PD Smith

Why living in the countryside is not green

01 December 2009 | cities, climate change | 2 comments

Wired JanuaryThe lat­est issue of Wired UK, “Reboot­ing Britain”, has a piece by me on how cities can help us to save the plan­et.

It’s based on research I’m doing for my next book which explores the past, present and future of cities. Here’s a taster:

“For the first time in his­to­ry, more than half the world’s pop­u­la­tion live in cities: by 2030, three out of five peo­ple will be city dwellers. But the British are buck­ing this trend. The 2001 cen­sus revealed an “exo­dus from the cities”. Since 1981, Greater Lon­don and the six for­mer met­ro­pol­i­tan coun­ties of Greater Man­ches­ter, Mersey­side, South York­shire, Tyne and Wear, West Mid­lands and West York­shire have lost some 2.25 mil­lion peo­ple in net migra­tion exchanges with the rest of the UK; in recent years this trend has accel­er­at­ed. This is not sus­tain­able. British peo­ple need to be cured of the insid­i­ous fan­ta­sy of leav­ing the city and own­ing a house in the coun­try: their roman­tic dream will become a night­mare for peo­ple else­where on the plan­et.”

There’s also a great piece by sci­ence fic­tion author Paul McAuley on the tech­no­log­i­cal changes that could make cities car­bon neu­tral:

“From the air, the ide­al green city should resem­ble Mayan ruins pok­ing out of a lush for­est. Under the canopy, there’ll be dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed but diverse and vibrant streets hum­ming with every kind of human life. Utopi­an? You bet.”

Read my arti­cle here and Paul’s here.

2 comments so far:

  1. Invictus_88 | 10 April 2010

    This evening I found your web­site’s URL scrib­bled into the mar­gin of a bun­dle of writ­ten notes for my dis­ser­ta­tion, but I could­n’t think why. Your blog isn’t obvi­ous­ly rel­e­vant to Anar­chism, Hakim Bey, or piracy…but then I scrolled down to this arti­cle, and the pen­ny dropped!

    Excel­lent arti­cle in Wired. I hat­ed it, actu­al­ly, but it’s the sort of chal­leng­ing stuff peo­ple need in order to get their brains fir­ing on all cylin­ders.

    A few crit­i­cisms;

    i.
    Tax­ing peo­ple out of their desires sim­ply means peo­ple end up pay­ing more for those desires and devel­op a(n even) greater resent­ment toward the gov­ern­ment. All ‘lux­u­ry’ tax­es prove this.

    ii.
    Big hous­es _anywhere_ are less effi­cient. The imbal­ance of emis­sions between urban and rur­al pop­u­la­tions is an argu­ment in favour of more afford­able hous­ing in the coun­try­side, not in favour of the attempt to to tax peo­ple off their farm­hous­es and into apart­ment blocks.

    iii.
    The top-down think­ing of the arti­cle sug­gests a weird dystopi­an future in which the State can demand that peo­ple live where they would rather not, and may only live in those places they want to live if their “jobs require them” to. Mad­ness!

    Tak­en — how­ev­er — along­side McAuley’s arti­cle, it seems more palat­able. How­ev­er the empha­sis is clear; if top-down pol­i­cy is to do any good, it will only be in mak­ing sus­tain­able, enjoy­able, urban liv­ing an attrac­tive, com­fort­able and excit­ing prospect.

    _Not_ by yet anoth­er tax passed by the sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrites in Par­lia­ment.

  2. PD Smith | 10 April 2010

    Thanks for that. I agree we should do every­thing pos­si­ble to invest in cities in order to make them attrac­tive so that peo­ple want to live there. No one likes tax­es. But they can be a use­ful tool, as in dis­cour­ag­ing peo­ple from smok­ing.

    I agree too that big (detached) hous­es are gen­er­al­ly less effi­cient whether they are in the city or coun­try­side. How­ev­er, you for­got to men­tion the issue of trans­port. Peo­ple in the coun­try­side — in big and small hous­es — dri­ve every­where. In the city peo­ple can walk to the shops or use pub­lic trans­port.

    Also, it is much more effi­cient to sup­ply peo­ple with ser­vices in dense­ly pop­u­lat­ed areas.