Are Cities New Countries?
With regard to this article …
Kunstler is not pro-urbanization. He is part of the "new urbanism" movement, which means building & rebuilding "human scale" cities. Tis means reinventinem maybe, Smallville, USA, home of Clark Kent. But not for continuing to construct the mega-sprawl cities. Not for skyscrapers in a looming era of electric brownouts.
And big cities may draw their money from afar, but they suck the nearby lands dry of water. They consume immense amts of electricity at not-too-distant power plants. (Atlanta comsumes the electricity-equivalent of almost 400 rail cars of coal every day, burned to keep the elevators & refrigerators & home entertainment centers running.) Big sprawling cities pave over all the adjacent farmland, and import food from near & far. They produce immense volumes of solid & liquid waste, much of it long term toxic, and export it to landfills or dump it at sea, etc. So this is what Jim Kunstler believes makes the current system unsustainable in the long run.
Long term, if big cities are "countries," then they are going to become the "failed states" of the future.
Gotta run. Best to all, BWK
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