> Proof that it's not crazy and silly is that this has actually been done in the Netherlands.
If something has been done in a country that's particularly compact, flat, and has mild winters, it may yet be crazy to think you can get the rest of the world to quickly follow suit.
The entirety of the rest of the world, maybe. But there are plenty of locations with similar conditions, and way more that are only somewhat less amenable in those respects and potentially more amenable in others.
I would also point out (as a general remark, not specifically aimed at you) that many of the arguments that have been made against better cycling infrastructure, could also have applied to the Netherlands a couple of decades ago. I think the idea is dismissed far more often than warranted, given how it was successful here anyway, which might indicate that gut instincts might need some calibration.
You realize snowy Norway and Sweden are near the top of the cycling countries. Pretending that snow has every stopped anyone from cycling is as myopic as pretending snow would stop people from walking around cities that have cold winters for the last 4000 years.
> Wow, another crazy silly idea that requires huge behavior change.
> And all we had to do was stop using coal a couple decades ago.
You realize this is a sunk cost, right? Imagine if we'd just started using nuclear in the 60's. And we all were hippies and there was no war. Imagine if we all held hands and sang kum-ba-ya. Pretty fun living in a fantasy world.
We were always going to develop to a point where behavioral change was necessary. Whether it was us today, or our children tomorrow.
So a country like South Africa can just turn off their coal plants and continue as normal ? Of course not ! They will go bankrupt ! Solar+storage is still too expensive !
Whereas if the US consumer stop buying oversize trucks and stop flying cross country for social events, they will actually save money!
It's simply not equatable to expect a poor country like South Africa to make sacrifices while the US (a rich country) refuse to levy a carbon tax.
Nationalists and communists have these grand top down views of their economies. The problem is that they ruin a lot of smaller industries in pursuit of their grand vision. Capitalism turned out be be a superior system and it's not top down!
The best way to solve this "tragedy of the commons" problem is through a tax where a market system can determine what should be changed.
Yes, the article is not a realistic solution, but neither is closing coal plants (without replacing them with something else).
Taxation is also a grand top down view of the economy.
You've got to figure out the details of an equitable amount. Do different countries pay different amounts? Are there subsidizes for the poor? Are other greenhouse gases, like nitrous oxide, also included, and at what rate? If someone doesn't pay, how is the tax enforced?
All those are part of a grand vision.
Just like the grand top down view wherein "nationalists and communists" decided to ban most CFC emissions. And the "nationalists and communists" who decided to ban commercial whaling, outside of a few nations.
How would the superior capitalistic system have solved those problems? It's not like the capitalistic system is doing that great a job of preserving commercial fishing.
The "Tragedy of the Commons" was based on a fairy-tale interpretation of history. The far greater tragedy occurred due to the commons owners enclosing the land and breaking commoner's rights of use.
Wikipedia says "In economics and in an ecological context, the tragedy of the commons is a situation in which individual users, who have open access to a resource unhampered by shared social structures or formal rules that govern access and use,[1][2] act independently according to their own self-interest and, contrary to the common good of all users, cause depletion of the resource through their uncoordinated action in case there are too many users related to the available resources". That is not a fairy tale.
That doesn't change the fact that carbon pricing depends on a grand top-down view of the economy - something you seemed to reject.
Read more of that Wikipedia article, including "heavily criticized, particularly by anthropologists and historians":
> Critical scholars note that although taken as a hypothetical example by Lloyd, the historical demise of the commons of Britain and Europe resulted not from misuse of long-held rights of usage by the commoners, but from the commons' owners enclosing and appropriating the land, abrogating the commoners' rights.
> Radical environmentalist Derrick Jensen claims the tragedy of the commons is used as propaganda for private ownership.[189][190] He says it has been used by the political right wing to hasten the final enclosure of the "common resources" of third world and indigenous people worldwide, as a part of the Washington Consensus
and
> Tragedy of the commons has served as a pretext for powerful private companies and/or governments to introduce regulatory agents or outsourcing on less powerful entities or governments, for the exploitation of their natural resources.
The tragedy of the commons is a parable that advocates neither capitalism nor socialism. It advocates the existence of a _responsible manager_ for any resource subject to exhaustion. Whether that manager should be a capitalist owner or a public entity is a separate question that comes in later.
And of course, it is entirely irrelevant whether the events described really happened. The broken window fallacy doesn't refer to one particular window-breaking incident.
Anyway, the concretization of the parable to the subject at hand is actually very straightforward: the atmosphere is the commons, and the carbon emitters are the commoners. Enclosures are an impossible solution this time, because we need to let the air to circulate freely. But the parable still teaches us the need for a single entity to be on charge of the atmosphere. National-level solutions - much less individual action - can only be a delaying tactic at best: the ozone layer was only saved by the Montreal Protocol. I'm old enough to remember public service messages encouraging the population to refrain from using unnecessary spray bottles, and that would have helped about as much as Dutch bikers help against global warming.
This is conflating advocacy for behaviour change and enacting policies to get it to happen. We haven't tried, crazily enough, reducing flying or meat eating with policy actions, for example. (edit: Ok, EU and some non eu countries just recently included flying in ETS, that's a little start.)
We absolutely need behaviour change, excluding that would be a mega (giga?) death scale error in judgement.
And we also need to move on all fronts, and can't afford to attack the biggest emission sources one by one serially (such as addressing coal plants first and transport after that). I think that's just obvious and this argument often seems like whataboutist rhetorical tactic.
In the case of the featured Bełchatów the problem might solve itself earlier than the stated 2036 shutdown date - it's already not competitive economically and the lignite used to power it is running out anyway.
I wonder what's the future of power generation in the region, because the planned replacement nuclear power plant still exists purely on paper after at least a decade of talks.
That’s not sufficient either, but it’s THE logical starting point. I feel like our politicians are too inept to deal with the issue of climate change. We need an engineering mindset.
What we honestly need is to make sure all major cities have substantial public transportation infrastructure as well, so that people's incentives to drive are much lower. People need to be walking more, biking more, and taking public transportation more.
I personally live in a crowded area of a fairly large city, but not a huge one. Anywhere I have to go that's within 1 mile of me, I walk. 2 miles, I bike. 3 miles or greater and within the city limits, I take the free public trolley and metro. I only drive when I absolutely need to. This mentality needs to not be limited to just me.
We also as a society need to realize that urban sprawl is a really bad thing.
I doubt that you'll get people to stop driving by simply building more public transportation, even if that was possible (it's often not because new tunnels are incredibly expensive and it's hard to fit new train lines into existing cities).
A big issue with public transportation is other people. You don't have the criminally minded youth in your personal car, you don't have a homeless guy in your car, you don't have a mother on her phone while her children are crying at full volume while you're in your car.
