 election as it was so close the loser would go to court to challenge the vote count of every precinct in the country.
- Election issues *cough* rigged diebold machines in ohio *cough* get contained to a specific state.
- It also serves to ensure the voice of those in less densly populated states are not alienated. Do you think a candidate would ever go to New Hampshire or Iowa in a purely popular vote?
- Reduces fragmentation, purely popular votes better allow candidates from other parties to impact election results. This can result in the views of the majority split resulting in a less representative candidate winning the election. Basically the Nader effect on a national scale.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Alsee]

Those of the Electorial College and US Senate, where rural states are represented and protected from exploitation, from the larger populations of urban states.

You're right.

There is only one problem though. They seriously screwed up when they made California a state. California is 163,707 square miles. Rhode Island is 1,545 square miles. 163,707 / 1,545 is 106. California is big enough to have been made into 106 states instead of just one state. Then Californians would have 212 senators (enough for 2/3 control of the senate... not merely enough votes alone to pass or block any law or any decision in the senate but even enough alone for a senatorial overturn of a presidential veto). Californians would have 318++ electoral votes, almost enough alone to elect the president (in that electorial college it would take 400-odd votes to elect the president).

You're right that the electoral college is a FANTASTIC... nay.... the electoral college is a PERFECT system. They just royally screwed up when drawing state lines. Anyone with half a brain should have known better than to draw California as just one state.... anyone with half a brain should have seen and seized the opportunity to grab almost total control of the US government.

It's too late to do anything about California.... but there is still a good opportunity that may come up. I'm not sure if you're aware of it, but for a long time there has been simmering back-burner serious discussion of the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico officially gaining statehood status. The population of Puerto Rico is nearly 8 times the population of Wyoming. If Puerto Rico does join the union, I say we should look at whatever internal districting already exists in Puerto Rico and let those districts independently vote on whether they want to join the union, and let them join as 8 separate states. If Puerto Rico joins the union I say they should get 16 senators and 24 electoral votes. Woohoo I love the Electoral College! It makes perfect sense! The Electoral College allows us to so much better represent and protect Puerto Ricans from exploitation from other states by letting them join as 8 separate states.

Nymz, my brother, my compatriot, I am so pleased to count you as a friend and electoral ally. That you and I both see how perfect and logical the Electoral College is, that we both see how perfect it is for better representing and protecting people... that everyone should get as much representation and protection as possible, and that if and when Puerto Rico joins the union that they should get as much representation and protection as possible... that if and when Puerto Rico joins the union that it should get as many extra imaginary lines drawn across it as possible... at a minimum enough extra imaginary lines for them to join as at least 8 states.

Yes, because where imaginary lines are drawn around people and how many imaginary lines are drawn around people is the KEY to giving people better representation and better protection. The Electoral College is the KEY to giving some Americans several times as much representation and several times as much protection as other Americans.

-

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[aunt edna]

Who's scoring today? 2 for this? What's the matter? too many words? bored? If you're going to score, buck up, make the effort - or just drop it completely.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[khallow]

The relevant bit from the US Constitution (article 4, section 2, clause 1):

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

It would require "consent by Congress". I believe that means majorities in both houses must approve of the new state or states. My take is nobody currently in Congress would want their voting power diluted by the addition of a couple hundred new states. So gaming of the system via this approach isn't going to happen. Having said that, it would have been possible during the early Bush era to break up republican dominated states, if the states' populations in question were willing, in order to increase the Senate vote.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[T.E.D.]

Instead, why don't we consider systems that have worked successfully. Those of the Electorial College and US Senate,

Here's another successful USA tactic which others could implement to artificially empower rural areas. Put all your prisons in rural areas, but fill them with prisoners from urban areas. Now here's the really neat trick: You count those prisoners as residents of the rural area instead of the urban area you took them from for purposes of representation! Of course this only works if you also prevent all prisoners (we call them "felons") from voting, but still count them as residents.

If this doesn't help skew things toward rural voters enough, you can add another USA trick: start locking up a huge percentage of your population. Try criminalizing addictive behaviors like drug use, gambling, sex, etc. Our "Three-strikes-you're out" laws are great for institutionalizing otherwise productive people for minor offenses. I know "Three Strikes" doesn't translate well, but perhaps there's some Cricket term you can rename it after, to get your elitist ex-jocks to think its a great idea.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the population was never intended to elect the president, it makes perfect sense. After all, it is the United States of America, not the People's Republic of America.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[amper]

Actually, the disproportionate representation also extends to the House of Representatives, as well, because the number of House seats is (currently) fixed at 435. For the system to be more fair, we should probably apportion seats among the states by the ratio of their population to that of the least most populous state. However, I did some calculations around this idea awhile back, and it turns out that overall, the rural states would still have the advantage in the Electoral College.

Re:Condescending and Elitist

[Anonymous Coward]

13 different nations instead of one? What the fuck are you talking about? We arent a 'nation' now, we are a Federation...of states you goddamn idiot.

predicted?

[dwater]

> ...a predicted global urban population of...

"predicted"?? Does that mean they think it's going to happen sometime in the future, or that some time in the past they thought it was going to happen now (ok, day before yesterday)?

Re:predicted?

[sholden]

It means they didn't actually count every person in the world on that day, but instead uses birth rates, death rates, migration rates, etc to predict when it happened.

Re:predicted?

[dwater]

...so now you can predict events in the past. What a strange concept. ...or perhaps it was before the predicted date when they made the prediction. It's only now, after the alleged event, that it sounds a little odd, if only to me.

In any case, I think 'estimate' would work better.

Re:predicted?

[sholden]

Maybe, but they are extrapolating based on the data they have which is certainly one way to make a prediction. Of course we will never actually know when exactly this happened and a prediction you can't confirm or falsify is a pretty useless one...

I'd also guess they made the prediction before the "fact" - the chances they just so happened to do the calculation in the smalltime window just after the event seems rather small.

Redefining "major"

[Torodung]

"A major demographic shift took place on Wednesday, May 23, 2007: For the first time in human history, the earth's population is more urban than rural.

That "major" shift: One guy left his house in the country to move to a house in the city! Perhaps five. It's a landmark occasion.

-- Toro

Re:Redefining "major"

[Anonymous Coward]

False alarm everyone! I was just visiting.

Rounding

[Kamokazi]

There were probably decimal places on those numbers too. My guess is they just predict a monthly or yearly growth number and then divide that out day by day and end up with a number that probably has many decimal places that they round off to the nearest whole number. I'm sure they have a margin of error if you look into it.

Does it really matter if it's 3,303,992,253 or 3,304,000,000? It's actually kind of silly to round that high, because the first number is probably going to be closer.

Re:Rounding

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it really matter if it's 3,303,992,253 or 3,304,000,000? No, it doesn't. 3,303,992,253 vs 3.304E9 on the other hand...

Re:Rounding

[daniorerio]

Yes, except that probably if you're really honest you would have to round it up to 3*10^9, in which case rural and urban population have been equal for a long time.

The date is wrong.

[mlawrence]

It is nice that they decided to choose Wednesday as the day it happened.

