Populating the Land; Ethics and Reasons

Have you traveled cross country? Have you seen towns and villages nearly emptied? Not only in the U.S. but worldwide urbanization March's on. The need for cash jobs and aspiring material lives and being not satisfied with sustenance is one of the big reasons. There is so much land that can become productive but for ample sustenance not for profit. Overpopulation truly is an urban problem. Our land and Earth are truly sustaining! We don't need controls but Homesteading opportunities! Many,many jobs can be done at home or village by internet. Friends of mine own a cattle ranch in Wyoming. They have 800 acres! They have tractor parts delivered from across the country. Agriculture must use new technology not only for soil enrichment like they need in Wyoming but in building protective and productive environments. China had their severe overpopulation crisis solved in an immoral way . Now they have urbanized dramatically.No more small farms. At one time there were 100's of thousands villages. Now there are 50 million empty apartments in the cities owned as collateral by families looking to become rich. The government now is rewarding couples who have three or more children because the need of workers is so great! We can build Permaculture communities for hundreds of thousands quickly by employing thousands to rebuild empty towns and lands if we only had the will. Shipping containers can be converted in factories which can turn out as many as a thousand a day if we wanted to do so. Whether one wants children has to always be up to the couple involved. But using artificial or brutal means to limit population is antithetical to true human progress. Just ask the pioneers how many children they wanted. "As many as I can feed and that's up to God".    We need to apply ourselves to creatively and sanely developing our lands for our future!

Stuart Sparber wrote:China had their severe overpopulation crisis solved in an immoral way .

Who decides what is immoral?

Go across the face of the entire Earth and you will find a more or less common moral code especially about murder and abortion. The law of God is written in your hearts. Even those who never read it know it! We have truly been brainwashed by materialistic communistic thinking to believe murder and abortion are antidotes to overpopulation!  Lack of Wisdom, selfishness and Greed need their brainwashers!https://pin.it/tfum7osup3izvv

Stuart Sparber wrote: Just ask the pioneers how many children they wanted. "As many as I can feed and that's up to God".    We need to apply ourselves to creatively and sanely developing our lands for our future!

I dunno.  If people are content to leave the responsibility of feeding their children to God, I doubt they'd get off their asses to do anything about pretty much any other issue.  

Stuart Sparber wrote: China had their severe overpopulation crisis solved in an immoral way . Now they have urbanized dramatically.No more small farms. At one time there were 100's of thousands villages. Now there are 50 million empty apartments in the cities owned as collateral by families looking to become rich. The government now is rewarding couples who have three or more children because the need of workers is so great!

I speak Chinese. I've been to China many times (as recently as December) and actually, the majority of the food there is still grown on small farms. The vast majority, in fact. It's important for keeping employment high, among other things. I intend to put together the pictures I took and put them up here at some point. I learned a lot about sustainable agriculture.

I have serious problems with urbanization, the knowledge economy, and globalization: basically, cities have sucked up more and more of US economic output by out-sourcing manufacturing and concentrating spending in urban areas.  This hollows out the rest of the country, forcing people to move into cities where they won't be able to afford property, have a good quality of life, and deal with all the mental health problems associated with cities.  Leaving the rest of the country to poisonous factory farms and neglect, and increasing class divides, income inequality, family collapse, drug abuse, and criminal activity.  

Mark Shepard is working to reverse this dynamic with permaculture and restoring local trust-based economies, pursuing cooperative arrangements to establish economy of scale and the ability to compete with the big guys.

Stuart Sparber wrote: But using artificial or brutal means to limit population is antithetical to true human progress. Just ask the pioneers how many children they wanted. "As many as I can feed and that's up to God".    We need to apply ourselves to creatively and sanely developing our lands for our future!

Currently, more than 1 billion people are currently not getting enough food to sustain a healthy life.  36 million people are going to starve to death this year.  Maybe humans should decide not to have more children than they can feed, rather than leaving it to God.

I think your over-use of exclamation points makes it stressful read your posts.  It may distract people so much that they miss your point.

Urbanisation is often vilified, but I think people are attributing malice to something achieved through good, old, simple incompetence.

The reason political parties are more likely to support urbanisation than ruralisation in today's world is because of the cost of delivery of services.

In a city, a given roadway will be used by thousands of people a day. The taxes paid by those thousands of people amount to well more than enough to keep it in good repair.

