[extropy-chat] urban sprawl as defense, and rural revitalization concept

[Extropian Agroforestry Ventures Inc.]

Actually from those of us in the Rural areas, that sounds wonderful.
The sewer/water/hydro/gas  infrastructure would be decentralized and that
has
some benefits.  It boggles the mind how large metropolis's  can avoid major

catastrophe's with such massive infrastructure support systems to maintain.

The only down side is physical transportation.
Speaking from experience, we in Saskatchewan have about a million people
scattered between 2 larger cities (200,000 each) , 10 smaller centers
(10,000 each)
and a mutitude of small halets scattered over a civilized space of 440 X
440 miles.

We have a "Grid Road System" which has more miles of highway (rural average
is a grid of roads spaced at 2 mile intervals) than any other canadian
jurasdiction.

In the booming 70's the roads were built and many covered with asphalt.
Heavier traffic in the 80's and 90's have kept the paved ones  in a
permanent state of disrepair.. as they were never built to sustain the
weight and speed of modern
semi's , B-trains and such.

Much of the rural rail system has been dismantled over the last 20 years as
well.

More people in each rual center might increase population from 1 to perhaps
10 million ideally, but the connecting road infrastructure would then have
to be
maintained to city rather than rural standards.

I for one would see this population transferance as  a wonderful thing.

On the terrrism side it would make mass extinction next to impossible as it
undoes
100 years of steady rural depopulation.

Rural decentalized power generation from wind similar to the 4 Billion USD
project Enron had planned for North Dakota our neighbouring USA state would
then certainly come to pass.
Distribution of liquid fuels to a decentalized network of hydrogen
catalytic conversion stations would then be economically viable.

The move from a centralized export based commodity economy to a
"decentalized network of clusters" finished product manufacturing economy
base for a centralized finished product export economy would be wonderful
goal for the next 30 years out here.

What has been severly lacking is the integration of , human willpower,
economic drive and
psychological positivity of attitude.

We here in Saskatchewan are called by our neighbour provinces  "The Gap".
The saying goes , " Manitoba sucks and Alberta blows".

So lets hope those terrorists keep scaring the bejeegers out of everybody.
As the "motel 6" commercial goes "we'll keep the lights on".

Pharmer Mo from LA North, Eh, ......AKA ...... Morris Johnson



"J. Andrew Rogers" wrote:

> On Aug 18, 2004, at 10:07 PM, Spike wrote:
> > Most would agree that there is a growing threat to
> > western civilization of an attack by some sort of
> > weapons of mass destruction: bio, gas or nuke.  We
> > are developing antimissile tech, but seems to me
> > another parallel defense would be to encourage
> > urban sprawl.  An enormous smeared out suburbs
> > would be far less vulnerable to attack than an
> > enormous highly concentrated city, would it not?
> > The argument is made that urban sprawl is bad for
> > wildlife, but the alternative may encourage an
> > attack which would be bad for both humans and
> > wildlife.  Perhaps cities have outlived their
> > usefulness.
>
> The economic optimum would probably be something closer to clusters of
> dense "micro-cities" connected by very efficient transport networks.
>
> You could sweep huge amounts of suburbia into a very small footprint if
> you built vertically such that the density was more like Chicago.
> Separate each of these so that there is 3-5 miles between any two
> micro-cities, with farms, open space, and whatever else is needed in
> between.  My back-of-the-envelope seems to indicate that this would
> work pretty well, at least in theory.  I don't know that people would
> like living in high-rises though, and it would require some adjustment
> of economic assumptions.  Much more environmentally friendly though.
>
> j. andrew rogers
>
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