And I'm not a car-enthusiast. I don't have a car, I take my bike pretty much everywhere < 10km. But if worked in the city, I'd buy a car, even if it took longer, because I wouldn't want to ride the train each day with lots of people who haven't learned how to behave when they share space with others.
>A big issue with public transportation is other people. You don't have the criminally minded youth in your personal car, you don't have a homeless guy in your car, you don't have a mother on her phone while her children are crying at full volume while you're in your car.
I live in Tokyo, where everyone uses subways. None of these things are a problem here.
>it's often not because new tunnels are incredibly expensive and it's hard to fit new train lines into existing cities)
It's not hard to fit new train lines: you just build more tunnels. Even America has done this before: the DC Metro system was built mostly in the 1970s. Building new train lines is merely a matter of political will.
> I live in Tokyo, where everyone uses subways. None of these things are a problem here.
We should all move to Tokyo then! Most societies are very different from Japan, so it very much is a problem if you're trying to increase public transportation there.
> Building new train lines is merely a matter of political will.
Possibly, and we don't have that will. Germany's energy policy with transition to renewable is lagging / failing because we can't build new & larger interconnections between regions because some field mice might be impacted or some neighbor doesn't want their view ruined.
While I like that sentiment and personally I fit into your lifestyle, I think it's worth considering the tradeoffs.
Europe does the above because they have too -- their population density is huge and they historically hit the max humans / land ratio (given historic food production technology at the time). This is eminently not true for the Americas and much of Oceania. The massive amounts of land in the latter areas are probably one of a few primary factors in why there is so much sprawl there.
In particular, I think many people fundamentally enjoy single family homes with a lawn, or having more space even within a city. Once you have a region (e.g. Bay Area) with enough people with single family homes, the road network has a network effect and a phase transition that suddenly favors car.
The problem is that we've been subsidizing single family homes to an insane degree. It takes a lot more infrastructure to support single family homes vs. more dense forms of housing. You need more sewer pipe, more wiring, more sidewalks, more streets, more plowing, etc. So cities in North America have been doing this unsustainable Ponzi scheme where they pack on more debt to do all this extra maintenance.
I can see the subsidy in some areas, like USPS mail (which has the same retail cost all over the USA, but is definitely lowest for the government to service in cities, thus providing a nationwide subsidy to rural areas).
But for items like sewer pipes, wiring, sidewalk, that seems to be serviced on a town level, so if you live in a more rural town, the property taxes per unit of house should be more. This means the above costs should be internalized pretty well.
But the tax bases in subdivisions AREN'T high enough to cover the maintenance costs. This causes towns to chase new development to attract more tax payers and the whole cycle repeats. There just isn't enough tax base in a subdivision to cover the maintenance burden when the time comes.
I live in Nijmegen where I cycle a lot. I also lived in Arnhem where I was situated near some very steep hills, for some years I almost didn't cycle there and walked a lot. I guess walking is also good, but my point is: one needs enough flatness to make cycling attractive.
Cycling in cities like Amsterdam is totally not attractive to me, just too busy with bikes. ;)
The obstacle to cycling posed by steep hills is being diminished greatly by e-bikes. Unfortunately, the problem with traffic in Amsterdam is not, but I think that only serves to reinforce how attractive bikes are for commuting. It reminds me of the old joke attributed to Yogi Berra, "nobody goes there anymore- it's too crowded."
How about long distances? Even zooming on ebike it still takes ages, even longer if you are on a bike line, obeying speed limit.
Climate is another factor - in a hot weather it’s actually nice to be on ebike (other than sunburn), but rain and cold climates suck. In NL public transport always used to fill up on a bad day.
Driving in Amsterdam is much worse than cycling there… But yes, planning a city to support safe cycling while also having decent public transportation is important, I guess. We just need less car centrism.
While technically true, there's still so much improvement to be had in flat-enough places that that's basically irrelevant for a while. Cities like London, Berlin or Paris are totally fine for cycling when it comes to flatness, and I'm sure many others that I'm less familiar with are too. And with electric bicycles, even cities like Arnhem are perfectly doable, as long as the infrastructure's up for it.
>but my point is: one needs enough flatness to make cycling attractive.
No, you don't. You just need a bike with these things called "gears" and "derailleurs", things the Dutch don't seem to believe in. You can also get an e-bike which makes going uphill no more difficult than riding on flat terrain.
Come on, an e-bike is much more like a scooter or a moped. I know it's not black and white, but cycling is getting forward purely on your own strength. Everything else makes you dependent on other things than your own body.
The e-bikes I've seen seem to basically be made to supply assistance so that the rider feels the same effort, whether they're pedaling on flat land or uphill.
People who begin cycling to work probably have a higher base level of health. Then cycling nearly everyday ends up being great exercise. The benefits of daily exercise are well known at this point.
They may also have safer jobs with less exposure to carcinogens. Heavy industry jobs are often located beyond a reasonable cycle commute from people's homes.
Less than a hundred years ago you would have factories in city centres and people commuting there from within a walking distance.
Nowadays both environmental regulations and land prices pushed all that to the outskirts.
The last 30km along the expressway leading to my home city are lined with factories, logistics centres and whatnot and I'm sure most workers there commute by car.
- Lower obesity rates vs most developed countries.
- Reductions in air and noise pollution.
- Arguably, improved social cohesion, because streets are friendlier for people to linger on and they spend less time sat in expensive metal vanity boxes.
>If this mattered, then we should just limit everyone to 30 years.
And when their 30 years is up, then we can have a celebration called Carrousel to eliminate them. Anyone who tries to escape this will be chased by the Sandmen.
that's because the dutch had a massive social movement to completely reorganize their transportation infrastructure and bulldoze segregated bicycle paths through the entire cityscape, it was called "Stop Child Murders"
I think that bit is the article's editorialising. Actual quotes from the study say:
> The study authors recognise that not everyone lives in a cycle-friendly place - but call for an “urgent” expansion of cycling infrastructure worldwide.
> “Lessons learned from successful experiences in countries like Denmark and the Netherlands, particularly on the city level such as Copenhagen and Amsterdam, would be essential,” they write.
> “These include but are not limited to, for example, proper bicycle lanes planning and construction, pro-bicycle education and culture, and policies to discourage car use through tax.”
Even in San Francisco, the second densest major city in America, the automobile lobby put a proposition on the ballot to remove the only car-free street in the city.
The amount of push back from the against any infrastructure that limits the automobile here is so overwhelming, it's completely ridiculous. I've been pushing for more cycling infrastructure my entire adult life. In NYC, Austin, and SF. Basically the only way to get it done is for the politicians to actually take a risk like Bloomberg did, and just do it by fiat. So long as you're trying to build a cycling system, the existing NIMBY populace will freak out.
