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Re-localize If you want a master catch-phrase to sum up the principles for all post-oil solutions, the answer is "Beyond Oil: live light and local".
On this page 3. Rural townships Mix and match: All 3 plans in action New Urbanism references New Urbanism building materials Hemp Why we should do it anyway Lifeboats or eco-villages How to sell Lifeboats General principles We must rebuild our suburban energy sinks into energy efficient habitations. Massive strides are being made in city plans based on moving people, not moving cars. Walking distance principles refer to much more than energy efficient homes built from renewable materials — they incorporate a whole viable post-oil city lifestyle that is both energy efficient and attractive.
This is the way we have lived for 10 thousand years and it is the way we will go back to living at the end of this failed suburban experiment. We have forgotten how vital and rewarding these local communities used to be. Globalisation and the automobile have destroyed city designs based on our human needs. We now serve a corporate industrial system designed on the car. But it goes further than that. Globalisation has changed our behaviour. We have become less accountable and less caring. We have lost our sense of place, our sense of relationship to the people we serve as we do our work. If everything we did was local and you did a job for your neighbour, would you rip him off? As our economies contract and become more local, there will also be a greater pride in our work and necessity to fulfil our contracts to the highest possible standard for one reason: accountability. We will work, play, shop, and go to school in local economic neighbourhoods. There will be no escaping a bad reputation if you are slack at your work. This is just one of many psychosocial advantages we wil enjoy in the post oil world. These changes are to be embraced, not feared! Imagine not having to worry about servicing your car ever again... and not needing one ever again.
This can all change. Meet the first candidate for transforming our current civilization — the Ecocity! Ecocities Buildings Biodiversity Transport The majority of its residents live within walking or cycling distance of their workplace, to minimise the need for motorised transport. Frequent public transport connects local centres for people who need to travel further. Local car sharing allows people to use a car only when needed. Industry The industrial processes its uses involve reuse of by-products, and minimise the movement of goods. Economy See also Wikipedia and Ecocity-Builders Dave's comment: If you watch one online movie on eco-city design, please watch this interview with Richard Register. He explains how our whole civilization can be rebuilt to run on one tenth of the energy we consume now in a more aesthetically pleasing and satisfying lifestyle. It's a Realplayer movie, about 50 minutes. It's just Richard as a talking head, but well worth hearing. One of the most thorough and definitive sites for new Urbanism that I have seen in 2 years of intense net searching has to be NewUrbanism.org — so in the interests of promoting their site, I will let you read their fantastic 10 point introduction to the many benefits of New Urbanism! Their summary introduction is below.
From their website:- NEW URBANISM promotes the creation and restoration of diverse, walkable, compact, vibrant, mixed-use communities composed of the same components as conventional development, but assembled in a more integrated fashion, in the form of complete communities. These contain housing, work places, shops, entertainment, schools, parks, and civic facilities essential to the daily lives of the residents, all within easy walking distance of each other. New Urbanism promotes the increased use of trains and light rail, instead of more highways and roads. Urban living is rapidly becoming the new hip and modern way to live for people of all ages. Currently, there are over 500 New Urbanist projects planned or under construction in the United States alone, half of which are in historic urban centers.
Energy efficient design stays cool in summer and warm in winter.
The next model seems to be about drastically reducing city sizes and setting up smaller township communities based on oil and phosphorus depletion! It is concerned wiht maintaining soil biodiversity, and designing a human ecological system around it.
It has been called "re-ruralisation" by my Swedish poster contact, Folke Gunther. This model also sounds attractive. This is just another model of town plan creating a more humane and balanced lifestyle with strong community bonds. And it could be achieved in just about 50 years! "If the average building life is 60 years, then the city changes at the rate of 1.6% per year....I assumed that instead of building the houses on that same plot as the one demolished you build eco units on the periphery of the city, along the roads preferably. Then you start to ruralise at the same pace as the normal replacement rate. After 50 years, only ten percent of the city is left. Instead of taking one eco unit I put four together. That gives 800 persons, and is enough for shared services like schools, etc. I suggest you start right outside the city. So the city grows into the agricultural land. People started criticizing the scenario, saying it was a waste of agricultural land. But it is not. First, from an economical point of view, farmers are better off in a ruralised area because they are just raw material produces in an urbanized system. In the ruralised system they are full service providers providing a value added service needing no middle man. The re-ruralised areas have much better biodiversity and nutrient retention capacity than the urbanized areas. Another criticism is that people say they do not want to live in such a lonely area. It is not. You can put four eco-units together, which means you have 800 close neighbors around you. You have 5,000 in walking distance. In cycling distance of 3km you have 17,000 people. There are enough people around you to support a football team or a choir in walking distance." This could be achieved by changes in zoning laws. The project of moving people out of the suburbs and into viable Ecocities, New Urbanism, or even rural townships need not happen in one leap. The natural processes of aging homes and their eventual demolition could be used to shift the population out gradually. Economic incentives could encourage the move to a viable post oil world. A 1.6% drift in population towards sustainable living would also offset a little of the oil depletion crunch affecting the city: everybody wins. The city would still have to drastically increase public transport during this 50 year program. Bus services and other public transport would have to be upgraded as quickly as possible, as oil decline could be anywhere from 3% to 15% per annum, depending on the condition of our oil fields. If we give our politicians the political power to enact the right zoning laws we could start to enjoy an attractive and mostly self-sufficient rural country life.Instead of having less friends, you will have more. This kind of community creates a vibrant social culture that banishes alienation and increases overall wellbeing. Instead of being poorer, you might be richer in the things that matter — health and exercise, personal and family time, and overall stability of life. Let us embrace and encourage these changes, and demand that our home be demolished at the end of it’s useful lifespan to make way for a gradual ruralisation of our bit of suburbia! If our governments get this right, you will be duly compensated with an affordable eco-apartment in an attractive, inspiring, quiet eco-city or New Urbanist town, or even a rural township if you like farming!? Mix and Match — all 3 plans in action "our cities need to become more urban, and our countryside more rural – not vice versa. " Download his Australian Federal oil inquiry submission paper (in Word). With a city like Sydney NSW with a tight CBD surrounded by Urban districts that gradually turn into vast areas of suburban sprawl out west, it is easy to imagine a mix of solutions. The CBD would be retrofitted along Eco-city principles, the urban areas could be transformed into New Urbanism regions (with massive upgrades to light rail or have a Skytran installed) and the suburbs could gradually be collapsed back into smaller townships using Gunther's natural attrition model above. All of this would have accumulating fuel savings. However it is done, the suburbs must recede into defined areas of population density with functional diversity. This map from Eco-city builders demonstrates the careful selection of areas to upgrade in purple, and other areas to convert to local parks and agriculture.
