Are cities "a bad thing" ? Charles says the following things are bad things about cities, > , with comments by David as >> : > a. Military vulnerability. >> There are arguments both ways here. Defending a dispersed settlement >> pattern can be very hard. With respect to weapons of mass destruction, >> though, I agree. > b. Pollution. (Of the air, rivers, estuaries and the sea.) >> Are you saying cities add more pollution to the planetary load than >> dispersed settlement? That seems unlikely to me, but I'll listen to >> statistics. >> If you're just saying that the city-dwellers are exposed to more >> pollution then that's technically true but not a very strong effect. >> Most of the pollution we suffer is solvents outgassing from carpets, >> chipboard, etc. inside our homes. The pollution in the streets is >> chicken feed by comparison. > There are two main points. The first is 'footprint'. Huge cities have > an impact that a number of small settlements don't have. One of the > reasons for this is the carbon sink effect of surrounding vegetation. > The second point is effect on the population. The concentration of > pollutants in a city effect city dwellers more. In smaller settlements > there is more opportunity for dispersion. > c. Living standards (cheek by jowl houses, high density housing, > high-rise housing, travelling time and cost to get to work.) >> A matter of taste. Many like city living. Personally I hate the idea >> of having to mow a lawn and so I live in a unit by choice. > d. Inefficiency and high cost of public transport. ( The 'cartwheel' > effect (as opposed to the 'grid' effect) means that infrastructure and > vehicles/rolling stock must be sufficient to cope with bulk of the > workforce moving into the cities in the morning and out again in the > evening. >> Is that an inevitability of cities? Or just of the way we've built >> cities? If we put more employment in Blacktown, would that help? > Melbourne was well planned but it inevitably grew beyond expectations > resulting in the 'cartwheel effect', congestion ,delays, time waste, > fuel consumption, pollution, etc, etc. > e. Inefficiency and costs associated with use of private vehicles. > (Roads must be able to carry bulk of traffic in one direction at one > time and the other direction at another. Plus the individual costs of > driving two - four hours per day to and from work. >> Whereas everyone in the country gets to work by public transport? > No. The point here is no congestion, time waste, fuel consumption, > pollution and the fact that many more can walk or ride a bike to work. > Plus the individual costs of driving two - four hours per day to and > from work. >> Consider a married couple, two jobs. They have a choice between both >> working in Sydney, or both working in the country. But the country jobs >> are in Tamworth and Albury-Wondonga respectively. On this basis two to >> four hours starts to look good. > Consider a couple with 3 kids. Only one car is needed because mum does > not have to go to work (and she doesn;t want to because of the community > around her) and the kids ride their bikes to school. > f. Destruction of natural landscape and native wild life and bird life. >> Greater with a concentrated pattern than with a dispersed one? > g. Destruction of sense of community. (The loneliest people in the > world live in cities). >> I'd like to see numbers on this. > h. Prevalence of crime. (This results in costs of Police, Courts, > Prosecutors, Jails, Rehabilitation, loss of production, etc.) >> Numbers on this too. > A good example of an alternative is the Netherlands (population 17 M). > From memory, their biggest city has a population of less than 1 M. The > whole country has an even distribution of towns and cities interspersed > with villages and farmland. The public transport system is able to > operate on a square grid, trees and farms help keep pollution under > control and the bulk of the population enjoy an enviable life style > despite the fact that 17M people are jammed into a country less than > half the size of Tasmania. With regard to pollution, I wrote (with comments by David as >) : You're not actually reducing the pollution load, you're spreading it out, making the local effect smaller. Admittedly, this has no effect on effects like greenhouse effect, which are dependent on total loading. City based pollution _could_ be smaller. Would it be easier politically to move the population out or reduce city based pollution ? That's an open issue. Which would be "cheaper"/"easier" ? Lastly, there are geographic barriers. I understand that its cheaper to provide the infrastructure to support people outside of major cities. If this difference were somehow charged for when people make their settlement choice and/or decide about service provision, you'd have a better outcome. > Most of the pollution we suffer is solvents outgassing from carpets, > chipboard, etc. inside our homes. The pollution in the streets is > chicken feed by comparison. I