But looking at the numbers - 3,303,992,253 to 3,303,866,404 is a 125,849 difference. If we are to beleive that 126,000 people a day move to urban areas, in 71 years there would be no farmers left at all.

I'm sure the daily number is much smaller, meaning if we take these numbers - it happened before Wednesday.

Re:The date is wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

You need more terms of the Taylor expansion rural_pop(t) = 3,303,992,253 - 125,849*t + c2*t^2 + c3*t^3 + ... to be able to extrapolate 71 years ahead.

Re:The date is wrong.

[SpectralDesign]

Interesting point, but you're forgetting to consider that the population will undoubtedly continue to grow in the time period as well -- both urban and rural population increases for a grand total possibly around 15-20 billion seventy-one years from now...

Bottom line, it is obviously an arbitrary finding of an arbitrary study that might be useful only in spurring dialogue about what's on the road ahead, and if we might possibly want to pull-over and buy a map before we continue at top throttle into the mad-max apocalypse that's just around the next bend in the street.

Or maybe we'll all live happily ever-after in our concrete urban nirvana. Who knows!

Re:The date is wrong.

[mlawrence]

I didn't try to be exact in my approximation - far from it. My point was the number of users migrating was much too large. I even assume that on Tuesday (the day before) the number of urban and rural people were exactly the same. :)

Re:The date is wrong.

[Smight]

You're assuming migration happened at all. If one person is born in a town one person shy of being called urban suddenly makes everyone there urban. So one birth or one person moving could result in a shift of 2501 fewer rural people and 2501 more urbanites. That's a difference of 5002 almost instantly.

Re:The date is wrong.

[mr_matticus]

It doesn't take 126,000 people. It takes half of that plus one to change the balance.

If 60,000 people (out of 6.6 billion) moved from a rural home to a city home, the rural population would drop 60,000 while the urban population gained 60,000 which would produce a difference of 120,000.

Even if your math was correct (which another poster already corrected), you'd still be looking at roughly double that amount of time.

Our new business plan:

[default luser]

1. Form First Foundation.
2. Create new "technology" religion.
3. Watch the old Galactic Empire crumble from within.
4. Get taken over by The Mule.
5. Find the Second Foundation.
6. ??
7. Write Foundation's Edge due to publisher pressure, and profit!!

Re:Our new business plan:

[Prof.Phreak]

8. Tie it all to Robots!

Re:Our new business plan:

[MillerAH]

8. Tie it all to Robots!

...due to popular pressure.
9. Double Profit...

Re:Our new business plan:

[grammar fascist]

8. Tie it all to Robots!

That was so cheap.

If I had been dead, I would have rolled over in my grave. As it was, I rolled over on the couch, which was much less ominous, but it did give me a good angle with which to chuck the book out the window.

Like a tool, I kept reading. But I was totally ready to defenestrate the thing.

To Quote the Poet....

[flyneye]

To quote the poet/philosopher Lee Ving:
Spent my whole life in the city,
Where junk is king and the air smells shitty.
People pukin' everywhere.
Piles of blood, scabs and hair.
Bodies wasted in defeat,
People dyin' on the street,
But the suburban scumbags, they don't care,
Just get fat and dye their hair!

I love livin' in the city [x2]

Mods on crack again

[Harmonious Botch]

Parent asks how the data in TFA is calulated. And he gets modded offtopic??

Outstanding news

[Quiet_Desperation]

Because I plan to retire to somewhere as rural as possible. Gods, the stink and the noise of you people...

Have fun, urbanites, when your little towns blossom into fire, either suitcase nukes or via the inevitable breakdown of the social order when the average IQ reaches that of a ferret. Or they'll become vast concrete sepulchres after a good, old fashioned plague sweeps through them.

I'll be fishin'.

Re:Outstanding news

[mrjb]

> Because I plan to retire to somewhere as rural as possible.

That sounds like a good idea. Keep in mind you'll be far away from hospitals, health care, conveniences etc.
Better move there before you're too old to enjoy it.

Re:Outstanding news

[rs79]

"Because I plan to retire to somewhere as rural as possible. Gods, the stink and the noise of you people...

Have fun, urbanites, when your little towns blossom into fire, either suitcase nukes or via the inevitable breakdown of the social order when the average IQ reaches that of a ferret. Or they'll become vast concrete sepulchres after a good, old fashioned plague sweeps through them.

I'll be fishin'."

I was born in a small town in Wales, moved to Canada when I was six and grew up in suburbia. After Waterloo I lived in LA, New York and Toronto. 12 years ago I moved to the middle of nowhere, Ontario (Pop. 150) and have never looked back. Do it. Get rabbits. Buy local fresh eggs. Enjoy your neighbors for a change.

My barn on a foggy morning.

Re:Outstanding news

[Creedo]

Amen. I live in central Kansas. I telecommute to work every day. I make 3-4 times what I need to maintain this lifestyle(which is pretty extravagant compared to most of my neighbors), and my extra cash is going into debt payments(which are student loans) and investment properties, so I could probably retire before 40 if I desired. My last urban experience was a cramped little condo, with bills so high that even with a decent job, we were just barely scraping by. Now, I am laughing all the way to the bank.

Re:Outstanding news

[Grishnakh]

Do it. Get rabbits. Buy local fresh eggs. Enjoy your neighbors for a change.

Neighbors? I live in the suburbs now, and my neighbors are all freaks. I don't want any more neighbors, at least not the human variety.

Here's a better idea for you:

Get chickens. Don't buy eggs, get them from the chickens. Enjoy not having any annoying neighbors.

What the heck do you want rabbits for anyway? They make lousy pets (I have personal experience here--never again), and there's not much meat on them. Want food? Get chickens instead. They have lots of meat, they lay eggs, and they eat just about anything. Want a pet? Get a cat or dog instead. Cats are clean, take care of themselves, hunt mice and bugs, are quite intelligent, and don't leave a trail of poop-pellets everywhere they go like rabbits. Dogs are good if you have lots of outdoor space, and are good at warning about intruders. Another option is geese. They're mean, they're noisy, and they'll attack intruders, and most people freak out because they've never been around big, mean birds before.

Okay everyone!

[Chas]

Quick! Now that Lower East Bumblefuckistan is so empty, let's move out there and take over!

Out where there's fresh air and open spaces.

And cows...

And...dirt...

And broadband is more myth than reality...

And even phone service is barely out of the "two cans and a piece of string" era!

Uhhhh...Forget I said anything. I'm just going to go beat myself about the head and shoulders with an old solid steel XT-style keyboard...

Re:Okay everyone!

[rs79]

"And cows..."

You don't HAVE to live next to cows.

"And...dirt..."

One thing you notice in the country when you get back from a trip to the city is the smell of fresh air. And the urge to shower to wash the grime and smog of the city off you.

"And broadband is more myth than reality..."

Satellite.

"And even phone service is barely out of the "two cans and a piece of string" era!"

Nope.

"Uhhhh...Forget I said anything. I'm just going to go beat myself about the head and shoulders with an old solid steel XT-style keyboard..."

The AT ones are better. I wouldn't use anything else.

Re:Okay everyone!

