Is Your Community Sustainable?

[DetroitDad]

A few months ago we had a comical debate about why suburbia is unsustainable, and some veteran posters insisted that their communities were the tops because they could walk to an Aco, Meijer, or Dairy Queen.

I thought I'd have some fun with that whole idea, considering the very real possibility of $10+ a gallon for gasoline in the foreseeable future. If you find this scenario fictitious, then you can just laugh and maybe bring yourself to having a little fun and playing along.

So, in a world with $10+ for a gallon of gas, how would your community fair? Would it still make sense to live there? Would you enjoy living there? How easy would it be to adapt? Would much adaptation be needed?

[ghettopalmetto]

The idea of "sustainability" has a lot more involved than just the price of a gallon of gasoline. In essence, the term refers to the ability of development to pay for itself. For a metropolitan area that has more than doubled in size over 40 years with virtually zero population growth, I'd say the whole of Southeastern Michigan faces some serious challenges in this regard.

[Stosh]

A few months ago we had a comical debate about why suburbia is unsustainable, and some veteran posters insisted that their communities were the tops because they could walk to an Aco, Meijer, or Dairy Queen.

I thought I'd have some fun with that whole idea, considering the very real possibility of $10+ a gallon for gasoline in the foreseeable future. If you find this scenario fictitious, then you can just laugh and maybe bring yourself to having a little fun and playing along.

So, in a world with $10+ for a gallon of gas, how would your community fair? Would it still make sense to live there? Would you enjoy living there? How easy would it be to adapt? Would much adaptation be needed?

We'd have a nice one. Ferris wheels, merry go rounds, all that.

[Mikeg]

So, in a world with $10+ for a gallon of gas, how would your community fair? Would it still make sense to live there? Would you enjoy living there? How easy would it be to adapt? Would much adaptation be needed?

Be careful what you wish for.

In his small-minded view of the world, DetroitDad apparently thinks that the only effects of $10 per gallon gas would be on the pocketbooks of suburbanites.

$10 per gallon gas means $300 per barrel crude oil [source]. How much will cities have to raise taxes so they can afford to operate their vehicle fleet and still maintain the streets so that police, fire and refuse crews can provide their services and retail deliveries can be made to the local merchants you rely on? What will happen to bus fares? How will city businesses, tax-payers and residents adapt?

Too few people have any clue as to how much petroleum is involved in the raw materials, the manufacture and the delivery of the goods and services they purchase on a regular basis.

Currently, about 2/3rds of total U.S. petroleum consumption is for transportation, and about 2/3rds of that is in the form of gasoline. [source] Put another way, gasoline represents only about 45% of current petroleum consumption. So even if someone choose to not consume gasoline, they are still exposed to a majority of the upward price pressure resulting from $300 per barrel crude. Petroleum accounts for only 37% of the daily energy consumption in the US and if crude rises to $300 per barrel, it will also cause upward pressure on the costs of other energy sources.

At $300 per barrel of crude, everyone's disposable income and daily life will be radically different from what we know today, but that's OK with DetroitDad because all he wants to do is speculate on the future of suburbia.

[Hermod]

This reminds me of an incident back in 1975. I was in R&D for the military and was going from Ft Lee, VA to TACOM in Warren for a meeting My seat mate on the airplane was an employee from the Dept of Transportation in DC. He was going to a conference in Detroit about transit. We were both native Detroiters. We were discussing the recent jump in gas prices from 25 cents to 52 cents per gallon. His prediction was that in five years, everyone would abandon their cars and ride public transit. I told him that folks were too wedded to their station wagons.

[ghettopalmetto]

Currently, about 2/3rds of total U.S. petroleum consumption is for transportation, and about 2/3rds of that is in the form of gasoline. [source] Put another way, gasoline represents only about 45% of current petroleum consumption. So even if someone choose to not consume gasoline, they are still exposed to a majority of the upward price pressure resulting from $300 per barrel crude. Petroleum accounts for only 37% of the daily energy consumption in the US and if crude rises to $300 per barrel, it will also cause upward pressure on the costs of other energy sources.