And this shows the fundamental problem: it's the people themselves, the voting public, who in car-centric places oppose any attempts at making the place less car-centric. Then they whine about how it's infeasible to be less car-centric. Yes, that's true: it's because they, themselves, have opposed such efforts!
I cycle to and from work. It's also wet and windy here, but it's not remotely flat. It's hard work. So yeah being flat is an extreme advantage.
Also Ebikes are more expensive to buy, maintain, and run. I doubt they last even half as long too. I'm still using a hybrid buy I bought 10 years ago for 200 (exdisplay).
> Also Ebikes are more expensive to buy, maintain, and run. I doubt they last even half as long too. I'm still using a hybrid buy I bought 10 years ago for 200 (exdisplay).
Do you have any stats to back that up? Sure, an ebike will be more expensive than an equivalent non electric version. But if you’re more likely to take it out over a car or paying for public transit, that’s much cheaper per mile of use.
For some anecdata, I bought an ebike 4-5years ago for about $1600 and put a little over 1,000 miles a year on it mainly in NYC. In total I’ve spent $600 on repairs and upgrades, with $300 being a new battery after 4 years. The rest was just replacing brakes and changing some of the stock items, mainly for aesthetic reasons. This bike replaced $40-60 cab rides to other boroughs and my unlimited metro card($130/mo). In less than a year it paid for itself and more, and I definitely would not have put as many miles on my regular bike.
Like I said I bought my bike 10 years ago for 200. I do at least 2600 a year, to and from work and errands I can use it for. I don't have exact figures but in that time I definitely haven't spent more than 1000 on maintenance. So 1200 for 26000 miles and it's never needed a software update and the battery (me) is still strong.
It's hard work and keeps me fit so that's an added benefit ebikes don't offer. And I'm not beholden to vendors deciding not to support my bike anymore or maybe locking features unless you pay monthly for them.
> Also Ebikes are more expensive to buy, maintain, and run. I doubt they last even half as long too. I'm still using a hybrid buy I bought 10 years ago for 200 (exdisplay).
That's only really an issue for those who buy them, though. When a significant number who can afford them, do, that's still a lot fewer cars on the road, which also benefits those who still are in a car.
Perhaps, except that my automobile can move more people and property at a much farther distance while being protected from the environment, both the natural environment and the environment of a high speed highway.
As an ancestor comment by Vinnl points out, "The study authors recognise that not everyone lives in a cycle-friendly place - but call for an “urgent” expansion of cycling infrastructure worldwide."
If you are a plumber making home visits in suburbs best accessed through a high speed highway, and need to have supplies and tools with you, then of course a vehicle is better.
If you are a wind surfer, and need something to carry your gear with you back and forth to the beach, then of course a vehicle is better.
There are many people in exactly the situation you are, and for good reasons need a vehicle.
But those needs don't represent everyone.
And with the right infrastructure, some things which require a car now, disappear. If the kids can (e)bike to/from after-school events, then there's much less need for one of the parents to be a dedicated chauffeur.
With frequent bus service, it's easier to take the bus into town, so perhaps a family doesn't need one car per adult.
When those who decide to go car-free still need to be able to move more people and property, they use a taxi, rent a car, or join a car share club, depending on their needs.
But it's not easy! 50 years ago Amsterdam was car-centered, like US cities. It took decades to get where they are now. The point is to learn from that experience, not reject the possibility outright.
Not really. We're talking about car-oriented infrastructure, which came about in Europe at the same time it did in the U.S. (even a bit later, if we're being honest).
A more tractable (in North America) way to reduce emissions: allow remote work. RTO was framed as a worker’s rights issue. It was that. But it was also an environmental issue. RTO is horrible for the planet.
I just sold my car. After 12 years or so I'm back to bikes and public transport. It was an interesting mental battle that took me about 8 months to win. And I'm a greenhearted leftist that votes for the Animal Party here in NL! The decision to move to carless is just really really hard. Even in a country that is so bike friendly.
In the end, it's not about the bike, or the car. But the ideas that it represents: the illusions of freedom, choice, safety.
The Netherlands is flat, so cycling like the Dutch would require not just changing infrastructure and social behavior, but changing the landscape in many places where people live as well...Amsterdam is known for it's canals, San Francisco for its hills -- e.g. the highest natural point in San Francisco (area 121 km^2) is 283m, the highest point in the entire Netherlands (area 41,500 km^2) is less than 40m higher.
I'm not saying the idea of everybody biking like the Dutch is as absurd as the idea of everybody boating like the Venetians, but it ignores the role of landscape in a similar way.
Yeah, cycling in the US gets you nowhere fast. Netherlands is only one and a half times as big as State of Maryland and cities are built vertically rather than spread out. If your daily commute is less than a mile, like most of these people's are, you can even walk to work.
Being ridiculous obviously has no limits.
I walk, bike, transit, and almost never take a car. my city is a car city, but it's still walkable. biking is faster during the summer for anything downtown, walking is better for anything 5 minutes away, and transit covers the longer distances.
I walked 200+ city blocks yesterday while I went across the city and diff places. Walking is also great exercise at those lengths and you go to bed like you just ran at the gym.
Most people are simply not willing to bicycle. There are any number of reasons given. Many would express a desire to cycle more in an idealistic sense. It is similar to someone who expresses a desire to quit smoking next week or start a new diet.
If people want to drive cars everywhere, that's a lifestyle choice they make. There's no need to make excuses for it. If they are happier, why not?
Bicycling infrastructure is popularly cited as a reason, but this is an incomplete picture. I appreciate that some scenarios are intimidating to novice cyclists, but this is where skill building and progressive improvements in awareness, technique and fitness play a role.
If people truly desired to use bicycles they might choose to live within 20 miles of their workplace and develop their cycling abilities incrementally.
If this discussion is like any of the others which have been posted, we will see excuses where it is both too hot and too cold for posters to bicycle. Never mind the workarounds for these issues. If they are not comfortable, that's okay.
These are not the voices which should be given precedence when we consider what bicycle infrastructure should look like. It isn't unreasonable to listen to these complaints about how impractical cycling is for their situations. There are many who will never become cyclists under any conditions. It is understandable given the political implications of the green agenda that posters wouldn't be forthcoming with these preferences.
The result of this posturing is an ever changing set of trends for what cycling infrastructure should look like. An ideal tomorrow which can never come.
That statement does not seem to mesh with statistics in the Netherlands [1]. Possibly people are simply not willing to bicycle using bad/unsafe infrastructure. Which, I should note, is not an "ideal tomorrow", but pretty good reality for a couple of decades already.
In a previous lifetime I was a bicycle courier in the US. We rode around the city comfortably with traffic. It was as safe as we wanted to be.
