A lost Pandora on Manhattan - Tree of Souls

Human No More · #1 05-09-2013, 02:16 AM

There's nothing implicitly wrong as long as population is kept in check -a city can hold people far more efficiently than the dozens of times as much area of suburbs that would be needed. People just need to stop over-reproducing, and need to look to new methods of supporting a population, such as hydroponics/vertical farms instead of fields or cutting down rainforest.

auroraglacialis · #2 05-09-2013, 10:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Human No More

a city can hold people far more efficiently than the dozens of times as much area of suburbs that would be needed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by auroraglacialis

And yes - this is true in some way or another for all cities, even the smaller ones and also for all suburbias.

Suburbs ARE cities.

And do you know how much land is needed to support on person living in a city? Not for the bare little area of his shelter, but to provide food, energy, clothing, construction materials, mineral resources, water,... The ecological footprint of cities is immense and what I said above was that the major problem with that is that the city utterly depends on the transport of these things into the city - what leaves the city is mostly waste. What if those who sit on these "resources" do not want to give them to the city because they prefer the forest to be a forest and not some truckloads of 2x4's or IKEA furniture for the city? And what if they cannot be convinced with money? Do you think the government of the cities would then just leave it alone and not have furniture? No, they will force these people off the land by any means possible from economic to physical pressure. And then they are called selfish because they did not want to give their forest to the people in the cities who "need" the wood. Just an example. The Avatar story - people sit on something those who depend on the exploitation of this "resource" think they "need" - so first bribe them, give them education and food - if they still dont comply give them an ultimatum and then the force comes in. Destroy their ability to live on the land and they will leave. And then - which was not in the movie but some people expressed that - they might be called selfish because they are causing the ones depending on the resources to suffer and maybe die just because they did not want to give them these resources. This is so ****ed up.
Urban and vertical farming is a joke - it is fun and educating and might provide part of the vegetables for the city which is nice - but the bulk will have to come from the land. You cannot grow enough corn or wheat in the city to feed the people living there. Not even starting to talk about wood, mineral resources, energy resources. If you can show me a single city - it can be as small as 20000 people which is in Germany the limit a town can apply for city status - that can do that truely, I will reconsider, but I am confident that there is none.