If there is a picturesque landscape, a town may be able to attract visitors. Rolling hills and green pastures are not very effective at attracting people unless there is something to do. With many Americans accustomed to eating burgers, fries and sodas in their cars, fine dining in the country is not a high volume opportunity. Outlet stores are a dime-a-dozen and must be clustered on one site to attract a variety of customers. Unless the location is really far out of the city, few people will stay overnight.
Swimming and water craft are good attractions if there is water and the body large enough to accommodate the use. Skiing is seasonal and must generate an entire year of commerce in the few months of winter.
Business and industrial parks are a viable attractor of commerce but the community must also have a suitably aged drug-free workforce who can do the work. There is little use for such a business park in a community if all the labor must commute to the location. There must be ancillary commerce like grocery shopping, medical services, car repair, etc. collocated such that people will leave a portion of their earnings in the local community. Newcomers who seek to live nearby need available housing.
Many businesses that seek to locate in such prepared sites demand tax abatement as an inducement to come therefore, tax revenues will not be immediately benefit the community. Some industries are so mobile that when the tax abatement expires they can relocate once again to some other community that is hungry for commerce.
Retirement homes as a viable option if there are adequate medical services available to treat older residents, transportation available to get everyone to where they need to go and local amenities where their money can stay local.
Private house ownership is far more affordable in small presently economically depressed towns. What is lacking are the grocery stores, doctors, dentists and pharmacies. Without such services long distance travel is required and that offsets the affordability of the location.
Other posts in this series
Community, Reasons to Exist, The Making of Place This is the introductory section
reason-to-exist Every town, village city and region originally had a reason to exist.
todays-reasons-to-exist Every community needs a a reason today for its continued existance. Otherwise it will wither and die.
factors-that-are-missingThe economic system we use today removes critical factors tat allow a community to stay vital.
a-shared-historyThe people of a community need a sared history to stay cohesive as a community.
sustainable-community all of the essential factors must remain present for a community to continue its existance.
sustainable-unemployment As manufacturing and the services industries ccontinue to evolve, human labor and attentjon is diminised. We need to devise a society where most people do not labor for their living.
sustainable-consumerism A balance between product durability and its replacement neds to be reached in order for an equilibrium to be reached.
sustainable-populations The human population cannot continue on its present trajectory without a terrible price to pay in the coming decades and century.
suburban-sprawl Sprawl is only possible when tere is ample buildable land and ample resources available to service thiose locations.
complete-streets Our transportation ways are not just for the automobile. People must walk, bike, and use other modes of transport on tose public rights of way.
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label age. Show all posts
Saturday, July 9, 2011
Monday, July 4, 2011
A Reason to Exist
Human settlements need a reason to exist. Unlike businesses and industry, people need both a functional reason and aesthetics to make a location worthy. Maybe it was a river landing or a placid flow area to run a ferry. Maybe it was the "head of navigation" where overland freight could then be floated down stream. A crossroads. A pass through the mountains. A gold mine or where there was energy to run the mill and transportation to move the goods. First was the energy and the transportation then the people came to fulfill the needs of the industry.
Every industry and every mode of transportation has its natural aging process that makes it more or less sustainable. Regions built canals to float freight across long and short distances. Most of those canals succumbed to the railroads as soon as the rails became operational. Each new system renders the last one obsolete.
Highways and trucks rendered the shortline railroad obsolete. When timber was plentiful and the coal mines flourished, a railroad ran a spur out to their location. But as the logging and mining operations became smaller in size at the outset of a new section, laying a new track was not a viable option. Rubber tires on dirt and gravel roads made more sense.
Industries moved leaving the human settlements behind. With a decimated income from labor, the towns dried up leaving only the most vulnerable people behind. Children left their families to follow work wherever it could be found.