[JesseMcDonald]

"And broadband is more myth than reality..."

Satellite.

Are you kidding? Have you seen some of these satellite data plans? $100/month (plus $100 up front) for download rates that barely meet broadband speeds, awful upload ratios, and ping times in excess of 500ms? They have a bit of a speed advantage over dial-up, to be sure, but only if you're willing to pay over five times as much. I can see how it might be useful for a business, but it simply isn't practical for personal use.

Re:Okay everyone!

[Don853]

You don't HAVE to live next to cows.

No, but if they're in the county, you have to smell them.

One thing you notice in the country when you get back from a trip to the city is the smell of fresh air. And the urge to shower to wash the grime and smog of the city off you.

Fresh air, or pig shit, depending how much farming is in the area.

Satellite.

Sucks.

Nope.

Until the squirrels chew through the line. Then it sucks again. But now that cell coverage is everywhere, it's pretty much a moot point.

Re:Okay everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

But you won't be out there in the country, so it's still a winner, cows, pig shit, dial-up and all.

Re:Okay everyone!

[Grishnakh]

I'm sure the $50 a month this costs over my current cable modem service is far more than made up by the savings in other cost-of-living expenses (house cost, taxes, etc.).

Who cares about ping times anyway? That's only important for losers who spend all their time playing online games. If I want to play a game, I'll start up MAME and play Pac-Man or something.

Re:Okay everyone!

[ultranova]

One thing you notice in the country when you get back from a trip to the city is the smell of fresh air. And the urge to shower to wash the grime and smog of the city off you.

You have running water in the countryside ?-)

Re:Okay everyone!

[JesseMcDonald]

Who cares about ping times anyway? That's only important for losers who spend all their time playing online games. If I want to play a game, I'll start up MAME and play Pac-Man or something.

Well, for starters a 500ms ping time would add about 1/4 to 2/5 seconds to the time required to load every object on every web page. For pages with many objects (images, scripts, CSS, Flash, etc.) that can add up fast. Additionally, ping times eat into the TCP acknowledgement windows, which limits the total bandwidth you can get on any one TCP stream (download or upload). It also tends to rule out any attempt to replace expensive landline calls with VoIP, since most people have a hard time holding a conversation with half-second delays interspersed throughout.

I'm sure the $50 a month this costs over my current cable modem service is far more than made up by the savings in other cost-of-living expenses (house cost, taxes, etc.).

Perhaps, but remember that you're not getting cable-modem-level service for that extra $50/month. Matching the service available to you in the city (whether DSL or cable) would cost a lot more than $100/month.

Re:Okay everyone!

[Chas]

You don't HAVE to live next to cows.

Sure. There's pigs, horses, sheep, goats, buffalo, etc.

One thing you notice in the country when you get back from a trip to the city is the smell of fresh air. And the urge to shower to wash the grime and smog of the city off you.

Uh huh. Having actually spent a portion of my life living on a farm in upper Wisconsin, I'm gonna have to laugh at this one.

Satellite.

Except for that multi-second (as opposed to millisecond) latency....download caps....Need I continue?

Re:Okay everyone!

[Grishnakh]

Matching the service available to you in the city (whether DSL or cable) would cost a lot more than $100/month.

What would this be? I didn't think there were any other options for broadband in rural areas besides satellite, unless you're close enough to get DSL or cable.

Eventually, we'll have fiber service, such as GPON which has something like a 30-50 mile range, but not yet.

Re:Okay everyone!

[JesseMcDonald]

Well, if you were willing to pay for it you could probably get a direct fiber or T1 connection no matter how far out of town you were. (Or you could pay them to put a DSLAM in range of your house, which would probably be a bit more cost-effective.) Like I said, though, matching the level of service you'd get in town with a regular cable or DSL connection would cost a lot more than $100/month.

lol who modded these all flamebait?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, fascist!

Re:lol who modded these all flamebait?

[khallow]

Yea, that was pure troll not flamebait.

Plenty of land

[Joebert]

urban population of 3,303,992,253 exceeded that of 3,303,866,404 rural

Wait a second, so there's a relatively even number of both ?

Why the hell do we incist on stacking up on eachother like there's nowhere to go if there's soo much unpopulated land left ?

Re:Plenty of land

[Ogi_UnixNut]

"Why the hell do we incist on stacking up on eachother like there's nowhere to go if there's soo much unpopulated land left ?"

I presume its because not all of the unpopulated land is particularly habitable. I think they take into account "land" like deserts, and other lands which are not the best for settlement.

In order for a settlement you need some local resources, at least things like water and electricity. You could pipe water across a desert and then build a city there, but its not exactly cost effective. Plus I'm sure quite a bit of that unpopulated land are in areas where there are armed conflicts/prone to natural disasters/lack of food supply . In which case not many people will want to settle there.

Other things which contribute to us "stacking up on each other" are things like work. Many towns grew into cities because they were good trade routes (its no surprise that many cities follow established trade routes). These towns needed workforce, rural people needed work, and were willing to "stack up " on each other in return for jobs. Look at the history of London during the industrial revolution, especially the slums. It was a hell hole for 80% of the population (many argue to this day that its still a hell hole, although not as bad as then), yet people still came because they needed work.

Local amenities are also easier to access. You do not need to travel 40 miles to the nearest big hospital. Most cities have a few of them. Ditto things like waste disposal and just getting around. Public transport would be a lot more expensive and uneconomical if it had to sprawl across the entire country, linking very small settlements.

Indeed it looks like it is the whole "economies of scale" at play. The more people that are packed in to a given space, the cheaper it is to provide stuff for them, which means that each person gets more per unit cost then if they were spread across. The only thing they don't have a lot of is space.

Also things like security. It's far easier to attack small villages one by one, then it is to lay siege to an entire city.

Thats all that comes to mind at the moment. But I would not be surprised if there are more reasons.

oblig 23 post

[patrikor_007]

OMG 23! 23! 2+3=May! it must mean something.

Re:oblig 23 post

[penp]

Hail Eris.

Obiligatory joke

[tylersoze]

Geez 80 comments and no one's made this joke yet? Oh well, I guess I'll have to be the one:

"I, for one, welcome our urban dwelling overlords."

Re:Obiligatory joke

[alv22]

Oh, shut up. +1 Informative +1 Insightful

Yes, we can trust this analysis.

[ScentCone]

I was a little doubtful about the people who released this information. I mean, what do THEY know? But, they used the phrase "tipping point," so I guess they know what they're talking about.

This is Slashdot.

[beav007]

By "day before yesterday", you obviously mean "two weeks ago".

You must be new here...

Re:This is Slashdot.

[dwater]

> By "day before yesterday", you obviously mean "two weeks ago".

Well, yes, obviously.

> You must be new here...

Why no. Art thou? ;)

Obligatory Population Warning

[beadfulthings]

Somewhere on this globe, every ten seconds, there is a woman giving birth to a child. She must be found and stopped. --Sam Levinson

Obigitory YouTube clip

[Matt Perry]

Obigitory YouTube clip

Human habitats...

[gd23ka]

and after they're all concentrated in the cities..