If local governments didn't encourage construction of new subdivisions on perfectly good farms, then we wouldn't need all that fuel to fly our produce from California.

[johnsmith]

The only true sustainability is if we all were self sufficient and lived on farms and forest area. The rest of your suburb vs. city argument is nothing but a pissing contest.

[Retroit]

How do you live off a farm in the winter-time? People will still want fresh produce from California. Let's get real here, people!

$10+ gasoline is not going to force people to sell their homes in the suburbs and move into run-down apartment buildings in downtown Detroit [[with broken elevators!).

[Hermod]

If local governments didn't encourage construction of new subdivisions on perfectly good farms, then we wouldn't need all that fuel to fly our produce from California.

Back when I was growing up in Detroit, we didn't get produce from CA, FL, or Mexico. Refrigerators had freezer compartments big enough to hold two ice cube trays. You got awful tied of canned fruits and vegetables by February.

To this day, the thought of eating canned peas makes me sick.

[slick]

How do you live off a farm in the winter-time? People will still want fresh produce from California. Let's get real here, people!

$10+ gasoline is not going to force people to sell their homes in the suburbs and move into run-down apartment buildings in downtown Detroit [[with broken elevators!).

Retroit,

Yes lets get real. If people moved from the burbs to downtown, that would force the owners to fix the elevators and they would probably have the cash flow to handle that expense.

People have been living off the farms, winter and summer for hundreds of years.
We were a lot more independent and sustainable. No big box stores, went to town a few times a year for necessary supplies. Flour, salt, sugar, everythings else you grew and put up for the winter.

Think nucelar holocause and mad max somehow humans survive.

[DetroitDad]

Interesting responses about farming and the like.

Assuming cities are possible thanks to agriculture, you have to wonder if crops could be grown as productive and cheaply as they are today, without the help of oil based fertilizers, and if importing cheap food would be possible. In megalopolis type areas [[where cities have grown so big that they basically merged with other cities) you really couldn't grow many crops in the former farm and hinter lands, since those areas have all been built on.

I guess it is arguable why cities exist in the first place. As a place of trade, many of our large cities would be functionally dead. New York and Chicago, for example, are considered "world class cities". I always took "world class" in economics, to mean that the city was prime for world trade in a optimal global economy. In a $10+ scenario, you have to wonder if global trade would be dead in the scale these places require.

[Stosh]

Interesting responses about farming and the like.

Assuming cities are possible thanks to agriculture, you have to wonder if crops could be grown as productive and cheaply as they are today, without the help of oil based fertilizers, and if importing cheap food would be possible. In megalopolis type areas [[where cities have grown so big that they basically merged with other cities) you really couldn't grow many crops in the former farm and hinter lands, since those areas have all been built on.

I guess it is arguable why cities exist in the first place. As a place of trade, many of our large cities would be functionally dead. New York and Chicago, for example, are considered "world class cities". I always took "world class" in economics, to mean that the city was prime for world trade in a optimal global economy. In a $10+ scenario, you have to wonder if global trade would be dead in the scale these places require.

Then you can pretty much bet your bippy that will never happen.
Too much power and influence behind the scenes to ever let that happen.
Wishing won't make it so, daddyo...

[oldredfordette]

We don't need crops the way they've been grown, Detroit Dad. We need a better way.

I think cities are more sustainable than you are thinking, especially Detroit. We have huge swaths of land ready to be cleaned and farmed. The suburbs are all starting neighborhood gardens. People lived in cold climates without food from California for a zillion years.

The large cities of which you speak were all built before oil was in use! New York, Chicago and Detroit were all route cities, port cities. So it would be again.

[oladub]

$10 gas would, all by itself, throw the country into a depression for reasons Mikeg mentioned. We could get to $10 gas by either our supplies getting cut off again or because of a devalued dollar.