Today some American towns rely heavily on the Social Security checks, public assistance, and the pensions of aging residents. There is no industry there to create local wealth from commerce. All the money that does come into the town is spent externally in distant places. The grocery store is located 20 miles or more away and is operated by a national chain that sells items processed far away. All the money spent there leaves the community not to return. Gasoline and heating fuel is the same. A foreign supplier, international price speculators, regional distributors take away all the money spent on energy. Telecomm companies suck away another share. Doctors and pharmacies take more away from the community. While all these enterprises are essential to the people who live in the community, they do nothing for the sustainability of the community. As far as each of these enterprises is concerned, a person equals one person, no matter where he lives. He will eat as much, drink as much, heat his home as much and need the same pharmaceuticals. The place that the people consider home is not important to the businesses.
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Without a natural means of producing local wealth by Mining, Manufacturing, Farming and Fishing the net worth of the community cannot increase and decreases a little more each day.
Human settlements must possess a reason to exist. Old reason may disappear and not have a replacement. Those settlements will eventually disappear. If a new reason to exist is found and cultivated then survival of the settlement may be maintained.
With all due respect to the hopes and desires of the people who remain, the mere desire to remain in their accustomed homes is not a reason to exist. If they have the capital to sustain their place, they can fund the continuation of that place. No one else will care nor be willing to pay for it.
Braddock, Pennsylvania is a town that is being allowed to die. It once was a vibrant steel mill town where the historic Edgar Thompson Steel Works is located. The steel operation was once the site of a bloody labor strike put down by Pinkerton Guards and is now a shell of industrial decay. There was a hospital there until 2010 when it too closed down. People still live there and a few low-end businesses like pawn shops and a bar or two remain. Entire buildings disappear on a regular basis as they become unsafe and are demolished. This is a town that has no reason to exist. And soon it won't. Its location has potential, but no one who is a part of the community will ever benefit from the massive influx of capital it will take to completely raze and replace everything that is not historic. The old community will cease to exist and a new one will be constructed when the price is right.
In 1989, Actress Kim Basinger put up $20 Million to buy the town of Braselton, GA. Her own financial status went sour and she sold her interest in the town to a developer in 1993. See Wikipedia: Braselton, GA, for details. The idea was to make a tourist destination and the town should flourish. It didn't. The developer still has not made a viable destination 20 years later.
There were the Main Streets grants in the 1990s that were supposed to revitalize small towns and economically depressed areas. The money was given to repave main street business strips, do sidewalk and streetscape improvements. The thought was that a capital investment in the infrastructure would make the place attractive again. They were wrong. If the main street had no reason to exist, the money failed to create one. Decay once again consumed the business district. Some towns did prosper as the result of the grant capital, but the landscape is littered with its failures.
Other blog posts that are related in a Series
Community, Reasons to Exist, The Making of Place This is the introductory section
reason-to-exist Every town, village city and region originally had a reason to exist.
todays-reasons-to-exist Every community needs a a reason today for its continued existance. Otherwise it will wither and die.
factors-that-are-missingThe economic system we use today removes critical factors tat allow a community to stay vital.
a-shared-historyThe people of a community need a sared history to stay cohesive as a community.
sustainable-community all of the essential factors must remain present for a community to continue its existance.
sustainable-unemployment As manufacturing and the services industries ccontinue to evolve, human labor and attentjon is diminised. We need to devise a society where most people do not labor for their living.
sustainable-consumerism A balance between product durability and its replacement neds to be reached in order for an equilibrium to be reached.
sustainable-populations The human population cannot continue on its present trajectory without a terrible price to pay in the coming decades and century.
suburban-sprawl Sprawl is only possible when tere is ample buildable land and ample resources available to service thiose locations.
complete-streets Our transportation ways are not just for the automobile. People must walk, bike, and use other modes of transport on tose public rights of way.
Highways and trucks rendered the shortline railroad obsolete. When timber was plentiful and the coal mines flourished, a railroad ran a spur out to their location. But as the logging and mining operations became smaller in size at the outset of a new section, laying a new track was not a viable option. Rubber tires on dirt and gravel roads made more sense.
Industries moved leaving the human settlements behind. With a decimated income from labor, the towns dried up leaving only the most vulnerable people behind. Children left their families to follow work wherever it could be found.