One of the unsafe points has always been the dedicated bike lanes. Drivers never expect you at that speed at that place on the road. People coming in or out of megamart parking lots have the wrong expectations or cannot judge speed well. Drivers attempting to make a right on red will overtake and t-bone the cyclist.
Next, they added ridiculous fixed orange cones to the bicycle lanes. Now you cannot perform a lane change safely.
Similarly, the bike paths have blind corners, people on in-line skates, joggers, women with baby strollers and other hazards.
Not to mention the advantages of drafting a mid sized SUV or box truck. Moving with traffic is just better.
The typical scenario in the US will have one or two points along a route where the novice cyclist is exposed to a road which makes them uncomfortable. With adequate planning a route can be selected which is appropriate to their skill level.
Of course this is far from the ideal world of cycling. But if users were serious about their interests they could start now. Not sure it is reasonable to expect the rest of the world to become Dutch. There's more to say for the Dutch than just the geography (Posters here object to cycling on hills. If they loved cycling they would seek them out.) or the infrastructure.
There's also the cultural values of thrift and efficiency. The avoidance of credit. Of the Dutch that I've known, they generally disdain a flashy automobile as a foolish purchase. You won't gain status pushing a bicycle in the US. Maybe for young angsty bicycle couriers there was an appeal in showing the world how indestructible we were. What is left is just empty green posturing...
"I would ride a bicycle to work, but the gov. didn't tax and spend enough on my ever changing ideal of a fantasy bicycling experience. Oh btw, I hate pedaling or exerting myself. But yeah, I totally love bicycles. Except when it is raining, snowing or sunny. I love bicycling so much that I know how everyone else should ride..."
I don't know why you're going on about people "loving" bicycling and supposedly being hypocritical. I wouldn't say Dutch people particularly love bicycling, but it's the sensible mode of transport in many places, so people are willing to (not love to) do it. Dutch people aren't meaningfully different - we're all just humans, and work largely the same as other people. There's no reason Dutch people are somehow so unique that they're the only place people would be willing to ride a bicycle. The main thing that is different, though, is that the conditions are different in the Netherlands, in particular infrastructure.
(But also keep an eye on other Western European cities. Many are making great strides in terms of infrastructure, and cycling is seeing more uptake.)
Overall I feel that the dangers are overstated and most people are unwilling to apply themselves. The reasons given are illustrative. Just sharing a road with cars isn't dangerous. Being overtaken by a large truck isn't dangerous. Psychologically intimidating for novices, yes. A sedentary lifestyle, heart disease and diabetes are more dangerous. Having poor awareness of your surroundings is dangerous generally.
The social status/conspicuous consumption angle is important. Among other factors, an expensive electric car signals the driver's ideological values in regard to climate and their ability to consume. A bicycle, not so much. People may not want to do thrifty and practical things in public view. Some cultures would view that as demeaning. That's the cultural difference.
Another aside, posters here have expressed that they are uncomfortable or socially unable to deal with simple interactions on public transport. They need the isolation of their automobile like a safety blanket. Chance eye contact or casual conversation could be traumatic for them. No amount of infrastructure can address these issues.
We might see city councils attempt to emulate bicycle infra of NL, but in practice it may be unusable for transportation purposes. Frequent crossings of traffic at separate bicycle/car intersections would be an example. Sure the bike trail might be designated for cyclists only and off the main road, but you have to stop every block at an intersection where drivers aren't looking. There are too many nuances to cover.
Just not practical at all. Usually planned by people who would never do regular rides. Next the locality will ban cyclists from the perfectly usable road, because they spent X dollars on the trail system and bicyclists make drivers 'uncomfortable'. Then a lard-cop will stop you from riding on the road and instruct you as to "how we do it around here".
The end result is usually a linear park. That's just my experience with what actually happens when cities and villages start with the high ideals of building cycling infrastructure.
Where people are already using bicycles, it is logical to make further concessions to cyclists in a well executed manner. But starting from a standpoint of the title, 700 units of carbon if everyone changed their lifestyle, commute distance, cultural values and addressed their social ineptitude...
I'd first like to see some basics, like a willingness to ride to the store for errands.
I don't understand. How can you say it's "not practical" when it's literally being practised in the Netherlands? Which also came from a car-centric culture - and yes, does have public transport, and cars as well.
Not practical as in we cannot expect everyone to adopt those values. Yes, I find bicycles practical. I don't find what is implemented as bike infrastructure practical. Even if we hit the ideal of bike infra, I doubt people would bother to use it.
For every post that says they cannot become a cyclist due to too much rain, or too much sun - re-read the post. They would like to adhere to a green ideal and pay lip service, but they will never ride to the store to buy a liter of milk. If we are being honest, they don't want to ride at all. They just want to say the politically correct thing.
Similarly, they might say they would like to use public transport, but have excuses. What satisfies their preferences is a high end electric vehicle. It signals green values and social status. A bicycle signals poverty. I'm not defending these social norms, but observing the status quo.
I find half-baked bicycling infrastructure worse than just using a road. I find that many people opine for bike infra, but they are just using the lack of infrastructure as an excuse. Much like, "I would quit smoking, but I'd have to wait until next month because I have too much stress this week" These people cannot be appeased.
The result is often impractical infrastructure built by people who see bicycling very differently. The ideal of overpasses for every crossing isn't economically possible for most areas. Instead a linear park is built. The bike trail has crossings at every block, away from the main intersection. The trail itself is clogged with baby strollers or in-line skaters. You'd be better off riding along the road.
The best examples of a bike trail in the US are often found along a river where bridges already exist.
Before spending on infrastructure, it may make more sense to address some of those cultural norms. People may use safety as an excuse, but take that excuse away and they'll find another. The reality is that bicycling on streets isn't unsafe. I'd wager that it is safer than driving cars on highways.
You can centrally plan infrastructure, but culture grows organically. It doesn't mean that bicycles are impractical, but that the top-down approach is hamfisted at best. You cannot take a specific set of circumstances in a single geographic region and extrapolate it onto the world.
> Not practical as in we cannot expect everyone to adopt those values.
But why? Why could we expect that in the Netherlands, and can't we expect it elsewhere? What's different? How did it grow in the Netherlands and why can't that happen elsewhere?
What time horizon are we solving for? I recall a case study (apologies I do not have the reference) in business school that if everyone cycled as suggested in the article - life expectancy would increase significantly for the population leading to more carbon emissions in the long run.
If we all lived like the Dutch global emissions would rise by 3-4bn tonnes (back of the napkin math). That is IF each and every country had the standard of living that the Netherlands enjoy.
Very easy to baamboozle people with hypotheticals constrained to just one fundamental.
