I can’t give you a citation but I’ve heard a whole bunch of fellow lefty students when I was in university talk about so called overpopulation. No one was expounding genocide, but a lot of people were talking about how Malthus was on to something.
The level of tight daily control required to run such a city, the HOA meetings, the fact that I’d have to live in a shopping mall. And for that reason… I’m out.
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I think some folks are too chained to what a western dense city feels like… Lagos is one of the densest cities in the world, yet there’s no hi rise construction outside of the cities core…
Also, we lose something like 35% + of urban land to the fucking car, so yeah. There’s the first and most obvious place to get more room.
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Been there, wrote about it (humble brag alert)
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As long as occasional and responsible trips into the wilderness are still allowed, I’m for it.
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Before I give up my twenty acres, I want to see every millionaire banker, politician, and celebrity off those ranches in Montana and Wyoming. Every damn one, and the buildings razed.
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If they’re taking intellectual influence from Malthus then they aren’t likely to remain lefty.
So hopefully it’s just a fling, like anybody is prone to
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Well hell yeah. If we right now had all our population living in cities someone would certainly advocate pushing them all out to live on the land. Just because ordering people around is just so, so satisfying.
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Yeah, I am going to say “fuck that”. We have a shit ton of room. We already have pockets with negative population growth, and at some point our population won’t only flat line, but shrink some. We won’t need to resort to such extremes.
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Human beings comprise 350 million tons of biomass, out of a total of about 5 billion for all terrestrial animals. So, shouldn’t we only get 7% of the land, by your logic?
Snide reply, sorry. Most of the critical responses here don’t read like they’re coming from people who read the article. There’s nothing in there about high-tech, vertical arcologies. Forced relocation is precluded. Suburbs are pointed out as the real problem.
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This is the tragedy of our species: We can imagine the most elegant solutions to save ourselves, but we’ll never enact them because of greed, laziness, and the corruption of power.
A lot needs to change before I start feeling optimistic again.
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This is why I’m excited about space travel and cities on Mars. Not because we can “mine the other planets later,” but because cities that are contained and self-sustaining (as much as can be) will be necessary in space and that will provide lessons and technology to make our terrestrial cities better. We need to change. We are wasting and wantonly destroying whole swaths of our ecosystem, and changing it’s systems. The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to keep all the parts.
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… I’m really liking the thought (and look) of half Earth by alternating longitudinal Earth slices.
Best thing for our (not quite as dark) winter vegetable consumption was buying the personal version of these (aerogardens). I give my neighbors lettuce and pak choi, and we still eat it 10-12 meals a week. Even calculated at the dirtiest energy possible, it’s 1/3 to 1/2 as dirty as transporting it 1300 miles.
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So you’re saying we’re definitely doomed then, right?
Same, but tall, narrow townhouse with many neighbors. I like living in density. I like being able to walk to the park, grocery and restaurants. But I go to a skyscraper when we’re all back to living in townhouses and flats. I’m doing my bit already.
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Yeah, I wonder if anyone ever suggested to Robinson that he consider terraforming Mars as an alternative 
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Food, not lawns.
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I know right! Once the power goes out and we can’t all sit around posting on BB think how much more productive we will be.
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You can’t have anarcho-primitivism without the mass die-off of humankind. It’s dystopian without a utopia, at least not before many generations of war, disease and horror lie firmly in the past. Now the rational society can thrive!