Remember what is says on the Georgia Guidestones:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones

        * Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
            [forced abortion and sterilization of reproduction offenders]
        * Guide reproduction wisely--improving fitness and diversity.
            [selection of the fittest, neutering/castration of the less desirable]
        * Unite humanity with a living new language.
            [
        * Rule passion--faith--tradition--and all things with tempered reason.
            [it's okay no matter how cruel and inhumane]
        * Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
            [and install a world court over those who might otherwise be free]
        * Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
            [and a world army that will put down dissent fast]
        * Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
            [don't elevate excessive amounts of serfs to capo status]
        * Balance personal rights with social duties.
            [you bet!]
        * Prize truth--beauty--love--seeking harmony with the infinite.
            [Right. Your infinite or mine?]
        * Be not a cancer on the earth--Leave room for nature--Leave room for nature.
            [Humans are cancer and you are the cure. Right]

Re:Human habitats...

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's pretend that you are throwing a party for some friends, say, you invited ten people to your medium sized apartment to watch a movie and drink and generally hang out, that sort of thing.

And then, imagine that instead of ten, forty people showed up. The food was gone almost immediately, the beer WAS gone immediately, and it was too noisy and uncomfortable to do anything. Cigarette smoke is clouding up the place, and the toilet is out of order.

Do you break the party up by politely asking people to leave, or do you call the cops?

There are 6 billion people on the planet Earth. How do you solve issues of resource management, fighting amongst political and religious ideologies, and so on, and so forth? Are you humane, or do you do what has to be done, even if it's not compassionate, humane, or promoting the concepts of "freedom".

And yes, having said all that, I will gladly sign up for the suicide booth if it means a couple billion people are going in with me. After all, a thing only has value if it is a rare thing. Six billion human beings sort of makes it hard to respect human life, and it's getting harder and harder every day.

What does that mean?

[skintigh2]

Are more people movingto urban areas?
Is the birthrate higher in urban areas and less in rural areas?
Are more rural areas being classified as urban?

I keep hearing this little factoid and none of the facts.

Modern Society

[maaskaas]

I think that this statistic just shows the course of modern society. More and more people are seeking "better" lives, and arguably this is what the city symbolises to someone from a rural community. Furthermore, I doubt that there will be food shortages if this trend continues rapidly in the favour of urbanisation because agriculture is an industry, and a heavily modernised industry at that. Our food does not come from poor little people working barefeet in harsh environments - it comes fat, rich bosses who owns agricultural industries. However, yes, it can be said that the actual workers are quite poor. Thinking about it, the growth of urbanisation and the decline of the rural populations will actually boost the industries dependent on it because the demand for products will become higher and the supply will have to be matched - and working for these firms will probably prove more profitable than cleaning tables in the urban areas. Just a few thoughts...

Re:or is it urban legends?

[toddhisattva]

Okay, I'm not literally laughing out loud, but think for a second....

Is it low-density suburbs or huge megalopoli like Mexico City and Mumbai?

Yeah, right, it's Wal-Mart and Starbuck's and all of those people who moved there after you did.

Sprawl.

You ain't seen the true meaning of sprawl until you've seen some place like Mexico City.

Not laughing out loud, but shaking my head in disbelief at how foolishly optimistic Barnum was.

old news - check link

[partycrasher]

http://thatvideosite.com/view/2266.html

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census

[zobier]

There should be 666e7 ppl on this planet some time around next February, what does it mean?)

Duck! You're Next!

[sunforged]

The only thing I worry about is being stuck behind a slow moving duck crossing the road in our village. The darned things waddle off the pavement and sit down in the middle of the road without a care in the world. Perhaps of course they're aware of this global tip towards urban living and are making ad-hoc protests at the state of modern life. I haven't been able to confirm whether this is the case because I don't speak duck

Do the Evolution

[themusicgod1]

Live efficient or be replaced by those more efficient than you.
The ecosystem cannot and will not sustain your inefficiency.

Re:Do the Evolution

[Rotten168]

Eh? That's a loony statement. Does Slashdot have a -1 loony moderation?

The myth of the rural farm

[DerekLyons]

Could this put more people in a dangerous position of dependency on a fragile infrastructure run by people without your best interests in mind?

You've never actually lived on a farm have you? Unless you want to live a lifestyle roughly that of a peasant in the dark ages - that farm is pretty dependent on fragile infrastructure as well. Gasoline, fertilizer, vetrinary services, doctors, containers to store the farm products in, the list is virtually endless and virtually none of it can be produced on the farm.
 
Yah, I know the myths of the ruggedly independent family farmer, and of the back to the land folks, and of the survivalists - but they are just that, myths.

Re:The myth of the rural farm

[iminplaya]

Not one of those big mechanized ones, no. Or even a small mechanized one. And you are right about their dependency to an extent. However, all those things you mention are not an issue for me.

Postcivil society: Empty the cities

[Baldrson]

And the greater the urban population, the more likely it is that urban populations will implode to produce a postcivil world.

The Agricultural Foundation

With neolithic agriculture came civilization.

With the Internet and advances in shipping technology we can enter a postcivil era with social organization much closer to that of the Greek demes (kin-based agrarian populations of about 5,000) that gave rise to their Golden Age.

Not only can we enter such a postcivil era, we are entering it. The rate of evolution of human pathogens is much higher now. The availability of technologies that can destroy urban centers is much wider now. The population is much more concentrated now.

Postcivil society will be the result. The only question is how much human suffering can be prevented by taking action to empty the cities before they are forced to seek new abodes.

Decentralized production and local consumption of food is far more energy and capital efficient since it needn't be transported to urban centers. This needn't involve a return to old agrarian technologies--although from an examination of household leisure time remaining for most employees after work and other burdens of civilization, it is apparent that civilized jobs are little more efficient for food acquisition.

Moreover, the small residual needs for distribution of food to cover local shortage is far more viable now with "just in time" inventory systems based on efficient, decentralized and very robust communications infrastructure. For example, the trading pits are not a necessity--it can all be electronically distributed and decentralized with reputation networks.

Likewise, huge central repositories of grain and livestock yards are inefficient inventory policies vulnerable to attack and sabotage.

Chicago can go.

Similar arguments apply to almost all other urban areas due to their existence as mere levels of abstraction atop the thermodynamics of food. The primary value of such abstractions remains via the distributed networks of communication keeping alive inter-cultural dialogs for those who choose it.

For instance, as a seemingly trivial example but one which profoundly affects the preferences of a surprising number of urban dwellers, people are profoundly affected by the range of choice of restaurant cuisine. This is so easily dealt with it is quite obvious people haven't thought a great deal about it. For instance, I know a couple in a small town of about 1,000, an hour's drive from the nearest urban center, who moved there from major urban areas, and had a taste for international cuisine. They use the Internet to find recipes and instructions on growing herbs and spices to their taste. After developing a set of dishes they particularly like they started inviting friends over on a weekly basis to sample their latest Thai, Mexican, Chinese or what have you dinners. Reportedly they have developed quite a following and could start charging money but they've chosen to do it just for the fun of it and have started asking musicians and other performers to show up. This style of entertainment combines the old-style "gracious country living" that seems to have been relegated to the memory hole by mass media entertainment, with the Internet's access to cultural information.