www.oaec.org/ They run live-in courses on all sorts of sustainable projects. Get a taste of the sustainable life and study the future!
Minnesotans For Sustainability — don't be put off by the title, this website is worldwide in it's focus and has lots of information pertinent to an international audience. Australia The Simpler Way — Working for transition from consumer society to a simpler, more cooperative, just and ecologically sustainable society.
Interesting ABC radio that admits peak oil, and interviews Sally Campbell from the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney regarding the directions for future cities. http://www.green-innovations.asn.au/ http://www.urbanecology.org.au/ They have some useful ideas on energy efficient living, but I'm not sure they are aware of Peak Oil. UK "If everyone on the planet were to consume natural resources and generate carbon dioxide at the rate we do in the UK we'd need three planets to support us!" www.powerswitch.org.uk to discuss New Urbanism in Peak Oil forums Following sites may not be Peak Oil aware, but nevertheless are moving in interesting directions. http://www.wwf.org.uk/sustainablehomes/index.asp http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/policy/sustainability/index.cfm http://www.sustainable-society.co.uk/ Other Links (Note: many of the paragraphs below come straight from the excellent Energy Bulletin Primer on Peak oil.) The Community Solution to Peak Oil. "The Community Solution is a program of Community Service, Inc. Community Service is dedicated to the development, growth and enhancement of small local communities. We envision a country where the population is distributed in small communities that are sustainable, diverse and culturally sophisticated." Intentional Communities: Intentional Community (IC) is an inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives and other related projects and dreams... ICs represent one of the sanest ways of dealing with energy peak. Other general information about sustainability:- http://www.apolloalliance.org/ http://www.planetdrum.org/
A few sites to read regarding post oil industry and construction:-
http://www.globalreporting.org/ http://www.earth-assets.com/aboutEA.htm What are your ideas on manufacturing products with a drastically reduced petro-chemical and plastics industry? Please email me.
Hemp has many advocates because it is such a versatile plant. In view here is the fact that hemp seeds can be used to make plastics, lubricating oils, varnishes, glues, paints, and the hemp plant biomass can be turned into MDF wood panelling for furniture. It can also make hemp blocks! Hemp can also grow almost anywhere, it can remediate soil, and its fast root growth can prevent soil erosion. It is an ideal plant for urban environments where soils have been neglected. It is also high in omega 3 fatty acids and makes fantastic food. France has been building hundreds of hemp-crete homes and Australia has just caught on with some "top secret" crops being grown for this purpose. See... Petro-chemical industry and plastics industry both shrink Like so many things over the next century, the petro-chemical industry will have to shrink down to a fraction of what it is today simply because we cannot grow millions of barrels of hemp seed each day. I acknowledge that there are renewable methods for generating "plastics from the air" through CO2 recapturing and chemical processes, (see Solar Methane article) but even this will be much more expensive than oil gushing up a well! We will not have as many plastics as we did in the Oil Age, but we will still have plastics for essentials. Like everything, our consumption will scale back. We will have less clutter and rubbish in our lives. We must all consume less, and there will be less of us consuming. Here are just a few suggestions for reducing plastics in our economy:- 1/ Plastic food containers go back to being glass bottles. Bottling of food from local producers to shelve for winter will again become a post-harvest tradition, rather than just packaging all our food into plastic bags that go in the freezer. We will need to save energy everywhere we can. Food storage is one area where less plastic can be used. 2/ Toys will be crafted from wood, and cherished for years rather than broken in a day. 3/ Ceramics can play a larger role in manufacturing and components. 4/ Carbon nano-strings can start to replace many items that we use today, including some metals. Read Space Daily for more information. Peak Oil 'To Do' List: Why We Should Do These Things Anyway Many people think that the Greater Depression will spin out of control into an anarchic collapse. So rather than wait for the government to start reforming our cities, they set up independent eco-villages right away. They quietly go about preparing for the inevitable post oil world. They do it now, so that they are ready for the oil-crash. This is a valid choice. Many Peak Oil campaigners try to ensure the survival of their own families by:- a/ Establishing an eco-village in case civilization collapses b/ Campaigning as best they can for a Powerdown society, while learning the eco-village lifestyle when they have the luxury of making a few mistakes. In other words, they escape our civilization into the future one, while also trying to preserve law and order and prevent chaos. Both tactics help ensure a managed transition into the post oil world. From Running on Empty, Australia. "The place and time I will lobby politicians is to try and gain access or
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