Allow me a little game: what the Dutch who do most of their trip by bike eat? Because today too many pseudo-ecologist claim the live at 0km, meaning they do anything in a small enough area to move just by feet and bike. HOWEVER they omit in their computing the other humans who work to serve them.
Time ago a friend claim he live at 0km and we start a little game: let's show what you eat&drink! The 0km bread bought from a local shop actually was made with a flower+the rest prepared by a local company roughly 800km away, with the flower itself from Ukraine, leavening agents from Turkey, salt from Spain. Oh that's just the bread. The locally bought seasonal fruits, let's say and apple came from north-est Italy, and I choose the apple as an example because they are normally collected one season before stored in a CO₂-saturated place and oxygenated a bit before going to customers-stores (so they look bright and big). If we try the locally bought "fresh" shrimp some are from India, some from Ecuador, they are fresh (in temperature sense) for sure, but seeing their color they are ALSO pre-cooked with a bit of steam before being packed and so on.
Personally having left (few years BEFORE covid) the dense European urbe for the Alps I change a bit my behaviors like I now bought not-that-small quantity of anything and stock them at home, it's MORE comfy for me, just going to the garage opening some freezer/wardrobes etc instead of going shopping just for a single item. The result is that compared I produce FAR LESS packages waste, I tend to eat more healthy foods and I even tend to pay most of the LESS. Stock them is also not that complicated at all, yes it might took a bit of time regularly, but it's really a little bit, and a small investments in fridges/freezer and so on. But again NOTHING really "extreme". I have two cars, one diesel one electric, I refuel both at home, the diesel one with a 1000l liters jar with a simple tube+spilling pistol filled up casually by a tank truck, witch means I and the supply chain combined burn LESS fuel to resupply than those who resupply continuously with their own engines. Again, nothing really special. Diesel it's not explosive, does not produce dangerous gases and can be stored for very long periods. Oh, and at any (regular) strike I never have to go wasting hours to resupply for having a bit of a very small reserve.
Long story short: PROBABLY (I can't compute everything) the most sustainable way of living is being spread in large not too dense, not too little dense areas pushing a distributed economy coupled with an effective PUBLIC logistic platform (to avoid the old classic Rockefeller/Standard Oil or now Amazon "market distortions") where we can evolve, meaning the density is sufficient to interact, have a reborn economy of scale that's now totally lost in cities, but not too much to impede redesign of anything, starting from residential buildings who can't really evolve in dense cities in Green New Deal terms or even in mere "they are EOL, we need to demolish them before they collapse", where there is room to evolve. Let's say future drone deliveries, fly cars etc. ALSO such areas are FAR LESS problematic to handle in case of catastrophic events (not even extreme like a nuclear strike eh! Just mere floods, wildfires, earthquakes, landslides etc).
This probably live a big problem: too much population? That probably imply without having the gut to tell it directly that someone want to push "waste" humanity in modern slavery situations depicted as nice walled gardens, eco friendly etc. The issue is that such move can't work well not only for those internees but for the humanity at a whole. We are a society, it's normal to have rich and poor, but more than a certain level the result is a crash unhealthy for ALL.
The argument is simple, maybe I was not that clear in my poor English: people who CLAIM to live on feet and bike so to be eco-friendly are not because to live like that they need others to pollute much on their behalf.
So they can state "hey, look, I'm good at my carbon score" in a hypocritically blind argument purposely ignoring the fact that their lifestyle in a small area of Earth to be sustained demand much pollution elsewhere while living on private cars in vast Rivieras do pollute GLOBALLY much LESS.
So people can try to reduce pollution living in single-family MODERN homes, with renewables, buying food in large quantity and stock at home OR claim to have reduced THEIR OWN pollution making someone else pollute more for them.
This sounds like the "We Should Improve Society Somewhat" meme.
"I want to be more eco-friendly." "And yet you do things that are not eco-friendly. I am very intelligent."
Your 0km friend must be particularly ignorant as to not realize that his coffee, his wine, his beer, his meat, his flour, his electricity, his phone, his clothes, and so on, are not made in the same place where he lives. This is highly a-typical - nothing to base an argument on.
The localvores I've heard about use the phrase "Marco Polo exception" to allow 'anything your average 13th century explorer might have brought back from distant lands. So: pepper, and turmeric, and even the odd knob of ginger root stayed in the larder.'
> living on private cars in vast Rivieras do pollute GLOBALLY much LESS
Citation needed.
Single-family homes are more expensive per person than shared buildings. You have higher heating bills because you have no common walls with others.
You have worse economy of scale in your water, sewage, power supply, and internet and phone service provider. Or, if you have your own well, or septic system, you have to spend more time to maintain it.
You must dedicate more room to storage or spend more time resource planning - if a light bulb burns out, I can walk to the store to buy a replacement while you either go without for a while, or you store more extras than I do, or you keep better track of your bulbs than I do. (The same applies for every consumable: batteries, toothpaste, tape, etc.)
You have to drive to visit the doctor, dentist, barber, and so on, while I can walk or take shared mass transit with frequent service. Assuming you have older kids, they need to travel school and visit friends.
Even the road to your house is more expensive to maintain than one in a city, which adds to your carbon footprint.
But even that is hand-waving on my part. So, to the literature! Here are snippets from three papers I found:
] Studies using the consumer's carbon footprint method usually reveal only small differences, either in favour off or against emission savings in cities. What are the reasons for the balance to shift in one or the other direction? This article, based on Germany, points to higher emissions in rural areas, while our own follow-up study on Bavaria shows the opposite: higher emissions in cities (Gill and Schubert, under review). - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092180091...
] In Eastern Europe, carbon footprints ... increase clearly with the increasing degree of urbanisation. By contrast, in some Western European countries, such as France and
Belgium, carbon footprints clearly decrease with the increasing degree of urbanisation, even when income is controlled. Overall in the studied countries, carbon footprints are 7% lower in cities than in rural areas when income and household characteristics are controlled. However, this is compensated by the 6% higher average income in cities. - https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab443d/...
Looks like the research evidence is that rural populations like where you live do NOT "pollute GLOBALLY much LESS" than urban populations like where you used to live.
That's a bit complex for an HN reply but anyway in general the key of density is "not too much, not too little". Modern cities are in the "way too much" level, some countrysides in the "way too low" level, Rivieras are the today mean IMVHO. Witch means enough dense to have a certain economy of scale, a certain sustainability of services, but not too much so they are able to evolve.
Let's take the example you do on "an apartment need less energy" because being stacked ..., that's true, in theory. In practice, at least here in UE, most apartments tend to be mean-old buildings, grown up quickly in some economic boom where energy costs was not something anyone care. You can't insulate effectively such buildings, you can do something at a high price for little results. While single-family homes are mixed, some are old, some are new and almost ALL can be rebuilt without absurd issues. Tall buildings can't: they are too dense, they are build in places where it's not allowed to build for good reasons (like some social housing of the '60s build one after another on a steep hill and a single crappy road to access all etc). So essentially they can only remain in they sorry state until they collapse or get demolished anyway.