Homeland Security

As recognized by Control Data Corporation founder, William Norris, in his project to create small, energy self-sufficient farms, and as recognized by founding fathers of the United States such as Thomas Jefferson in his effort to make Yeoman Farmer Conservatism the basis of federalism, centralized population structure creates vulnerabilities.

The obvious vulnerabilities, such as pandemics, bioweapons attacks, nuclear attacks, due to centralization of population, central stores and transportation hubs, need not be elaborated. A decent article on just the threat posed by corporate agriculture is given by the New Scientist bioterrorism special report: "Run, radish,

Braaaains.........

[blankoboy]

The more people concentrated in an urban area, the greater the zombie apocalypse will be! Just wait, another 28 years later and you'll see. Hopefully Milla Jovovich will still be young enough and hot enough to kill them all.

Wrong Data

[Rsriram]

My research shows that on that day there were actually 3,303,929,675 Urban people and 3,303,952,767 rural people. This is because some of the urban people were actually rural folks who had come to gawk at the cities and went back that night.

Or just population growth

[Moraelin]

Remember that here they're not talking services, lifestyle, etc, when defining urbal vs rural. It's simply based on population. If you're in a settlement with less than 2500 people, it's urban, when it's over 2500 it's urban. So basically if you had 2499 people in 2005, you were a village, two years later a couple of people grew up or moved in, and voila, you're a 2501 people city all of a sudden.

Suburbia is counted as part of the town too, so if you have a 1900 people village with a 600 people suburb, it's suddenly a town because it totals 2500.

To make it funnier, standards of living aren't the same all over the globe anyway. Compare the following:

- In the USA you'd expect that at 2500 people (and even before that), you'll expect -- and in fact _demand_ -- certain kinds of services and infrastructure.

- In lots of parts of the world, e.g., Africa, China, some parts of the eastern block during communism, a village would still mean 19'th century stuff. It can/could mean not just some quaint houses with a garden, but houses without running water (as in, they actually had a well for water, and a wooden outhouse in the garden), milking their own goat or cow for something to eat. And forget telephone, they had maybe one phone at the post office.

Or some are literally tribes that still haven't found their way out of some fucked up tribal society. Some still live in huts, hunt their own food, have a closed economy that doesn't even use money for the most part, and hold witchcraft trials. Literally. Yet it just takes a cluster of them larger than 2500 people total, to count as "urban".

So you can have a community with all modern services and a supermarket counted as a village in, say, the USA, although noone actually works the land there, at 2400 inhabitants. But have a "town" in Africa that's little more than some huts and where everyone cultivates their own crops, because it's 2500.

Heck, even in the USA, some of the Amish communities have grown bigger than the "town" limit, or are counted as the suburbia of a bigger town, yet their lifestyle is rural in all aspects. They didn't get taken over by urban sprawl, they just stayed as rural as they were in 1700, but had enough births to eventually count as "urban". They do grow faster than real urban communities, so it's just a matter of time.

A bit more economics

[Moraelin]

Here's a bit more of economics for you. The shift to less farmers is basically because we simply need less of them. That's been the trend of the last 1000 years straight.

In the middle ages for example, for each grain seed planted you'd get 2 to 7 grains as crops. Yeah, that crappy. Now we get a few hundred. The same surface planted can literally support 100 times more people. Yet even if we had stayed at the plough-with-oxen tech level, we'd still not need more people planting the land. The surplus of fed people can jolly well do something else.

I.e., even if we stayed at the plough-with-oxen level, in 1000 AD, let's say it took 800 farmers to feed 200 non-farmers (soldiers, city folk, etc) for 1000 people fed total. Nowadays the same 800 farmers, with the same oxen, could feed 100,000 people. Yet still only 800 of them are needed to work the land.

But we don't use oxen any more either. Working the land was also a slow and labour intensive process in the past. Nowadays we have tractors and combine harvesters which do the job of a couple dozen humans previously.

Simply put, we have an over-abbundance of grain. We started feeding it to cattle, but even that leaves enough bread for a helluva lot of people. And even those cows and pigs simply don't need that much work any more. There's machinery doing most of that stuff. E.g., you don't have people milking the cows by hand and spending hours churning small quantities of butter any more. It's machines all the way from the suction cups they use to milk, to churning it or whatever. You simply don't need that many people doing that. A few thousand dairy farmers and workers can (and do) feed a country the size of Germany.

Chicken are even funnier: they're raised literally in chicken factories. The broiler chicken race is a mutant which grows in mere weeks to the size of a full chicken. Yes, that's what's in your chickenburger or the frozen ones at the supermarket.

At that growth rate you don't even need to clean after them or anything. A whole warehouse is covered with wood chippings, then filled with freshly hatched (in incubators!) chicks, and they just get food and water down some troughs. Noone even goes in there until they're ready to be harvested. They live in permanent semi-darkness so they won't fight, they have as much space per chicken as an A4 sheet of paper, and they get to walk and sleep in their own shit (wood chippings only absorb so much) for that couple of weeks until they grow big enough to be slaughtered. Then they're all packed in trucks and driven to the an automated slaughterhouse. Then someone with a bulldozer clears the old wood chips, spreads new ones, fills the warehouse with a new set of freshly-hatched chicks. Repeat.

It only takes minimal human work to operate that kind of a chicken factory. Except for picking them and loading them in trucks, everything is automated. (E.g., feeding, heating, the fans that push in fresh air, etc.) Once you loaded it with the hatched chicks it's "fire and forget" until harvest time. A couple of workers can grow ludicrious amounts of chicken per year.

_That_ is why cities can grow so big. We simply don't need more peasants.

Re:A bit more economics

[aunt edna]

Hate to do this, but maybe you should look around .... at the chicken farm you're in yourself, buddy. How'd you like them economics?

Re:A bit more economics

[Moraelin]

Hate to do this, but maybe you should look around .... at the chicken farm you're in yourself, buddy. How'd you like them economics?

Actually, since you're asking, I like them very much. Compared to any other period in history (as opposed to some utopias that never actually worked), the economy is doing pretty damn good, and the average citizen actually sees some benefit out of it too.

Well, that was if you actually were asking about the economy. If you were going for a metaphor, I'm affraid you'll have to be a bit more speciffic than that. There are about a dozen other possible meanings for it (e.g., as an entirely inaccurate metaphor for urbanization.) Some justified, some stretching it, some silly, and some probably going right over my head. Or maybe you're just upset at the idea of treating the chicken that way -- which, actually, I am too. Or God knows what else.

So I could provide a dozen answers for every case I can imagine, but that would be a waste of both my and your time, not to mention the time of anyone else unfortunate enough to read that kind of a huge post. So, well, a bit of clarification could save us both a lot of wasted effort.

Cancel that, now more rural than urban again...

[Anonymous Coward]

Chang Wey, who was the guy tipped the balance in favour of larger worldwide urban population, by moving to the city, has just decided that the city isn't for him and is moving back to the country again.

hear us laugh?

[andr0meda]

I just love it how almost every world "news" (ahum) item is appended with..