understand vehicles generate particulates, which indoor materials do not, and particulates generate their own set of problems. In addition, particulates are higher closer to main roads. > The point here is no congestion, time waste, fuel consumption, pollution > and the fact that many more can walk or ride a bike to work. > Plus the individual costs of driving two - four hours per day to > and from work. Jobs are not close to people in the greater urban conglomerates, quite separately to jobs being in the urban conglomerates rather than country regions. If land and transport were "properly charged for", you might then have a city where people do not have to commute long distances. Further, land use management decisions can be made which minimise these effects. At present, making a choice to commute long distances interacts with other road users, and everyone who has to put up with the pollution. Proper charging might help here. Additionally, though, perhaps the options available to people are pretty much "all bad" and people are choosing the least worst option, rather than the "best" one in any meaningful sense, and with some changes to city layout, we would be able to offer more people better options. Perhaps, the "nucleation" of country centres means that the layout is "more naturally" optimum, although there fewer services - and while properly charging for land and transport might not be politically feasible, but promoting regional development might be. > Consider a couple with 3 kids. Only one car is needed because mum does > not have to go to work (and she doesn;t want to because of the community > around her) and the kids ride their bikes to school. Certainly, its a good thing to provide more options for families deciding to specialise into domestic and non domestic roles. How this interacts with couples who do not want to specialise, I don't know. We want to minimise the adverse impact of one choice on the other, and not favour either choice at the expense of the other, I guess. Some people will always have to be in the country to maintain farms and mines and provide services to these industries. The more people _also_ in these regions, the better the services will be for those who are necessarily there. Incrementally, people might leave the region for the city, making it more attractive for others to leave for the city, being a vicious circle. Cumulatively, their decisions have a greater impact on others. But, before the first person left, some services might have been equally viable in the city as the country. Therefore, it would make sense to promote the regions; in particular, incentives to stop "the first to leave" might be particularly cost effective. Mark : Larger urban centres prompt whole of city regional governance authorities like the 'City Water Board', 'City transport authority', etc. These authorities should have democratically elected boards (taking Ted Mack's advice on the shortcomings of secondary representation - i.e. councils appointed their people to such a board). Within the big state capitals at least, smaller local government/council subdivisions remain necessary for general council/community functions. We need to consider at least the following types of areas as special cases: 1. very big cities; 2. remote, sparsely populated rural communities. The best form of simplicity is something (inspired by the "one vote one value" rationale in favour of proportional representation electoral/voting systems) along the lines of "one city/town/community one government" (or one SET of governance authorities such as Water boards, Transport authorities etc. in big cities). "Township autonomy" (and associated notions of democratic justice, equitable funding entitlements etc.) is a superior notion to allocating government based on size, especially just population size. For big cities, communities within the entire metropolitan area would require councils separate to whole of city transport boards etc. I believe towns such as the following (from a list I sent on 14 May) could be managed well with single local/regional governments/councils: 11 Hobart (Tas.) 126,118 12 Geelong (Vic.) 125,382 13 Townsville-Thuringowa (Qld) 109,914 14 Cairns (Qld) 92,273 15 Toowoomba (Qld) 83,350 16 Darwin (NT) 70,251 17 Launceston (Tas.) 67,701 18 Albury-Wodonga (NSW/Vic.) 67,316 19 Ballarat (Vic.) 64,831 20 Bendigo (Vic.) 59,936 21 Rockhampton (Qld) 57,770 (and all smaller settlements) Much academic literature encourages communities of 30,000 in population and less for the "closest to people" level of democratic government - large enough to accrue scale economy and critical mass benefits but small enough to be effectively responsive to community/individual needs. US style School Districts, as AJ recently drew attention to, are an interesting possibility. I like the idea of an education system safeguarded by good minimum standards but which give individual schools apt levels of autonomy at the individual school, Principal and School Board levels.