"My own children will go, as soon as they grow, for there is nothing here now to hold them." North county Blues. Bob Dylan.
Today some American towns rely heavily on the Social Security checks, public assistance, and the pensions of aging residents. There is no industry there to create local wealth from commerce. All the money that does come into the town is spent externally in distant places. The grocery store is located 20 miles or more away and is operated by a national chain that sells items processed far away. All the money spent there leaves the community not to return. Gasoline and heating fuel is the same. A foreign supplier, international price speculators, regional distributors take away all the money spent on energy. Telecomm companies suck away another share. Doctors and pharmacies take more away from the community. While all these enterprises are essential to the people who live in the community, they do nothing for the sustainability of the community. As far as each of these enterprises is concerned, a person equals one person, no matter where he lives. He will eat as much, drink as much, heat his home as much and need the same pharmaceuticals. The place that the people consider home is not important to the businesses.
.png)
Human settlements must possess a reason to exist. Old reason may disappear and not have a replacement. Those settlements will eventually disappear. If a new reason to exist is found and cultivated then survival of the settlement may be maintained.
With all due respect to the hopes and desires of the people who remain, the mere desire to remain in their accustomed homes is not a reason to exist. If they have the capital to sustain their place, they can fund the continuation of that place. No one else will care nor be willing to pay for it.
In 1989, Actress Kim Basinger put up $20 Million to buy the town of Braselton, GA. Her own financial status went sour and she sold her interest in the town to a developer in 1993. See Wikipedia: Braselton, GA, for details. The idea was to make a tourist destination and the town should flourish. It didn't. The developer still has not made a viable destination 20 years later.
There were the Main Streets grants in the 1990s that were supposed to revitalize small towns and economically depressed areas. The money was given to repave main street business strips, do sidewalk and streetscape improvements. The thought was that a capital investment in the infrastructure would make the place attractive again. They were wrong. If the main street had no reason to exist, the money failed to create one. Decay once again consumed the business district. Some towns did prosper as the result of the grant capital, but the landscape is littered with its failures.
Other blog posts that are related in a Series
Community, Reasons to Exist, The Making of Place This is the introductory section
reason-to-exist Every town, village city and region originally had a reason to exist.
todays-reasons-to-exist Every community needs a a reason today for its continued existance. Otherwise it will wither and die.
factors-that-are-missingThe economic system we use today removes critical factors tat allow a community to stay vital.
a-shared-historyThe people of a community need a sared history to stay cohesive as a community.
sustainable-community all of the essential factors must remain present for a community to continue its existance.
sustainable-unemployment As manufacturing and the services industries ccontinue to evolve, human labor and attentjon is diminised. We need to devise a society where most people do not labor for their living.
sustainable-consumerism A balance between product durability and its replacement neds to be reached in order for an equilibrium to be reached.
sustainable-populations The human population cannot continue on its present trajectory without a terrible price to pay in the coming decades and century.
suburban-sprawl Sprawl is only possible when tere is ample buildable land and ample resources available to service thiose locations.
complete-streets Our transportation ways are not just for the automobile. People must walk, bike, and use other modes of transport on tose public rights of way.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
A Sustainable Community
The work that I do to earn the money to pay my bills and fund my retirement has taken a left turn into a different province. The work that I have been doing is so tightly related to the whole picture of American life that this new direction will circle back on all that has been accomplished by the company and people who work there. The new word is Sustainable.
Individual people have a sense of what sustainability is while businesses and power brokers do not. Built into the human psyche is that biological imperative to procreate. Each person feels a need to pass on his or her genes, ideals, morals and wealth to a next generation. Fathers want sons to carry forth the surname. Fathers start businesses with their name and add "Son" or "Sons" to it in the hopes of sustaining the hard won successes of the father. Boards of Directors will adopt and abandon any name which suits its goals to sell goods and services to make the profit it needs to satisfy the investors. Corporate businesses will hire and dispose any employee who they feel benefits the bottom line. For businesses the world is composed of lines that have a beginning and an end. They prefer it that way.