My guess is that politicians would feel a need to do something so we would wind up with rationed gas like we had with Carter; gas lines, stations closed on Sunday, purchase limits, with only alternate day purchases allowed.

Suburbs could rapidly transform themselves. Large front and backyards could be turned into huge potato and vegetable patches. They could be leased out to neighborhood truck farmers. Garage space could accomodate chickens. Clotheslines could be erected. Bus and carpooling services would sprout overnight for those who still had jobs. More computer work could be done at home. Fewer days with longer hours would be spent at the office.

All these things could happen but in a diminished economy, but the amount of potatoes families could grow is worth almost nothing compared to monthly mortgage payments. All the sustainablity efforts that might be made would not offset the problems of sustaining families financially in a depression.

[rb336]

My guess is that politicians would feel a need to do something so we would wind up with rationed gas like we had with Carter; gas lines, stations closed on Sunday, purchase limits, with only alternate day purchases allowed.

yet another nice try to defame Carter. We had no national gas rationing under Carter. there were proposals, yes, but there wasn't any. some states did do that odd-even thing, and plans were drawn up for coupons but what went on in 1979-80 was not 1973 pt 2

[oladub]

yet another nice try to defame Carter. We had no national gas rationing under Carter. there were proposals, yes, but there wasn't any. some states did do that odd-even thing, and plans were drawn up for coupons but what went on in 1979-80 was not 1973 pt 2

Depends on one's definition of rationing. There were gas lines, alternate day gas sales, a lot of gas stations closed on Sunday. I don't think I mentioned coupons. That would have been Roosevelt.

There was much I liked about Carter if it makes you feel better. He was intelligent, had a physics degree instead of a law degree, was married to my favorite first lady, managed a peace accord between Israel and Egypt, didn't participate in any Iraq/Afghanistan debacles while in office, and he has done some commendable things as an ex-president. Unfortunately, Ted Kennedy undermined his presidency and inflation got out of control while he was in office.

[Detroitnerd]

The solutions are right in front of us. We just don't want to see them, I guess.

We have plenty of open land and people who need jobs and a sudden interest in locally grown, heirloom, organic food.

We have plenty of obesity, high car insurance rates and crumbling roads, and a sudden interest in walkable communities.

We have lots of regressive taxation, corporate welfare, and rules that make it hard for people to run small businesses, and yet we have lots of good ideas and people who'd like to pursue them.

We have a federal government that wants to run several wars on our dime, yet can't find the savings for modest, European-style social programs that a majority of us want.

We have tens of thousands of vacant homes and tens of thousands of homeless people.

One poster here put it very well a while ago: It's like that family where Mom and Dad can't afford daycare for the kids and can't afford a nursing home for the grandparents. How long before they make the connection and return to the 19th century living arrangement?

[Stosh]

The solutions are right in front of us. We just don't want to see them, I guess.

We have plenty of open land and people who need jobs and a sudden interest in locally grown, heirloom, organic food.

We have plenty of obesity, high car insurance rates and crumbling roads, and a sudden interest in walkable communities.

We have lots of regressive taxation, corporate welfare, and rules that make it hard for people to run small businesses, and yet we have lots of good ideas and people who'd like to pursue them.

We have a federal government that wants to run several wars on our dime, yet can't find the savings for modest, European-style social programs that a majority of us want.

We have tens of thousands of vacant homes and tens of thousands of homeless people.

One poster here put it very well a while ago: It's like that family where Mom and Dad can't afford daycare for the kids and can't afford a nursing home for the grandparents. How long before they make the connection and return to the 19th century living arrangement?

Normally this sort of arrangement would depend on two things:
1) Land ownership or rental from an entity [[probably the city), and
2) whether or not the city waives the taxes [[residential), or deems the land agricultural, with that tax rate.