"In the US, this happened a long long time ago.."

You have no idea how hard we are laughing at the other end of the pond, really.

Re:vast cities (nature deficit disorder)

[Paul Fernhout]

Check out:
    http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=nature+defici t+disorder
From:
    http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/06/02/ Louv/index.html
"Do today's kids have "nature-deficit disorder"?

A new book argues that children desperately need to be able to play in the woods -- and that our culture's sterile rejection of nature is harming them in body and soul.

"In the not-so-distant past, kids ruled the country's woods and valleys -- running in packs, building secret forts and treehouses, hunting frogs and fish, playing hide-and-seek behind tall grasses. But in the last 30 years, says journalist Richard Louv, children of the digital age have become increasingly alienated from the natural world, with disastrous implications, not only for their physical fitness, but also for their long-term mental and spiritual heath.

In his new book, "Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder," Louv argues that sensationalist media coverage and paranoid parents have literally "scared children straight out of the woods and fields," while promoting a litigious culture of fear that favors "safe" regimented sports over imaginative play. Well-meaning elementary school curricula may teach students everything there is to know about the Amazon rain forest's endangered species, but do little to encourage kids' personal relationship with the world outside their own doors. And advances in technology, while opening up a wealth of "virtual" experiences to the young, have made it easier and easier for children to spend less time outside.

Louv spent 10 years traveling around the country reporting and speaking to parents and children, in both rural and urban areas, about their experiences in nature. In "Last Child in the Woods," he pairs their anecdotes with a growing body of scientific research that suggests children who are given early and ongoing positive exposure to nature thrive in intellectual, spiritual and physical ways that their "shut-in" peers do not. By reducing stress, sharpening concentration, and promoting creative problem solving, "nature-play" is also emerging as a promising therapy for attention-deficit disorder and other childhood maladies. Indeed Louv, in both the book's title and content, suggests that while increased exposure to nature may prove a salve for many of the childhood disorders that now run rampant, the very ubiquity of those disorders is evidence that two generations of alienation from nature may have already resulted in considerable harm to our kids."

Re:bad idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you must really be from the country. I mean, I'm from the country--most of my friends' parents were farmers, you can smell cow everywhere, and it's an hour and a half to any population center over 10,000--but you must be really country to have that kind of aggression.

I don't normally brag, but you're a dipshit and I hope you read this. My friends' parents, you know, the ones who were mostly farmers? You know what else they were? Rich. Mansions, or what passes for mansions in those parts (15-20 rooms), paying cash for cars, spur-of-the-moment trips to FL or CA, you name it. So why don't you tell me how economically exploited they felt? Sure, there were poor people around, but I knew them too, bought shitty weed from them at first, sold good weed to them eventually, partied with them, went to school with them. You know what 90% of them were? Dumb, lazy fucks, and that's why they were poor. It's been 15 years now since I've lived there, but I've visited often and I'm batting about .900 in predictions of who's a loser for life and who's getting out.

You know what I predict, if your post is for real and not just an act? You're a loser for life, because you're too damn bitter and attached to whatever shitty situation you've got going on where you are. It's too bad, because you don't sound like a complete idiot, but if you don't get over your self-pity bullshit and revolution fantasy you're going to be stuck right there 'till the day you die.

Oh, and BTW, I may live in the city but I've spent enough time as an 11B to be pretty sure that I can take your country ass out.

So why don't we get tax credit for renting?

[Targon]

This is something that has annoyed me for a long time now. Those who own homes get tax deductions from the interest on their home loans. As a result, not only do home owners see the value of their home increase over time, but they get tax deductions on the interest from their home loans, so the cost of living for homeowners will end up being lower in the long term.

Those who rent tend to pay more in rent, get nothing for it, and in the long run have nothing to show for their cost of living. There are no tax breaks in any way for those who rent, which makes the cost of living higher, while having less to show for it. If the majority of people are living in an urban environment, that implies that the majority of people are renting, not owning where they live. So, why is the attitude of government always focused on things that would help home owners, rather than on the majority, which ends up renting?

If the government wanted to really boost the economy(which would improve tax revenues), there would be a shift to provide tax deductions for those who rent. The money people save would allow them to save up for a house, which would help reduce the NEED for social security(in the long run). Help raise the social standing of the low and middle income people, and there will be more non-credit spending. Renters need tax breaks too.

Re:So why don't we get tax credit for renting?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're almost there!

It's because the government wants homeowners.

Define "urban".

[jonadab]

Much of that "urban" population lives in smaller cities and towns, not in the large megalopoles most people think of when you say "urban". For every city of a million people, there are ten cities of a hundred thousand people. For every city of a hundred thousand people, there are fifty cities of ten thousand. And for every city of ten thousand, there are twenty or thirty smaller towns and villages. Taken individually, their population is small, but there are a lot of them.

These kinds of surveys count them all as "urban", because the residents don't live on farms, but they are, culturally speaking, nothing like the big cities.

Re:Define "urban".

[tmalone]

You're right that the western idea of "urban" is not what we're seeing here. Added to the prevelance of smaller towns, we also have to look at slums. Worldwide there are hundreds of cities with populations over one million. Slums are absorbing much of this shift. By 2015 there will be 550 cities with more than one million people. The UN estimates that over a billion people live in slums currently. Most of these urbanites worldwide will not be living in cities like New York or London, but they will be living in cities like Rio and Lagos. They will be camped out on eroding hillsides or huddled in shantytowns. Mike Davis wrote a great little book about this called Planet of Slums. What is so sad about this shift is that the new urbanization has little to do with industrialization. People are moving to the city to be a part of informal economies, because the rural lifestyles they're leaving behind aren't doing it for them. They aren't being lured to the city by opportunity, but instead being driven from the countryside by poverty.

Now you know the rest of the story

[avtchillsboro]

FTA: "Cities refine and process rural goods for urban and rural consumers. But if either cities or rural areas had to sustain themselves without the other, Wimberley says, few would bet on the cities.

"As long as cities exist, they will need rural resources - including the rural people and communities that help provide urban necessities," he said. "Clean air, water, food, fiber, forest products and minerals all have their sources in rural areas. Cities cannot stand alone; rural natural resources can. Cities must depend on rural resources.""

Now you know the rest of the story...about why the US Constitution is the greatest political document ever written. The Constitution creates the Electoral College--which ensures that rural areas & the people who live there will have strong political representation.

Call me wacky--but without the Electoral College, dissenters who want low taxes & limited government wouldn't stand a chance--and the Bill of Rights would long ago have ceased to be worth the paper its printed on.

Re:Now you know the rest of the story

[vidarh]

The electoral college has hardly ever had any impact on an election - electors have with only a handful exceptions voted for the candidate they were told to as an outcome of the vote in their state. So why is it you think the Electoral College secures strong political representation for rural areas?

Re:Now you know the rest of the story

[penp]

And without the Electoral College, one might actually feel like their vote was being represented. But it's not. If you live in Texas, the whole Electoral College is going to vote Republican whether or not you vote Democrat. If my 'vote' in the Electoral College will effectively go toward the same candidate regardless of who I vote for, what is the point in voting in the first place?