Consider the timber logging industry. They get legal access to a stand of trees, cut them all down and move along to a new stand of trees leaving the clear cut slopes to fend for themselves. It's a beginning, a middle and an end. No feeling of responsibility remains after the last tree is cut. After all there are more acres of trees to conquer.
Coal mining operations are the same. Dig coal, pile the tailings and move on. They sell the coal, bury the dead and discharge the injured. Coal matters. People don't. Coal is wealth. People are liabilities and expense. As long as there is a vein of coal to dig the mining companies can proceed in straight line along the seam. As long as there is another miner, old miners are put aside like a rusty drag line bucket.
We allowed industries to turn greenfields into brownfields and pull up stakes leaving the land to sit vacant and poisoned. Beverage containers typically track a linear path from manufacture to a landfill serving one portion to a customer.
These paradigms of consumption work only as long as there is an ample supply of materials and energy to make things and ample space to dump the trash afterward. This model of sustainability is depends on the idea of infinite supply and cheap processing. It depends on a society willing to allow a business to ignore the negative side of production – the waste products.
Through a much maligned Federal oversight and regulation, many industries have been required to restore their wastelands to pre-operations conditions. They have been required to do a better job of not mucking up the environment in the first place. Businesses respond reluctantly when they respond at all. They cite the increased cost of their goods and services to the consuming public as the reason to be allowed to pollute the air, water and land. Businesses are willing to pick up and move when they have fouled their sites. Settlements of people are not so inclined or mobile. They end up tolerating the non-sustainable practices of businesses.
Other blog posts that are related in a Series
todays-reasons-to-exist
shared-history
reason-to-exist
factors-that-are-missing
sustainable-community
Individual people have a sense of what sustainability is while businesses and power brokers do not. Built into the human psyche is that biological imperative to procreate. Each person feels a need to pass on his or her genes, ideals, morals and wealth to a next generation. Fathers want sons to carry forth the surname. Fathers start businesses with their name and add "Son" or "Sons" to it in the hopes of sustaining the hard won successes of the father. Boards of Directors will adopt and abandon any name which suits its goals to sell goods and services to make the profit it needs to satisfy the investors. Corporate businesses will hire and dispose any employee who they feel benefits the bottom line. For businesses the world is composed of lines that have a beginning and an end. They prefer it that way.
Consider the timber logging industry. They get legal access to a stand of trees, cut them all down and move along to a new stand of trees leaving the clear cut slopes to fend for themselves. It's a beginning, a middle and an end. No feeling of responsibility remains after the last tree is cut. After all there are more acres of trees to conquer.
Coal mining operations are the same. Dig coal, pile the tailings and move on. They sell the coal, bury the dead and discharge the injured. Coal matters. People don't. Coal is wealth. People are liabilities and expense. As long as there is a vein of coal to dig the mining companies can proceed in straight line along the seam. As long as there is another miner, old miners are put aside like a rusty drag line bucket.
We allowed industries to turn greenfields into brownfields and pull up stakes leaving the land to sit vacant and poisoned. Beverage containers typically track a linear path from manufacture to a landfill serving one portion to a customer.
These paradigms of consumption work only as long as there is an ample supply of materials and energy to make things and ample space to dump the trash afterward. This model of sustainability is depends on the idea of infinite supply and cheap processing. It depends on a society willing to allow a business to ignore the negative side of production – the waste products.
Through a much maligned Federal oversight and regulation, many industries have been required to restore their wastelands to pre-operations conditions. They have been required to do a better job of not mucking up the environment in the first place. Businesses respond reluctantly when they respond at all. They cite the increased cost of their goods and services to the consuming public as the reason to be allowed to pollute the air, water and land. Businesses are willing to pick up and move when they have fouled their sites. Settlements of people are not so inclined or mobile. They end up tolerating the non-sustainable practices of businesses.