In a rural environment, that same length of roadway might be used by a hundred people a day. Or ten. Or, you know, none at all, except for buses and transports. The tax revenue available per square foot of roadway is way less, so much less that the excess of the cities is tapped and doled out to rural communities.

It's just cheaper and more efficient to deliver services to people living stacked in boxes, one atop the other, or in houses stuck cheek-by-jowl. Less infrastructure to build for more people sheltered and provided with every necessity, and many non-essentials. There's no plot, no conspiracy, just efficiency. You put the housing where the jobs are, and supply services to them. That's how we got tiny mining towns, mill towns, and even those pit-stop, middle-of-nowhere crossroads or junction towns that suffered most after the Interstates were built in the untied states.

I have serious problems with some of the talking points around abortion. Detractors often act like it's treated with the same lack of concern as an over-the-counter hangover drug or something, when in reality, it's often a necessary procedure that leaves those who have to resort to it devastated for years after.

Abortion is a sad necessity, and those who spend their effort hating and trying to shame those who hold a different opinion, and spending money to do so, might, I think, instead put their efforts towards creating places where an alternative may be found in cases where there is no medical or psychological need to abort. If there were more shelters available for expectant mothers who otherwise would have no recourse, perhaps coupled with skills training to help with other aspects of life, I think the abortion numbers would drop significantly, and more so if the shelters involved were adamant about not evangelising.

I also think that if those concerned with the lives of the unborn weighed the moral toll of conception prevention versus abortion, they'd end up sounding less like a Monty Python skit.



-CK

Just a reminder that this is a political thread & therefore already in the cider press. Being nice still applies.

I think we are creating a mess trying to answer a bad question.

The bad question imho is how do we efficiently and sustainably support a centralized model (urbanization)?

It's a lot cleaner to simply decentralize, but those who benefit from centralization oppose that trend vigorously.

And so the conscientous objectors to an environmentally and socially destructive world opt out and homestead.

Same as it ever was.

Except that your conclusions, J, rest on an unfounded assumption, that being that decentralisation is cleaner.

If everyone sought to homestead, we'd each be confined to a relative postage stamp, and there would be no wild land anymore. Also, there have always been people who prefer a more urban environment than a rural one. The assertion that urbanisation is environmentally and socially destructive is an oversimplification of a complex issue.

Also, the idea that rural life is inherently morally superior, based on social and environmental arguments, is flawed; the proof of that can be seen in ancient devastation of the environment in a rural context by goats and wooden plows thousands of years ago. This has nothing to do with morality.

I think that the solution is easy: if we are to have cities, and the fact of the matter is that we have cities, and they're not going away, then we need to employ vastly superior methods of dealing with the concentrations of waste generated by such dense population. We also need to ensure that the energy we generate has as small a footprint as is appropriate. And we need to produce as much as we can locally, not only to reduce shipping costs (in financial and environmental terms), but also to provide employment and purpose to the populace.

If food waste went to feed locally and ethically-raised livestock, which was then slaughtered and butchered locally, and if sewage waste was instead harvested to produce energy and more biomass, and perhaps food a step or two removed, much more of what was shipped in would remain here, even just as living soil.

If solar panels were ubiquitous in the urban environment, cities would be much more self-sufficient.

In short, if cities were transformed into tightly interconnected but structurally piecemeal arcologies, they could not only neutralise their negative impact, but depending on the specifics of the design, could act as filters on the land, cleaning air and water so it leaves cleaner than it entered.

Arcology, for any not familiar with the concept (thank you, SimCity 2000).

And no, there's nothing wrong with a rural life. I want one myself, after a fashion. But because there's less infrastructure to rely upon out there, it can easily be more difficult to do away with aspects of rural life that require dirtier and more toxic solutions, such as petroleum-powered tools and vehicles. Yes, there are non-petroleum solutions, even now, but if I break the bank to get out of the city, as I will have to do, I won't exactly be rolling in it enough to invest in the premium solar power system, electric pickup, electric tractor, or whatever.

Cost is a barrier even now to people working in the city who would rather be homesteading.