Re:Now you know the rest of the story

[avtchillsboro]

Replying to two posters:

I guess neither of you get my point--Presidential elections based strictly on popular vote would ensure that Presidential candidates would only ever campaign in cities--and only the largest ones at that--so if you don't live in one of the nation's ten or so largest population centers, you would essentially have no representation in the executive branch.

Without weighted representation, rural states would have damn little legislative representation either. Maybe you think we ought to get rid of the Senate also?

Without rural areas having weighted representation in the executive & legislative branches, imagine what environmental and agricultural policies would be like.

What if eminent domain consistently favored the interests of cities over rural inhabitants? With a setup like that, do you suppose that the judiciary would give a rat's ass about small landowner's rights anywhere? What kind of chance would you give snail darters & other endangered species? Call me wacky, but I sincerely believe that civil rights; the rights of political dissenters--and rights of minorities; whether they be political, ethnic, or otherwise--depend on the Bill or Rights--

& fundamentally, it is the Electoral College that puts the teeth in the Bill of Rights
.

Re:vast cities (nature deficit disorder)

[Kelbear]

I'm immediately dubious, but I would first like to hear some excerpts before I reject the notion that "nature" is inherently better than cityscape. I need to hear more first.

Perhaps some examples from the growing body of scientific research?

After hearing the word "sensationalist" being used, it's hard not to try to associate Louv's claims with the word as well. "Think of the Children" is a common sarcastic quip on Slashdot, which is a reminder of situations where people have chosen to disregard the need for proof if the issue deals with their children.

I see reasons why children encounter less nature during their developing years, but I don't dispute that since it's not suprising to me. Sounds about right. However, what I don't see is reasons why nature is inherently better. I would like to know what advantages it brings in case similar or better benefits can be achieved without having to be tied down to a specific environment. There are quite a few benefits to urban living as well, and I think most would want to take the best from both worlds.

coastal perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Midwest "cities" tend to be more car-oriented.

Midwesterner here... thanks for the "cities" slam. (Not really...)

Ever been to Chicago? http://www.transitchicago.com/
Even been to Los Angeles? It's as car-oriented as can be.
Ever been to Seattle? Not-so-stellar public transit there, too.

Insecure coastal types (and their ridiculous generalizations) are always good for a few laughs.

not so smart

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because they don't have ANY hospitals outside of major metropolitan areas. Oh, I guess their oncology departments aren't as good, admittedly...in a country hospital while dying of cancer, you can only stay alive a few weeks past your natural time, bloated and in pain, rather than a few months, bloated and pain.

Country life truly is awful!

Overpopulation is 1 of the most blatant lies ever

[gd23ka]

Texas alone has 262,000 sq miles, with 5,280 ft per mile that's 5,280 x 262,000 x 5,280 x 262,000 sq ft or 1,913,684,889,600,000,000 sq ft. Now if we moved the
entire 6 billion of the world population into the State of Texas everybody would have 1,913,684,889,600,000,000 / 6,000,000,000 = 318,947,481 sq ft to live in.

Imagine that: Three-hundred-eighteen-million, nine-hundred-fourty-seven-thousand, four-hundred-eighty-one (!!!) square feet for everybody on this planet to live on.

Texas is among other things a great state to live in, but compared to the total land area of Earth of 148,939,100 sq km the 678,051 sq km of Texas only account for .45%(!!!) of it.

-> You could squeeze the entire population of the world into an area half a percent of the entire planet's surface area and with some 319 million sq ft of space allotted to each woman, man and child they wouldn't exactly be breathing down each other's neck, now would they?

Overpopulation is yet another myth. Of course people need roads, factories and agriculture and when they've got that they'll want pools, satellite communications and lamb chops from New Zealand... but still the myth figures do not add up, neither those of the overpopulation crowd nor those of the global warming faction.

In case you haven't seen it btw, do watch Matt Durkin's documentary "The Great Global Warming Swindle" http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great _global_warming_swindle/index.html

You can also watch it online at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4499562022 478442170&q=global+warming+swindle

People are catching on to these lies pretty fast now so I'm pretty confident there
wont be any suicide booths or other overt population control scenarios, except
maybe for "volunteers" like you who put "freedom" into quotation marks. Human
beings are precious no matter whether there are only a handful or six or
six-hundred billion, if you took the time for some introspection you'd know why.

Re:vast cities (nature deficit disorder)

[khallow]

I see a few obvious differences. First, nature is a less controlled, less restricted environment. You can be exposed to a lot of things that would be covered over in an urban environment. And in an urban area, I'd say 95% or more of the environment can't be visited (ie, you can't just walk into apartments and businesses). And due to crime, a lot of people keep their kids inside. Second, it's a more varied environment. There are a wider variety of terrains, plants and animals, and weather. Finally, I think one is more likely to get adequate exercise in a natural environment (again because they aren't spending time indoors).

More Urban Than Rural

[seinethinker]

As we move forward, the densification of urban areas will escalate because of resource issues. The pricing of fuel is evidence enough to justify the rapid amount of city infill. However, more cities are re-evaluating their purpose for being and desire to re-attract families and the elderly. What is hilarious is why people in the U. S. (and I am an American, btw)build cities in incredibly bad areas (i.e. New Orleans, Oklahoma, Phoenix). Well, back to the main issue, urban areas are not only going to swell because of resource issues but also people desire services and goods not found in the countryside.

There are benefits and downsides to the re-densification of urban areas. One of the benefits is we will be able to reclaim some of the arable land in the United States, decrease the threat to our food chain and the natural environments that aid in the well-being of this planet. Another benefit is the chance for communities to develop and people to interact. These days people are stand-offish and there is a lack of community. Perhaps this re-population can resolve this issue (ex: new movement of condos like in New York that offer services that bring tenants together). Some of the downsides are crowds and traffic. However, the biggest sacrifice would be people giving up their cars and opting for mass transit. Most Americans won't embrace mass transit like Europeans, we like our freedom too much. However, if we want to make a big impact on our carbon footprint on the environment, we had best invest in fuel-efficient methods of getting from point A to point B. Let's only hope that our future doesn't look like Lagos (the current 'Mad Max' megalopolis of hell).

-- Lynn

Sig figs don't work that way

[Nf1nk]

Whether they say 53,103,102 or 53,000,000, it's still to the person. Just because one number is a little more "neat" than the other, there's no way to know which one is more accurate. The actual number could be higher than the first number, meaning rounding down would just make it even less accurate. It makes more sense to me to give a result that's in the middle of the error range than rounding.

In uncertainty analysis there is something known as implied uncertainty it is the uncertainty of a number given by the instrument that measured the number. 53,103,102 just as a number has an implied uncertainty of +-.5 which for people is clearly bunk, so for something that partials don't exist the number appears exact. 53,000,000 has implied uncertainty of +-500,000 this show considerable range of possible numbers. The first number is implied by the second, but the second reflects a much less accurate measurement.