Other blog posts that are related in a Series
todays-reasons-to-exist
shared-history
reason-to-exist
factors-that-are-missing
sustainable-community
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Sustainable Populations
Like many students in the 1960's, my perspectives of the global picture was shaped in part by Paul Ehrlich's book, The Population Bomb, and its dire predictions of the near term consequences of not forcibly constraining world populations. While the premises and conclusions of his work were overly "enthusiastic" and did not bring about the demise of any civilization anywhere in the world in the 40 years since their publication, the conditions that he wrote about have been notched up to a higher level of potential failure.
Ehrlich's error was in not being able to predict technological advances which would make it possible for food production to increase at a rate greater than the rate of population growth. On the other hand, he also did not account for the aging of the populations that [then] currently produced all of the Manufactured, Mined and Farmed production of the world. Population economists have not been able to devise a projection method that accurately predicts population sizes over any long period of time. One can use simple curve-fitting to show what will probably happen over a few years, but economic, environmental, and political factors act to influence the actual growth rates in was that cannot, as yet, be modeled. Cohort-component methods look at the age and gender composition of the population in sub-areas to "better" predict the population growth, with only marginal improvements in the accuracy of the predictions.
Whether or not we can make long-term projections of population size with a high degree of confidence, we can look into the near future and see what is going to happen to the composition of our population barring any massive events or social and cultural changes that might occur.
While this planet may be able to sustain a population of 8 to 10 billion of us, the question is should it be burdened with such a load. Although the damage we inflict on this planet may not look pretty, the earth has no eyes to see it. We are the ones with eyes and a consciousness to appreciate beauty and offer scorn at the damage we are doing. Our survivability is not predicated on a beautiful landscape, but it does depend on us not creating collateral toxicity that will lead to our demise. Surely, whatever we do in the next few decades there will be humans inhabiting this planet in some level of what we loosely refer to as civilization. There may be 7 or 8 billion of us or maybe only 3 or 4. It is up to us. It is our decision to make whether we exist in a comfortable world or the one Paul Ehrlich refers to as the battery-chicken world.
There is a finite quantity of fuel in the ground for us to exploit. Burning as much of it as we have to date has resulted in the environmental damage we have already seen. That damage was not just an event-based occurrence, it is a process that continues to react and continued to produce the damage. Even if we all stopped putting any carbon into the atmosphere, the degradation may not stop, because there is a multitude of natural sources of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that result in climate alterations. Lake Lyos in Cameroon spews CO2 into the atmosphere via a man-made effervescent vent for the built-up CO2 gases in the lake water. We are not adding any CO2 to the air there that wouldn’t end up there due to periodic gas eruptions. Anhydrite deposits along the continental shelves all around the planet erratically and intermittently erupt massive quantities of methane. Other volcanoes erupt CO2 and other noxious gases. Forest fires and the clearing of rainforest plots of land all add to the greenhouse gas load of the atmosphere. Even though humans are not the sole perpetrators of carbon loading of the air, we are the only ones who can do anything about it.
It is up to us to first decide what we want the future to be, then we have to develop strategies that will move us in that direction. It is up to us to develop a Sustainable Geometry that includes all the equations and all the variables. We may only be able to address a few of them at a time, but we can use what we already know to begin the plan and start moving toward the solution.
Solar and wind power will not be a dominant source of energy in the next ten years, or even 20. But we can start now to get a few percentages on the total and by the time a new technology surfaces to take it place, we will have accomplished something.
Curitiba, Brazil made a commitment to public transportation as the dominant mode for trips to work. They started in the late 1960s and build up their systems with then existing vehicles and new ideas of how to deploy transportation. As new vehicle types and urban landscapes were built, they included the mass transportation modes as the primary one. Today, they have a 60% share of trip to work on their bus and rail systems.
In the US, we do not need to invent the most efficient wind turbine or the most efficient photo-voltaic solar panels before putting one in on the grid. We can use what we have until someone invents a better one.
The future has an annoying habit of arriving too early. We are far from being ready to embrace the new geometry that will force us to comply. Either we shape a more sustainable future or nature will shape a more sustainable population of man. Again from the mind of Paul Ehrlich, the stabilization of population size will come from either a controlled birth rate or a higher death rate. More than likely it will be a combination of the two. Since I am moving along the age-cohort chart along with the rest of us, I would rather see a reductions in births rather than an increase in deaths.