-CK

Chris, my concern with urbanization is the concentration of people: I don't see how permaculture can work if over half a country's population is focused in a small geographic area.  Yes, cities can certainly improve with solar, composting, and gardening, but they are always going to be reliant on the country-side to feed them (based on the lack of space to grow food in a city).  Modern agriculture has plenty of problems, but one thing it does well is drastically reduce human labor inputs.  Permaculture requires more human labor, so you will need more humans with more space to grow things, use trees for firewood, etc.  And yes, currently there are some benefits to centralization, such as increased use of public transit.  It's an extremely complex question... but I come down on the side of growing smaller town population/economies along with de-centralization of food production/distribution.  Ideally, I'd like to see non-urban areas begin to grow again, with policies to encourage investment in small towns and push economic investment to a more local level.  Breaking up corporate monopolies would be a great start.  

And I agree completely with your point about the cost barrier.  I'm working an office job, burning carbon on my commute, and not producing most of my food - just for the salary and to pay the bills.  Very few people have the finances, job opportunities, or permaculture skills to thrive outside of the Grid. In my experience, many of the people who live in cities/suburbs do so out of necessity, not out of choice.

Chris Kott wrote:Except that your conclusions, J, rest on an unfounded assumption, that being that decentralisation is cleaner.

If everyone sought to homestead, we'd each be confined to a relative postage stamp, and there would be no wild land anymore. Also, there have always been people who prefer a more urban environment than a rural one. The assertion that urbanisation is environmentally and socially destructive is an oversimplification of a complex issue.

Also, the idea that rural life is inherently morally superior, based on social and environmental arguments, is flawed; the proof of that can be seen in ancient devastation of the environment in a rural context by goats and wooden plows thousands of years ago. This has nothing to do with morality.

-CK

I respectfully and wholeheartedly disagree.

Everyone on the planet can fit in texas or new zealand, with more than a postage stamp, leaving the rest of the world wild.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3016331/think-the-world-is-crowded-you-could-fit-the-entire-human-race-in-new-zealand

Urbanisation requires centralization. Centralization raises the chances that some people will take advantage of other people. Power corrupts.

"I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe." Thomas Jefferson , Jefferson to James Madison, December 20, 1787, in PTJ, 12:442. https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/chain-email-10-jefferson-quotations

I did not claim rural life was morally superior, I assert that decentralization provides a better model for limiting the damage humans can do to each other and/or to the environment.

And as for the cost of leaving the city, this has been covered well in other posts. If you pick a large city and try to stay in commuting distance, its a steep hill to climb. If you relocate to a truly rural area, the cost of living is usually really low.

I dont doubt that there are tweaks that will improve the impact of urbanization but the root issues of centralized supply lines will remain. I predict that human nature will ensure that graft, corruption, malinvestment, and deferred maintenance will conspire to keep urban environments toxic to the environment and to human relations.  

That's funny, because when we drive out to visit family, about eight hours north of Toronto, the gas is usually $0.20/L more expensive. That cost tacks on to everything brought in from outside. In addition, there's more driving to be done, so more gas gets used.

Granted, it may have been cheaper when the tracks that run parallel to the highway ran cargo and passengers by rail, but the cost to the cities was too much to keep it up for the rural municipalities (a bonehead move, to my way of thinking).

If rural areas tried to simply maintain their own roads without assistance from higher levels of government (read: taxes from cities), the roads would be unusable, especially in temperate areas that experience the freeze/thaw cycle.

If we are binary about our thinking, nothing will ever get done.

I like the idea of growing villages and towns. I think that if permacultural food systems could be implemented on the scale of conventional agriculture, there would be jobs out there for people on which to support themselves directly, with a significant surplus besides for sale to the urban market. The urban market would be the only one, as, with the exception of regional differences or individual species selection, everyone would be growing pretty much what their neighbours were.

At the same time, we need cities if we wish to enjoy the benefits of specialisation (ironic that I would bring this up, considering my posts' signature).

If we want neurosurgeons and cardiac doctors, as opposed to Old Country Doctors (sorry, Bones) for GPs that sometimes do surgery, we need the societal structure that allows them to do nothing but diagnose and treat sick people all day, which means that other people need to make businesses of providing for their needs, including food and the industries that get that food to market and allow money, the product of paid labour, to be exchanged for the desired good.

This includes housing, water, power, clothing, and anything the specialist doesn't want to have to make from scratch themselves. Hell, you need that in microcosm in a village setting, if your village is lucky and productive enough to support an Old Country Doctor.