How much they have cost in structures? Because a light 2 flat home it's a thing, a 12+ flat building it's another. How much big settlements have altered local climate to the point that any cities have it's own proper microbial signature, natural water system alterations etc? Spread settlements source water locally, so they do alter a bit, but not at a city scale, they pollute locally, but again not at a city scale. An example I found is http://www.newgeography.com/content/006840-high-density-and-... but you do not need real measurement it suffice to think how nature work and how humans can or can't integrate with it.
In a spread Riviera you still get a doctor nearby, because the density is enough, but you only get small buildings intermixed with nature. Yes, you need to travel, but you do not need expensive and invasive road infra, bridges, tunnels, metro etc just simple roads with some animal passages here and there, the soil is still permeable almost everywhere and so on.
In evolutionary terms: classic deliveries from on-line retail? No issues: just replace your mailbox with a small package home and that's done. Drones delivery? No issues. There is plenty of space. Just change the package delivery to offer an aerial access. Future flying cars? No issues. Just sacrifice a small area of your garden to create the lending place. You have room for p.v., to store water, ... since you can be A BIT autonomous any "service issues" from electricity grid to water supply it's not so urgent to fix and so on.
Long story short: economy of scale works when PRODUCER are nearby, since now in cities almost no one produce anything, there are just services and resellers in cities there is no more an economy of scale. Since WFH have issues but works and issues can be solved well, or at least mitigated with a bit of time, most westerns cities who are tertiary sector workers place have anyway no reasons to exists anymore. Transition it's not cheap, but in ALL CASES will happen because as I said before cities can't evolve and we evolve. As the time passes buildings reach their EOLs and rebuild them it's next to impossible or simply an absurd effort. There will be and already there is no room to move anymore, tied to crappy public transportation systems who are not sustainable if more effective and so on.
If we try at a slow peace it will hurt much less but try to deny that stating it's possible to keep building cities "but modern one", modern today, obsolete tomorrow, with the same issue is as hypocritical as my friend...
Umm, I gave citations which show your claim that "living on private cars in vast Rivieras do pollute GLOBALLY much LESS" needs much more solid support than your personal views which you have just repeated.
These included examples from Germany (where different regions had different urban/rural balance) and France (where rural had more CO2 emissions).
> you do not need expensive and invasive road infra
Do you have evidence for that? You need, what, 100 meter of street per house? And you are, what, one person? While 100 meter for an urban street is indeed more expensive in linear terms, but can support hundreds of people.
> Drones delivery? No issues. There is plenty of space. .... Future flying cars?
Flight is energy intensive. Either you have heavy batteries (making the flight even more expensive) or you've got hydrocarbons, which currently means fossil fuel.
Batched ground transport is more fuel efficient. It only costs, what, about 1 EUR to get a letter delivered to your door? But you only get that once per day, and not every day.
The Rivieras had horse-drawn delivery before vehicles so you only need a few horsepower to get around. Ground-based vehicles emit less pollution, operate in a wide range of weather, and have safer failure modes.
> You have room for p.v., to store water
My point is that this means you don't have any cost sharing with your neighbors. Each house needs enough to cover its peak use, and likely each person need to know how to maintain the local equipment, and have the tools for the additional maintenance.
One city water tower is more effective than the same amount of individual cisterns.
> since now in cities almost no one produce anything,
As a software developer, I would produce exactly the same amount in the countryside as I would in the city.
Actually, probably less because I would have more to maintain the house.
> most westerns cities who are tertiary sector workers place have anyway no reasons to exists anymore
You do know that many people like to be in the city for easy access to restaurants, clothes shopping, the library, clubs, socializing with friends, lectures, political demonstrations, parades, churches, festivals, and more, right?
I personally hate taking care of a lawn, and I get cabin fever working from home.
> tied to crappy public transportation systems who are not sustainable
It's not like wide-scale ownership of personal automobiles is sustainable either. I mean, your lifestyle requires two cars. What happens if, due to age or illness, you no longer have the physical ability to drive? What do you do then?
> These included examples from Germany (where different regions had different urban/rural balance) and France (where rural had more CO2 emissions).
Not to being rude but such computations are not science, are just game based on arbitrary assumptions... A "TCO of pollution" need a damn large model who simulate all people consumption traced to their sources, counting relevant processes in between + simulate different theoretically realistic arrangements changing some parameters. AFAIK no such models exists probably simply because it's not much in fashion reasoning in global terms instead of focusing on single specific aspects and perhaps it's so long and complex that most fear anyone can spot small errors practically not really important, but weaponized to discredit the whole design...
> Do you have evidence for that? You need, what, 100 meter of street per house?
A simple empirical evidence: do a large Riviera need many simple roads or big dorsals? I mean why we need a big highway? Typically to connect a dense area to another because many people and goods travel from some "hub" (in network theory speaking) while a almost-hub-less network do need more small links to traverse it from anywhere to anywhere. Now if you agree with that try to imaging how impacting is building such expensive highways vs small roads. Not much in absolute terms (like how many rocks, asphalt etc you need) but in relative terms of local impact on climate and nature.
It's the same for a fully watertight city area vs a sparse urbanized one: both roads are watertight, but in a city there is a very large watertight surface who push water in few directions, in the riviera water goes everywhere so you do not get much "river" effect that alter local water system. Similarly for small roads you do not need to destroy entire mountains, create giant infra that alter local wind and so on.
> Flight is energy intensive. Either you have heavy batteries (making the flight even more expensive) or you've got hydrocarbons, which currently means fossil fuel.
Sure, so far, BUT that's anyway our path for various reasons, climate and social change included who need to move people and so having "movable infra", something not doable with roads or rails but doable by air and water. Also we have to compute the cost of vehicle + it's use vs crafting a whole road/rail etc infra and keeping it up. Again it's a damn complex model but it's not a new idea that by air is almost at the same cost even if we can't move anything by air... It's not me but
https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... who claim that's the future. They claim for urban mobility but I think that's definitively crazy, while it's perfectly doable in a large riviera, and I doubt McKinsey do not have though that...
> Batched ground transport is more fuel efficient.
That's theoretically true, practically false: public transports are efficient when are a bit loaded, but to be effective they need to operate 24/7/365 witch means OR they accept to be far less efficient than private transports MOST of the time or they simply run only for efficient usages and so people need anyway a private transport and having both is still less efficient that using only one. Even in Swiss, to cite a fresh article: https://www.thelocal.ch/20230109/opinion-trains-in-switzerla...
