Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain • Hacker News Board

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#111

Post by mmjaa » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

volkl48 wrote: post #103

mmjaa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I completely disagree with you. Having travelled the world, I feel the worst thing we can do is continue with the big cities. They need to be dismantled, and replaced with smaller, lighter, more local communities that do not require so much energy to maintain - very big city requires immense resources to keep it running, every single day. More rural living is what will save us, imho.

Except that is false. A person living in a big city uses drastically less resources and energy than a rural person does. Less/no driving, smaller more energy efficient dwellings (apartment blocks = way more efficient heating/cooling), vastly less infrastructure per capita , etc.

Nonsense. Factor in all the oil that was used to build the resources the city dweller depends on, and to maintain those resources. Factor in the sheer energy waste of cities.

An honest appraisal cannot lead to the conclusion that cities are good for us, energy-wise.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#112

Post by mmjaa » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

geoka9 wrote: post #106

mmjaa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I completely disagree with you. Having travelled the world, I feel the worst thing we can do is continue with the big cities. They need to be dismantled, and replaced with smaller, lighter, more local communities that do not require so much energy to maintain - very big city requires immense resources to keep it running, every single day. More rural living is what will save us, imho.

> very big city requires immense resources to keep it running Because they have immense numbers of people living in them? Anecdotally, living in a high-rise building, I am amazed how much more inefficient living in a single-family house is. From unused space and heat loss to the accumulation of junk in the garage/basement/backyard and constant ongoing maintenance of everything, it just seems to be so much waste of re…

>Because they have immense numbers of people living in them?

Because those people do less to support their own survival locally, and therefore cities require immense intake of energy and resources every day, in order to maintain that lifestyle.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#113

Post by nasmorn » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

glup wrote: post #65

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heck, just look at the thread on the cancellation of Apple's wireless charger. Part of me wished I could post a gif of the daunting and terrifying task of putting a phone in a docking station.

Ya I just buy a new one when my current one runs out of juice.

There is a story from my home town Vienna that a certain celebrity would come to the phone shop ever 2 weeks buying a new battery. That continued for a few months until some clerk asked her what she did with all of those and she was thus introduced to charging.

I know what you are thinking now. The battery lasted 2 weeks!!!

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#114

Post by HillaryBriss » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:20 PM UTC

rujuladanh wrote: post #35

kgwgk wrote: post #31

I think people overestimates how "remote" those "ghost villages" are. They are very small settlements (the article mentions six houses) which may be a few hundred meters from the next inhabited place. It's likely that there are at least ten thousand people living in a 10 miles radius. (I'm refering to the regions that the article talks about, population is much more sparse in other regions in Spain.)

Indeed. Spain is the size of California, so that may give some perspective...

indeed. it's California + 80,000 KM^2 (i.e. about 20% bigger than California)

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#115

Post by goodcanadian » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

samstave wrote: post #91

rorykoehler wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was quite interesting. I knew Tokyo was big but wow! I live in Singapore. I think it's a sweet spot for high density cities.

I was dumbfounded just the other day when i learned that tokyo is 38 million... So basically that one city has the population of caifornia. If i were a wantrapeeneur id be seeing what app services tokyo specifically from and economic and cultural perspective as if you can monitize just fraction of tokyo businesses......

So basically that one city has the population of ca[l]ifornia.

The population of Canada!

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#116

Post by saalweachter » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:37 PM UTC

mojuba wrote: post #108

heliodor wrote: post #104

General opinion seems to be that this is a bad thing but I disagree. Modern life offers us much more than we'd get by being farmers. We also need fewer farmers because of automation and large-scale farming. People want to move to urban areas. Let them, and don't judge.

Was my first thought too, but villages not growing into towns is also an indication of a different problem: it's a demographic disaster of declining birth rates.

Or consolidation of a population via internal migration into a smaller number of larger towns.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#117

Post by chx » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:47 PM UTC

mmjaa wrote: post #110

chx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what the most energy efficient people moving device is? The counterweight elevator. It's true. Cramming a village worth of people into a highrise, surrounding it with walking distance amenities is by far the most efficient, environment friendly way of supplying said populace. Yes, you need trucks to stock said stores but then again, no matter where they live you'd still need those trucks and this way a) e…

Bollocks. It takes amazing amounts of oil to get the cheap stuff to the cities. The only reason these are more 'efficient' is because of arbitrary pricing - if we placed a higher value on oil-consumption, in terms of cost to the Earth, the cheap plastic junk wouldn't be being subsidised by our childrens future. I know its not a popular opinion, but the things that take so much oil to make and transport and deliver to…

Your problem is going to be that you not only need butter but also need a myriad other things and only a few of those can be self sufficient in a small local community. Yes, we shouldn't truck things from half a country away but that doesn't mean the energy consumption / CO2 footprint at the end of the day will be lower for a sprawl than a dense city.

Yes, cutting back to medieval times, wearing homespun, most amenties supplied by the local blacksmith and cobbler and some things supplied by traveling merchants , that'd obviously be more environmentally friendly. I doubt most people are ready to do that. And also -- Malthus would like to have a word with you. No way you can supply this many people with such technology.

Yes, the ultimate green solution is to decrease the amount of people living on Earth but check how China did with the one child policy.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#118

Post by pxndx » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

I've been thinking that if I suddenly had a large sum of money, I'd buy one of these villages, renovate it, add amenities and proper internet, and then rent the individual homes to people that work remote, or set it up as a kind of co-living and co-working space, like a company town.

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#119

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:58 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #97

samstave wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was dumbfounded just the other day when i learned that tokyo is 38 million... So basically that one city has the population of caifornia. If i were a wantrapeeneur id be seeing what app services tokyo specifically from and economic and cultural perspective as if you can monitize just fraction of tokyo businesses......

Tokyo is not a city. It's a metropolitan area and one of the 47 prefectures in Japan. It contains a bunch of special wards, towns and cities inside it with their local governments. The special wards of Tokyo are even called cities in English by the wards themselves. One example is Shibuya City: http://www.city.shibuya.tokyo.jp

[deleted]

Re: Ghost Villages for Sale in Spain

#120

Post by kwindla » Sat, Mar 30, 2019, 8:59 PM UTC

pavlov wrote: post #4

”The company recently got a boost after Gwyneth Paltrow flagged one of its villages on her website as a good Christmas present.” I thought this was a joke, but clicking on the link reveals that a $172k village in Spain was indeed listed in “gift ideas” alongside such more traditional items as a $7700 Hermès surfboard. As fitting a portrait of our present era’s wealth distribution as any. Future generations may look b…

The Goop article that's linked to is titled "The Ridiculous but Awesome Gift Guide." Goop's click-bait content game is strong.

And they're not the only ones, of course. That Hermès surfboard is an amazing artifact of our time, too. (Thanks for noting it -- I would have missed it otherwise.) It's a conspicuous consumption collaboration between Hermès and Ardmore, a media-savvy artists' collective in Kwazulu-Natal.

On the subject of "après nous, le déluge," I once did a product demo for some people who worked for a very wealthy family. TWe didn't have much background info except that the family office was "very interested" in our product (a high-end video conferencing/collaboration environment).

It turned out that the use case revolved around "gifting." I didn't understand what that meant. "The family gives a lot of gifts," was the explanation, "to each other, to other people outside the family." The people I gave the demo to were the two people on staff in charge of gifting. Two full-time people.