I tend to look at it a bit differently. Cities are incubators for specialised goods and services production. I think it is incumbent upon all of us who benefit from such specialisation in society, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, to figure out how to make cities work for, rather than against, the environment and people who live there. The money and talent gathered there is what will produce things like hyper-efficient solar electric and battery/supercapacitor technology that is also completely recyclable, Molten Salt Reactor technology that will power energy-intensive practices while consuming stockpiled radioactive waste, and the infrastructure and technology required for the off-world mining and fabrication industry that has the potential to take harmful industry off-planet.

Building cities into arcologies is a way to halt urban sprawl, reserving wilderness and space for those so-inclined to homestead.

-CK

J Davis wrote:
And as for the cost of leaving the city, this has been covered well in other posts. If you pick a large city and try to stay in commuting distance, its a steep hill to climb. If you relocate to a truly rural area, the cost of living is usually really low.

Chris Kott wrote:
That's funny, because when we drive out to visit family, about eight hours north of Toronto, the gas is usually $0.20/L more expensive. That cost tacks on to everything brought in from outside. In addition, there's more driving to be done, so more gas gets used.

Chris, to clarify, are you saying that living in a rural area isn't cheaper?  That hasn't been my experience at all.  I've lived in three major cities and now live in a rural area.  Housing costs alone more than make up for any difference in gas prices or the like.  My rent in the last city I lived in was $1800 a month, with no utilities included.  I didn't want a lawn, but my neighbor did, and he paid $400 a month for water.  My payment now to buy my house, rather than rent, is $500 a month for a house that is bigger, newer, and on 2 acres of land.  Food is much cheaper in a rural area, along with most everything else I can think of except gas.

I am certainly all in favor of better nuclear and denser energy storage technology.  My problem more is with the rise of so-called "superstar" cities at the expense of others (and the insane price rise in places like SF, NYC, or Vancouver).  Pittsburgh's renaissance into higher-tech industry is more what I support - pumping more funding and tech $ into second-tier urban areas.  Urban renewal if you will.  It really bothers me that places like Northern VA (where I live) keep building into farm-land and forcing people to burn gas to sit hours in traffic per day (due to the centralization of corporate and government-based economies) while mid and small-size town struggle to survive.  So basically, more de-centralization amongst cities, not complete de-centralization of an economy.

It's probably also worth pointing that quite a lot of humans seem to prefer living in very very dense urban environments... so if they don't want to experience the countryside they shouldn't have to.  But then you have to wonder if people actually prefer living in such close proximity, or merely prefer the power/prestige that has flowed from living in cities - presumably since Sumerian times.

PS: I sort of agree with J on the Jeffersonian citizen-farmer moral ideal, but I think the Hamiltonian approach is more pragmatic in a multi-polar, heavily armed world.

Trace Oswald wrote:

J Davis wrote:
And as for the cost of leaving the city, this has been covered well in other posts. If you pick a large city and try to stay in commuting distance, its a steep hill to climb. If you relocate to a truly rural area, the cost of living is usually really low.

Chris Kott wrote:
That's funny, because when we drive out to visit family, about eight hours north of Toronto, the gas is usually $0.20/L more expensive. That cost tacks on to everything brought in from outside. In addition, there's more driving to be done, so more gas gets used.

Chris, to clarify, are you saying that living in a rural area isn't cheaper?  That hasn't been my experience at all.  I've lived in three major cities and now live in a rural area.  Housing costs alone more than make up for any difference in gas prices or the like.  My rent in the last city I lived in was $1800 a month, with no utilities included.  I didn't want a lawn, but my neighbor did, and he paid $400 a month for water.  My payment now to buy my house, rather than rent, is $500 a month for a house that is bigger, newer, and on 2 acres of land.  Food is much cheaper in a rural area, along with most everything else I can think of except gas.

Yes, I am definitely saying that the cost of living isn't necessarily cheaper in a rural setting than an urban one. The costs are different, but if a person's earning potential in a given set of surroundings scales with the cost of housing, as is often the case, except in extreme cases, then yes, there's more driving to do at a greater cost in gas, fewer options in terms of what is available to buy, more time required off if you need any kind of medical visit other than the GP.

Hell, there are people in rural environments who lose half their weekend, every weekend, because they need to spend Saturday or Sunday driving to town to go shopping.