> My point is that this means you don't have any cost sharing with your neighbors. Each house needs enough to cover its peak use, and likely each person need to know how to maintain the local equipment, and have the tools for the additional maintenance.
That's another classic problem, still unsolved. In the recent past for instance teleheating was sold as and eco-friendly cheap and simple way: you get hot water from some industry cooling systems who need to push heat out and you are happy. Now those who choose that path cry that their heating prices have skyrocketed... Similarly nowadays in UE homes are FAR cheaper than apartments in operational expense terms. The issue essentially is "if we are all smart and fair anything is simpler sharing stuff", but the big if tend to be valid for limited period of time...
The city water tower is a good example: in theory individual homes get water and have nothing but keep up normal home pipes. Nice. In practice it means that an accident on the system is a general emergency since anyone are without water. If you have a bit of reserve at home, EVERY HOME, than the emergency is far less urgent and so maintenance and design costs goes down. You do not need a hyper-quick team 24/7 ready to run, with anything needed immediately available for instance. For electricity it's the same: a spread Rivieras grid with homes capable of few hours autonomous power it's far less costly than a dense grid that must reduce downtime to the extreme. There is a storm and some transformers burn? Oh, no issue we will change them tomorrow vs push people in the middle of a stormy night with all they need to change it ASAP. We users do not feel those costs but they are still there.
> Actually, probably less because I would have more to maintain the house.
And how much time you save having cut the trip to the office ALL working days?
> You do know that many people like to be in the city for easy access to restaurants, clothes shopping, the library, clubs, socializing with friends, lectures, political demonstrations, parades, churches, festivals, and more, right?
Yes, BUT I know that if enough people flee the city those who want it can only keep it up alone, witch is a doomed to fail effort... BTW in terms of ease of access: try to move in a dense EU city and in a vast riviera... It's often easier do 100km in a riviera than 10 in a city. Personal experience...
> It's not like wide-scale ownership of personal automobiles is sustainable either. I mean, your lifestyle requires two cars. What happens if, due to age or illness, you no longer have the physical ability to drive? What do you do then?
That's a issue common everywhere: if we do not die young at a certain point we need help. But help in a riviera it's not much different than in a city, for instance it means having someone who gives you food, help you move etc, evolution is the answer: we are near self-driving cars, in the future even if not tomorrow, we will have them. In the future we will have likely much more automation that allow elders to remain autonomous for a larger timeframe of their life. Then... Than it's the same than today. At a certain point we can't live alone anymore. And that's why we have structure to help the elders, having them in a city or spread does just means having littler structures in nature instead of isolated concrete buildings where we can't almost see anything nice around...
However you are right stating that NOT EVERYBODY can afford certain homes, cars etc, and that's a problem I do not see solved by anyone. Those who claim goshiwong alike homes solve that tend to be some who want young and productive slaves, not anything else...
You've made an argument that rural living has lower CO2 emissions. How do you know that you are correct? Because of an intuitive feeling? You've just implied that your own statements are not backed by science, so why should anyone believe you? And I've given equally valid handwaving arguments for why your proposition is wrong.
> Sure, so far, BUT
That's the way physics works. We've had roads for thousands of years. They can be built with manual labor and horses. Flight is energetically more expensive, and only justifiable if road construction is very expensive. Eg, we nearly always use ferries rather than planes to cross smaller bodies of water.
You already need roads, and that need isn't going away. People still need to visit the doctor, dentist, barber, etc. You want trash pickup, and probably want fire service and ambulance access. You probably want a septic truck to visit to pump out your septic system. The recent pandemic shows that education-from-home doesn't work well. Someone may need to visit a dialysis clinic three times a week. And all those workers need to get to their places of employment. Hence, there will be roads, making ground delivery cheaper than air.
> That's theoretically true, practically false: public transports are efficient when are a bit loaded
In what you replied to, I was talking about delivery transport, not public transport.
In any case, of course mass transit needs to be "a bit loaded" - you aren't going to run one person per bus or train.
And in "OR they accept to be far less efficient than private transports MOST of the time" you need to define what "efficient" means. You have two cars, which you rarely use. Figure you replace a car every 10 years, for 40K EUR, that's 4K/year in depreciation. Plus maintenance, insurance, power/fuel, new tires. Perhaps 5K/year? And a bit more since you have two cars.
Checking now, a year card for all of London is £4008. In Berlin, a fare zone ABC card costs €107/month or €1284 per year. And people do live in London and Berlin without a car.
Personally owned cars are not cost effective when measured that way.
Yes, there are definite advantages to cars. But this article is about promoting more alternatives to cars, not getting rid of cars.
Note too that heat production and pollution controls are effective with district heating than each household providing its own heat, and still likely cheaper than electric heat.
> more small links to traverse it from anywhere to anywhere
Congratulations. By getting rid of highways you've just greatly increased your supply chain costs for everything because all cargo trucks now take 2-3x longer. And you'll be running trucks at lower capacity and/or doing a lot of trans-shipping to supply all those people.
> If you have a bit of reserve at home, EVERY HOME, than the emergency is far less urgent and so maintenance and design costs goes down.
That reserve costs money. Centralization reduces the overall cost, even including paying for "a hyper-quick team 24/7 ready to run".
> It's often easier do 100km in a riviera than 10 in a city. Personal experience
Ahem. I'm from the US. I know people who commuted 125km each way for work. And I've been in the rush hour traffic in Los Angeles. But that's neither here nor there. 100km of car traffic is much more polluting than 10km on an e-bike.
> And how much time you save having cut the trip to the office ALL working days?
Your argument is predicated on rural workers working from home. People can also work from home in the city.
I already work from home, living in the city. Though really, I work from the local library, the local college, a cafe, at the park (if the weather is good), etc. Like I said, I get cabin fever staying at home all the time with no one nearby.
> if enough people flee the city
We had that happen in the US. "White flight", as white Americans took advantage of racist government subsidizes to move to the suburbs.
The result is not financially sustainable. Providing roads and utility services is much more expensive for these homes than in older, more compact urban residential areas because it requires more material per capita.
Furthermore, the Baby Boomers are getting old. More and more of them will be able to drive. They'll need alternatives to having a car.
> But help in a riviera it's not much different than in a city, for instance it means having someone who gives you food
I should have assumed a car-centered person like you would assume the only two options are "be able to drive a car" and "have someone [who can drive] help you."
In a more compact area, with a mix of services, other options include: walk (including with cane or mobility walker), bike, e-bike, tricycle (for those with balance issues), golf carts, moped cars/micro cars, scooters, mobility scooters, and of course public transit.
These can let someone maintain their independence for a long time, even without a car. But they are more effective in urban areas with mixed planning than in spread-out rural areas.