The arrangement you mention also depends on a few variables...
1) Whether people are willing to get off their lazy butts to actually do something in these fields. Farming is hard work. Tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting. All labor intensive.
2) A return to 19th century ideals depends on the return to 19th century transport. The horse. For plowing and hauling, quite dependable. And growing your own transportation is appealing, but the city won't agree to this...yet.

Of course any return to this arrangement would depend also upon losing a whole lot more people. The land needed to effectively support a family is a whole lot more than what you think.

[Detroitnerd]

Normally this sort of arrangement would depend on two things:
1) Land ownership or rental from an entity [[probably the city), and
2) whether or not the city waives the taxes [[residential), or deems the land agricultural, with that tax rate.

The arrangement you mention also depends on a few variables...
1) Whether people are willing to get off their lazy butts to actually do something in these fields. Farming is hard work. Tilling, planting, weeding, harvesting. All labor intensive.
2) A return to 19th century ideals depends on the return to 19th century transport. The horse. For plowing and hauling, quite dependable. And growing your own transportation is appealing, but the city won't agree to this...yet.

Of course any return to this arrangement would depend also upon losing a whole lot more people. The land needed to effectively support a family is a whole lot more than what you think.

Clarification: I don't mean to say that the answer to everything is to return to the 19th century. That just applies to the family example. In any event, I believe we cannot try to stay in the late 20th century. It's not working.

[ghettopalmetto]

My guess is that politicians would feel a need to do something so we would wind up with rationed gas like we had with Carter; gas lines, stations closed on Sunday, purchase limits, with only alternate day purchases allowed.

I personally saw two of those phenomena last summer [[gas lines and purchase limits), and that was at only $4 a gallon.

The problem with the current conventional wisdom of sustainability thinking is that it presumes we're still going to drive everywhere for everything. Driving everywhere is so 20th Century.

[MikeM]

So, in a world with $10+ for a gallon of gas, how would your community fair? Would it still make sense to live there? Would you enjoy living there? How easy would it be to adapt? Would much adaptation be needed?

When I have the week off, I go for days without driving. Within a half-mile walk of my house are:

my tailor
11 restaurants
my dentist
2 coffee shops
my broker
a health food store
my barber
a cigar store
a fish market
a meat market
a pharmacy
a bakery
a clothing store
an electronics store
a bookstore
a wine shop
a hospital

...but then I live in an unsustainable suburb.

[ghettopalmetto]

...but then I live in an unsustainable suburb.

Is it safe to say you don't live in Novi?

[Detroitnerd]

The land needed to effectively support a family is a whole lot more than what you think.

I'm not sure how you know what I think, or even that I'm proposing families supporting themselves. I do think the growing, processing, transport and cooking of food is going to be one of the biggest parts of our economy in the next 100 years, but I don't think it's necessarily something people will all do for their own families DIY style. And I don't think it will necessarily all take place in the city. I imagine that much of the farming will be done in what is now Oakland and Macomb counties.

[MikeM]

Is it safe to say you don't live in Novi?

It is safe to say, but does it matter? As far as DD is concerned, I'm in a suburb; I'm not in the city, so time is running out for my lifestyle.

I forgot to add: my bank, my wife's bank, her optician, and her hair salon.

[Detroitnerd]

It is safe to say, but does it matter? As far as DD is concerned, I'm in a suburb; I'm not in the city, so time is running out for my lifestyle.

I forgot to add: my bank, my wife's bank, her optician, and her hair salon.

I think maybe some people are painting with a broad brush, but I think it's safe to say that a lot of suburban locations that formed around the old interurban have the density and walkability that new urbanists go gaga for. I'm thinking in particular of places that have "downtowns," such as the Grosse Pointes, Birmingham, Ferndale, Royal Oak. These places are much better positioned for the future than, say, the formless urbanoid environments of parking lots, strip centers and office towers you see in Troy or Southfield.

But when it comes to all these places, they are Downtown Junior compared to what downtown Detroit was -- and could be again.