Ehrlich's error was in not being able to predict technological advances which would make it possible for food production to increase at a rate greater than the rate of population growth. On the other hand, he also did not account for the aging of the populations that [then] currently produced all of the Manufactured, Mined and Farmed production of the world. Population economists have not been able to devise a projection method that accurately predicts population sizes over any long period of time. One can use simple curve-fitting to show what will probably happen over a few years, but economic, environmental, and political factors act to influence the actual growth rates in was that cannot, as yet, be modeled. Cohort-component methods look at the age and gender composition of the population in sub-areas to "better" predict the population growth, with only marginal improvements in the accuracy of the predictions.
Whether or not we can make long-term projections of population size with a high degree of confidence, we can look into the near future and see what is going to happen to the composition of our population barring any massive events or social and cultural changes that might occur.
While this planet may be able to sustain a population of 8 to 10 billion of us, the question is should it be burdened with such a load. Although the damage we inflict on this planet may not look pretty, the earth has no eyes to see it. We are the ones with eyes and a consciousness to appreciate beauty and offer scorn at the damage we are doing. Our survivability is not predicated on a beautiful landscape, but it does depend on us not creating collateral toxicity that will lead to our demise. Surely, whatever we do in the next few decades there will be humans inhabiting this planet in some level of what we loosely refer to as civilization. There may be 7 or 8 billion of us or maybe only 3 or 4. It is up to us. It is our decision to make whether we exist in a comfortable world or the one Paul Ehrlich refers to as the battery-chicken world.
There is a finite quantity of fuel in the ground for us to exploit. Burning as much of it as we have to date has resulted in the environmental damage we have already seen. That damage was not just an event-based occurrence, it is a process that continues to react and continued to produce the damage. Even if we all stopped putting any carbon into the atmosphere, the degradation may not stop, because there is a multitude of natural sources of carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that result in climate alterations. Lake Lyos in Cameroon spews CO2 into the atmosphere via a man-made effervescent vent for the built-up CO2 gases in the lake water. We are not adding any CO2 to the air there that wouldn’t end up there due to periodic gas eruptions. Anhydrite deposits along the continental shelves all around the planet erratically and intermittently erupt massive quantities of methane. Other volcanoes erupt CO2 and other noxious gases. Forest fires and the clearing of rainforest plots of land all add to the greenhouse gas load of the atmosphere. Even though humans are not the sole perpetrators of carbon loading of the air, we are the only ones who can do anything about it.
It is up to us to first decide what we want the future to be, then we have to develop strategies that will move us in that direction. It is up to us to develop a Sustainable Geometry that includes all the equations and all the variables. We may only be able to address a few of them at a time, but we can use what we already know to begin the plan and start moving toward the solution.
Solar and wind power will not be a dominant source of energy in the next ten years, or even 20. But we can start now to get a few percentages on the total and by the time a new technology surfaces to take it place, we will have accomplished something.
Curitiba, Brazil made a commitment to public transportation as the dominant mode for trips to work. They started in the late 1960s and build up their systems with then existing vehicles and new ideas of how to deploy transportation. As new vehicle types and urban landscapes were built, they included the mass transportation modes as the primary one. Today, they have a 60% share of trip to work on their bus and rail systems.
In the US, we do not need to invent the most efficient wind turbine or the most efficient photo-voltaic solar panels before putting one in on the grid. We can use what we have until someone invents a better one.
The future has an annoying habit of arriving too early. We are far from being ready to embrace the new geometry that will force us to comply. Either we shape a more sustainable future or nature will shape a more sustainable population of man. Again from the mind of Paul Ehrlich, the stabilization of population size will come from either a controlled birth rate or a higher death rate. More than likely it will be a combination of the two. Since I am moving along the age-cohort chart along with the rest of us, I would rather see a reductions in births rather than an increase in deaths.
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