I think it's time for a small recap: I'm not talking in CO₂ terms but in pollution terms. The actual fashion of carbon score etc is an economical and political move, not something tangible and scientific.
In such terms I state that in a spread living we can have a spread economy as well. Witch means we need to move LESS goods around the world for less distance. For instance where I am (French Alps) it's a good climate for trouts farming, chicken farming, production of lentils, chickpeas, potatoes, ... NOT that much but enough if we are in a de-centralized economy to nourish A BIT the resident population. Oh yes it's not enough. But it allow to move significant less merchandise thanks to that small fraction. We can't make shrimps, we can't make enough milk for butter, cream, cheese and direct milk to drink but in a de-centralized economical model it's economically sound develop as much as possible such local resources and so the fraction of long-haul food logistics we need it far reduced. Similarly in single-family homes there is room to stock foods AND the interest of doing it witch means a lot less packaging and so less logistics for them. For instance instead of buying sooo many bottles per year I buy oil in 5 or 10 liters jar, I drop the oil in small oil cruets for normal usage. Similar for wine/beer/vinegar. Instead of buying small individually packed cheeses I buy large ones and freeze all I can freeze, stock in the fridge those who can last few MONTHS and so on. Summing this allow to pollute LESS than being concentrated in small areas and small buildings. USA suburbs are too dense and only residential to be sustainable, a Rivieras is a place where homes are not one attached to another and only residential but a mix of residential and commercial small buildings with enough space around for nature.
So no, I do not makes an error giving up large highways. Certain goods will be more expensive, favoring a local-first economy. Diversification is pushed instead of being massacred so we have our MAIN source of innovation and strength.
That's is. Beside that: do you think tall buildings in cities are eternal? Did you try to imaging how to rebuild them when they'll be EOL? Try just to compute such costs.
I suppose you agree we need economy of scale: where is now economy of scale? We have megafactories, factory-states, consumer-states, ZERO economy of scale ANYWHERE. We do not have real innovation anymore, just popularisation and improvements of existing tech/new use of old tech. We have reached evolutive limits in most areas. What's the future you imaging?
> I'm not talking in CO₂ terms but in pollution terms.
The topic was "If we all cycled like the Dutch, global emissions would drop 700M tonnes".
Some forms of pollution are more critical than others.
> it's economically sound develop as much as possible such local resources and so the fraction of long-haul food logistics we need it far reduced
We had such an economy. Turns out canal and then rail are far more efficient at moving goods than roads. So much so that canal and then rail hubs became important towns and cities.
Cheap fossil fuels then made road transport more economical, allowing suburban and exurban sprawl, like what you enjoy.
> I buy large ones and freeze all I can freeze
You know that people who live in the city can do that too, right? We keep bulk foods in our basement storage, where it's dark and cool.
In the US, Latter Day Saints ("Mormons") believe they should have a three months to a year of food in storage, and many Mormons live in Salt Lake City.
> do you think tall buildings in cities are eternal
"Tall buildings" is a common misdirection by people who don't like cities. "Tall" can be 5 stories, like the one I live in, or it can be 100 stories, like a skyscraper.
No buildings are eternal, including rural ones. Tearing down and building a new 5 story building with 20 apartments is not hard. Likely cheaper than tearing down and re-building 20 free-standing houses. Have you computed the costs?
And a lot of people live in urban areas in detached houses, and "with a mix of residential and commercial small buildings with enough space around for nature."
> ZERO economy of scale ANYWHERE
I can't see how anyone with a basic sense of production history can make that claim.
Even on a physical level, big cargo ships are much cheaper per ton-mile than smaller ones. That's why we have 20,000 TEU+ container ships.
> Some forms of pollution are more critical than others.
Definitively not CO₂... It was chosen just because we can lower it, while we can't with other pollutant...
> We had such an economy. Turns out canal and then rail are far more efficient at moving goods than roads. So much so that canal and then rail hubs became important towns and cities.
That's a VERY interesting point: back then being in a certain place means live better than some other places, so people concentrate. Now? Allow me to quote a little bit more talking about stocking foods, yes it's possible everywhere there is room to store. In dense European cities there is no room for significant storage, the more a building is newer the less space it offer. We start to see people looking for OLD buildings to have more room just to WFH in hybrid (absurd) setups. And that's pose another issue: in dense EU cities there is no room to evolve. Try Google StreetView in some cities of the center and south. How can you rebuild a building without road access (YES, in some large EU cities some "poor housing" was built in the '60s with ONLY stairs to access on the side of a hill with a single road, lately they added some lift, but still NO ROAD nor no room to make one). How can you even plan to demolish a building where such activity demand to relocate 100+ people and blocks few roads FOR MONTHS in places so dense that there is no alternative path or there are very few and obscene?
I do not know enough USA average situation but in center and south EU cities are dead, there is no way to evolve them behind relocating their resident and rebuild them from scratch a thing so expensive nobody even imaging it, and since relocation is needed anyway better to build something without such horrid evolution problem.
Now on economy of scale: what's produced these days in cities? In EU and I bet also in USA on average almost NOTHING. IN the past cities was the place where all artisans go, so where there is competition, and the innovation, low price and specialization. Now only few giants produce, all the rest resell their goods directly or use their machines to produce something with the raw materials the giants supply. We have reached the point of having restaurants without kitchens, they got a different menu per day, packed often pre-heated food on time, they just serve it. We have dishwashers of some vendors made to "work best with our dishes" and so on. That's why I say there is no more economy of scale.
> Even on a physical level, big cargo ships are much cheaper per ton-mile than smaller ones. That's why we have 20,000 TEU+ container ships.
Sure they are cheaper, but they are JUST A PART of a logistic chain. They are cheaper IF there is a mass production, mass shipping, mass unloading in a restricted area. Actually such cheapness is unsustainable. Did you remember the "panic" where the Ever giver stranded in the suez Canal? In IT terms the name is SPOF.
The idea of the world as a factory, just-in-time productions etc have proven to be cheap WHEN ANYTHING GOES WELL, and a damn disaster when anything break even a little bit. A civilization can't take such risk. That's why we see back in fashion the self-sufficient model, witch alone can't work either, NK Juche policy as a good example. Ancient Roman's have a proverb in medio stat virtus (in the mean lie the virtue), witch means we can't be self-sufficient, and we can't be all specialized in a just-in-time giant factory. We can't be in the contryside nor in city. We need a mean way, that's the Riviera model.
Did you know there are only 8500 coal power plants in the entire world, and they produce 20% of CO2 emissions?
In fact it’s only a subset of those that are really bad.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/five-percent-power...
Decades and decades of “don’t eat meat”, “don’t fly”, …
And all we had to do was stop using coal a couple decades ago.