It makes me cringe when I see numbers like 53,103,102 +- 623,103, that number is clearly crap. They admitted that there is a large uncertainty, but the excessive significant figures implies a high degree of confidence in the numbers. If you understand the normal distribution you would know that it is safe to call that same number 53,100,000 +-620,000 because the true number has a high probability of being within that range

How they estimated their numbers

[reconn]

They estimated their numbers based on the UN's study Global Report on Human Settlements, 2003. This report estimated the figure 51.3% global urban population by 2010, which was used in calculating May 23 as the tipping point.

This report inspired the book Planet of Slums by Mike Davis, who also wrote an great article in NLR that has disappeared behind a pay-curtain. But you can read a google cache of it here.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey man!
I'm from Puerto Rico... currently living here.

Wierd enough that you used us as an example, as that's an issue of much debate in this island.

GENERALIZATION of our views:::
1- People want Puerto Rico to be a free nation
2- People want Puerto Rico to be the 51st state
3- People want Puerto Rico to stay as it is

It's interesting what you said regarding the Senate and Congress, because that's something I always wonder... what the hell is the US going to do with us in there?
With our votes in there?

I'm very much proud of being a part of These United States of America, but, to be honest, I don't want to become a state... I believe it would errode too much our identity.

By the same token (and a wierd connection inside my brain), I don't think the USA should accept spanish as a primary language.
I love english, and I love my spanish (1st language)... but, I see that the strength of a nation, in part, comes from speaking the same dialect.
Spanish should be a secondary language in the USA, NOT a primary one, IMHO.
((In Puerto Rico, both spanish and english are the primary languages))

WARNING:::
If you think the politics of the USA if screwed up, well...
HAhaAHhaaHaahahaa aHA ahAHh ahah AHAaaa
aAHahAH AHAAAHAHAAH aHA HA haAHA HAA!!!

((in spanish now))
jAJajaJA ajA aj aJj ajjajjaAJJAJJAAajaJ
AJJJ AJAJ ajaja JAJAJAAA Jaja jaJaa

I'm not proud of this, at the least, but word of warning:
Politicians in Puerto Rico are FUCKED UP in the brain.

Yes, yes... I read /.
Yes yes, I know the US politicians are fucked up too... but trust me guys, OUR politicians will REALLY get you to see CSPAN.
Hilarity will ensue.

I for one, re-welcome our Colonialist Overlords to our small island!

Re:artificially empower rural areas

[Nymz]

You have described my own state of California to a tee. We've had a "Three Strikes" law for years, we criminalize many addictive behaviors, and our prisons are so overcrowded we have started transfering them to out-of-state prisons.

What you haven't described is why we, California, use these "tactics" to "artificially empower rural areas". By calling it a tactic, you imply a strategy, which implies a goal.

Good thing 90% of statistics are made up.

[Paperweight]

Good thing 90% of statistics are made up on the spot.

Re:Good thing 90% of statistics are made up.

[iminplaya]

Yes...well...feel free to take that up where it would be a tiny bit more on topic. I didn't bring that up here. Here, I shall be more than happy to carry on with the subject that I brought up. That would be *Where are you more secure? In the city? Or in the countryside?*. Deal? Cool...I'm with ya all the way, babe.

Check your math

[WrongMonkey]

Texas is 262,000 sq miles. Your calculations are for the area of a square that is 262,000 miles on each side. There is a very important difference. 262,000 sq miles = 5280^2 * 262,000 = 7.3041408 × 10^12 sq feet. That's more like 1196 sq feet per person. That's still enough for a modest house, I suppose.

Re:Check your math

[gd23ka]

And I don't even work at NASA but you're right. Still, 1196 sqft per person(!) is a hell of a lot when you remember that most people are forced to live on far less space, some even in their cars. And so all of humanity would still fit quiet nicely into an area less than half a percent of the land area of the planet.

We could of course put a suicide booth on the anonymous coward's 1196 sqft lot so he has an easy way out if he can't cope.

Re:vast cities (nature deficit disorder)

[sreilly]

My family (wife, daughter and myself) moved from a 300 acre farm to Edinburgh (capital city of Scotland) when my daughter was a couple of months old. We've been here for about 14 months now and have seen way more nature than when we lived in the rural setting. Between the numerous parks and botanic gardens as well as day trips outside the city, my daughter is getting all the nature she can handle.

Claiming that kids in urban areas are "shut-in" seems like a misunderstanding of urban life (at least the urban life that I know). Living in the city means you spend MORE time out and about - not in your flat, which serves more as a place to sleep and eat in between doing stimulating things like going to museums, playing in the park, etc.

Re:vast cities (nature deficit disorder)

[Paul Fernhout]

European cities tend to have sharper boundaries between city and country due to better zoning regulations, making the country more accessible as it starts right after a sharp edge to the city. US cities tend to have a huge blurry suburban boundary stretching on and on where there is little nature -- making for long trips out of the city before one can reach anything faintly natural. Also, European countries tend to have laws permitting the free passage (and even camping) across undeveloped and even farm lands, whereas the USA laws tend to restrict that as trespassing (or owners "post" their lands for liability reasons, resulting in the same thing).

Perhaps one of the factors for your family was a change in work situation (given how demanding most farmwork can be) making available more free time to spend together as a family in nature?

One more part of that interview on Nature Deficit Disorder:
    http://dir.salon.com/story/mwt/feature/2005/06/02/ Louv/index.html
"Is this just an urban problem, or does it affect children in suburban and rural areas as well?

For my research, I tried to cross every barrier I could think of -- for instance, I did interviews in more rural areas and suburban areas, like the one I grew up in outside Kansas City, which still has a lot of nature. I went in there thinking, Well, certainly if you have woods next to you, kids will be out in them. But that simply wasn't true. The parents and the kids there were saying the same things as kids in more urban areas. In fact, the amount of nature you have in New York City is actually better than some of the newer suburbs; imagine, today, a city building a Central Park.

A major study came out a few months ago that said that the rate of obesity in children is growing faster in rural areas than it is in cities and suburbs. Again, it seems counterintuitive. But it's not so counterintuitive when you think about the fact that the family farm is fairly nonexistent now. Kids in rural areas are playing the same video games, watching the same television, and they're on longer car rides."

So indeed, kids in rural areas can suffer from NDD too!

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

US cities tend to have a huge blurry suburban boundary stretching on and on where there is little nature -- making for long trips out of the city before one can reach anything faintly natural.

Really? The cities I know well, Philadelphia and New York City, both incorperate parks (Fairmount Park and Central Park).

You only know 1 city. Bostiyorkadelphia.

[HornWumpus]

There is no country between them anymore.

The fact you don't know the difference between a manicured park and real country is also telling.

When I was a teen we built ourselves a 'base' complete with human sized snares (bent over 'spring trees'), barbed wire barricades, pits traps and pungi stakes to keep cops and other adults out. After one cop fell into the septic pit they stopped chasing us into 'our' turf.

Try that in Central Park.

Re:artificially empower rural areas

[T.E.D.]

What you haven't described is why we, California, use these "tactics" to "artificially empower rural areas".

I didn't say you did. We'll use Hanlon's Razor and assume it happened on accident. All I'm saying is that the effect (or one of the effects) has been to empower rural areas, and that someone wanting to purposely cause that outcome could use this proven method to do so.