This can be offset if you're generating food, other necessary goods, or profit off of the land, or if you work remotely and the scale of your pay isn't coupled to the productivity of the region in which you're living. Also, if you are in a rural area but on a direct trade route between large communities, you benefit from the existence of that transportation route, and likely the nearby town is a commuter bubble of sorts, extending some of the benefits of urban life (more diverse goods at a lower cost) at the expense of slightly higher land costs/rent.

Food in a truly rural area might be cheaper, unless you live in the middle of a corn and soy desert, or anywhere agricultural goods are grown for processing and/or export, but I would expect that to be more of a case of swapping with neighbours.

And if the cost of gas is high, so will be the cost of anything that isn't produced locally.

It's not a straightforward issue. I, personally, would prefer the rural life, but for me, being in the country on a piece of land would mean starting about three new, long-term projects right away, and three more when those are quietly ticking away, building businesses, or at least products for a business. For those who don't have the wherewithal to work for themselves, that isn't an option, so those benefits wouldn't apply to them, unless they find a neighbour to help.

-CK

Chris Kott wrote:

Trace Oswald wrote:

J Davis wrote:
And as for the cost of leaving the city, this has been covered well in other posts. If you pick a large city and try to stay in commuting distance, its a steep hill to climb. If you relocate to a truly rural area, the cost of living is usually really low.

Chris Kott wrote:
That's funny, because when we drive out to visit family, about eight hours north of Toronto, the gas is usually $0.20/L more expensive. That cost tacks on to everything brought in from outside. In addition, there's more driving to be done, so more gas gets used.

Chris, to clarify, are you saying that living in a rural area isn't cheaper?  That hasn't been my experience at all.  I've lived in three major cities and now live in a rural area.  Housing costs alone more than make up for any difference in gas prices or the like.  My rent in the last city I lived in was $1800 a month, with no utilities included.  I didn't want a lawn, but my neighbor did, and he paid $400 a month for water.  My payment now to buy my house, rather than rent, is $500 a month for a house that is bigger, newer, and on 2 acres of land.  Food is much cheaper in a rural area, along with most everything else I can think of except gas.

Yes, I am definitely saying that the cost of living isn't necessarily cheaper in a rural setting than an urban one. The costs are different, but if a person's earning potential in a given set of surroundings scales with the cost of housing, as is often the case, except in extreme cases, then yes, there's more driving to do at a greater cost in gas, fewer options in terms of what is available to buy, more time required off if you need any kind of medical visit other than the GP.

Hell, there are people in rural environments who lose half their weekend, every weekend, because they need to spend Saturday or Sunday driving to town to go shopping.

This can be offset if you're generating food, other necessary goods, or profit off of the land, or if you work remotely and the scale of your pay isn't coupled to the productivity of the region in which you're living. Also, if you are in a rural area but on a direct trade route between large communities, you benefit from the existence of that transportation route, and likely the nearby town is a commuter bubble of sorts, extending some of the benefits of urban life (more diverse goods at a lower cost) at the expense of slightly higher land costs/rent.

Food in a truly rural area might be cheaper, unless you live in the middle of a corn and soy desert, or anywhere agricultural goods are grown for processing and/or export, but I would expect that to be more of a case of swapping with neighbours.

And if the cost of gas is high, so will be the cost of anything that isn't produced locally.

It's not a straightforward issue. I, personally, would prefer the rural life, but for me, being in the country on a piece of land would mean starting about three new, long-term projects right away, and three more when those are quietly ticking away, building businesses, or at least products for a business. For those who don't have the wherewithal to work for themselves, that isn't an option, so those benefits wouldn't apply to them, unless they find a neighbour to help.

-CK

I guess it's very dependent on how you use the term rural.  My current house is on 2 acres, I just bought 80 that I will be moving to this year.  I think anyone would consider this rural, but I'm 15 minutes from a Walmart (and still will be after the move), 40 minutes from a city with a population of 50,000.  My 80 acres has no neighbors in sight and 3 neighbors within 10 miles in any direction.

I make slightly less money than I did in the city (about $8,000 less this year) but my cost of living is far less than half of what it was when I lived there.  Gas prices in the town nearest me right now are $2.69 a gal.  I just checked Milwaukee's prices, and the cheapest price listed on gasbuddy is $2.59.  In realistic terms, it is a very small difference.

Food is far cheaper here, and I can buy local, organic, truly free range chicken eggs (if I didn't have my own) for $1 a dozen.  Vegetables that can be grown here are practically given away.  I can buy beef, chicken, pork for much less.  Certain things I have to buy at the store of course, but Walmart is much the same everywhere, and Aldi is less than that.  

For other goods, I generally do what I did when I lived in the city.  I order from Amazon or another online company.  If I need something right away, I drive to Menards or Home Depot, 40 minutes each way.  The prices there are pretty much the same  no matter where you live.

Stuart Sparber wrote:Just ask the pioneers how many children they wanted. "As many as I can feed and that's up to God".  

Pioneer wives might have felt differently.

I thank God that I did not have to bear as many children as God thought I might be able to feed.

Trace, you also have to keep in mind that Chris and I live in Canada.  While it's much bigger than the States, most of us live within 100 miles of your border.  We don't have anywhere near the choice you guys have when picking a spot to live and, in Ontario, we have to drive for hours just to get away from all the sprall and to find land that isn't 5k/acre (it's over 10k/acre where I am, for farmland).

Timothy Markus wrote:Trace, you also have to keep in mind that Chris and I live in Canada.  While it's much bigger than the States, most of us live within 100 miles of your border.  We don't have anywhere near the choice you guys have when picking a spot to live and, in Ontario, we have to drive for hours just to get away from all the sprall and to find land that isn't 5k/acre (it's over 10k/acre where I am, for farmland).

Timothy, Canada and the US are almost the same size

I get your point though.  Through much of the "rural" US, small towns are fairly prevalent, and many of them have Walmarts, or at the very least, small mom-and-pop grocery stores, and aren't completely isolated.

I'd like to jump back into this great discussion we're having. Cities are necessary and good when they serve humanity. New York City in the 1950's and early 60's is an example.This is where I grew up. There were plenty of jobs, housing and an abundance of leisure options for the working class. Restaurants were cheaper and with so many options.If you wanted to move there were so many decent and cheap options. Civil Service had plenty of openings that were truly open to all. Today you got to know someone. Today restaurants are expensive. Working people are struggling to pay the rent. Forget about moving! Greed has changed the reason for big cities.      Abortion kills lives and hurts survivors. It is not an option without cost. Either we want to be blessed or cursed by children. One can always say no and use a highly effective natural cycles method. Worked for us for 25 years. Going back to the land is the healthy trend of our day and Permaculture is the way to do it. Exclamation Point!

Trace Oswald wrote:Timothy, Canada and the US are almost the same size

Sorry, I thought I had a wink in there.  We cover a bit more area, but I think you guys actually have more land, subtracting waterbodies.

In Urbanization without Cities, Murray Bookchin spent a lot of time tracing the development of cities and urbanization from an anthropological perspective, and the benefits they've had for humans.

Before cities, the concept of multiple ethnic and tribal groups living at relative peace within the same space, and ultimately identifying with their geographic community across religious, ethnic, and racial lines may not have developed. Cities were a natural stepping stone to breaking out of more parochial ways of thinking about human relationships and developing a concept of common humanity.

He also traced how cities have evolved into mega-cities or metropolises, how the civic ties of the city have given way to the centralized bureaucracy and impersonal scale of the metropolis.

But there is no reason cities cannot be re-imagined to be part of a sustainable, ecological society. Rural and urban do not have to be in tension. both can be different life-ways working to achieve the same goal - ecological, regenerative systems and the provision of human needs as part of this. It's a matter of returning to a human scale, or taking back direct control of the cities we live in, and re-imagining the relationship between cities and countryside. The countryside is often treated as the breadbasket for the city, a resource to be extracted for urban dwellers. Conversely, the city is often treated as the problem by country folk, who blame the city itself for this dynamic rather than the underlying logic on which cities are built. Change the logic, change the city.

Havana, Cuba grows most the food its people produce within the city. There are ways of bringing both country living and urban life into the fold of regenerative permaculture.

As an urban Nomad homeless I have no choice but to live in this city but it has become true madness as of late. The crowds alone can drive you nuts. When I first starting working in the early seventies there on Fifth Avenue were crowds but each navigated with each other in a profound weave that is an anachronism today. If I were to count each day the cut-offs I would certainly reach 100. So density can work or not work. It depends on the character of the people. People looked to sustain their lives then not luxuriate. A vacation in the mountains was all right not a visit to China. Rent was easy to make. So Greed can definitely affect livability in cities.