151–159 of 159 posts
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> We can't easily pack humans more densely into trucks We basically can, with decent urban transit and rail services.
How many pounds of people can fit in a bus? How many pounds of potatoes? People need vastly more room than produce.
>> Around 60% of Oosterwold is set aside to support "urban agriculture", cutting the climate-change impact of food miles I don't see how this helps. An urban farm is not nearly as efficient as a true industrial farm. They don't have the economies of scale. They are limited as to chemical use (both pesticides and fertilizer) and have to deal with noise complaints. Urban farms are also, nearly universally, fed by potab…
I'm not super knowledgeable about this however NL is a powerhouse of agricultural technology, they're a tiny country that's the 2nd largest food exporter in the world. There is a lot of really really interesting technology implemented there that will possibly make them a superpower once food crises become more frequent with climate change.
The real question is: should it really be used to for that purpose. Does it make sense that the Netherlands is the second biggest exporter of tomatoes in the world? The easy answer to that is: no. The more complicated one is: also no.
To actually produces these vegetables in -let's be generous- less than ideal climate, they have huge gas-heated greenhouses, with 24/7 lighting. That is anything but sustainable.
Of course they are highly-efficient greenhouses, combining heating with electricity production, allowing to minimize the use of chemical inputs etc, etc, etc. But in the end, the gas prices they got were so cheap, that they would simply burn gas to produce and resell electricity, and vent the heat in the atmosphere.. Oh well..
What about them pigs? Does it make sense to have about as many pigs as inhabitants in such a densely populated country?
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It's not cutting the climate-change impact of food. It's cutting the climate-change impact of food miles. As you say, overall it's making things worse, e.g. increasing the climate-change impact of every other delivery but food.
Food-miles sound good, but the reality of modern shipping is that it takes far less energy to move food than grow it. The carbon/energy cost of bringing a plant product from a hot country to a cold country is far less than the energy needed to grow that product in a cold country. That's why nobody grows bananas in new york. We could, but the cost/energy to do so is hugely more than the energy to ship bananas from pla…
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Urban areas are not just walkable but walk-centric. They are built under the assumption that most people don't move faster than 4-5 km/h. Places that want to attract people must be close to each other in local centers, or people don't go to them. Bicycles are more suburban than urban. Because they allow people to move flexibly at a relatively high speed, they encourage suburban structure, where things are spread out…
You have clearly never been to any Dutch city. Bicycles are priority #1 even in the most crammed and tight spaces, and thus the distinction between "urban" and "suburban" becomes completely mangled. There's simply places with less space (Amsterdam) and places with a little more space (Almere). Does that make Almere a suburb? Possibly depending on your perspective, but there is nil relation to bicycles. Now, of course…
But on top of that, there's bicycle paths and sidewalks everywhere. Cars are not your only option; just one of the options for leaving the city (there are also plenty of trains and buses). It's a well-designed suburb, rather than the bleak car-only sprawls of the US.
To give a Dutch perspective: Lots of Dutch people would not be found dead in Almere (founded in '76), for a long time it was basically a satellite city of Amsterdam where people went to sleep. Then in the mid 90's it started to change: companies realized that the daily traffic jam to Amsterdam in the morning and to Almere in the evening was a major obstacle, so why not relocate the company to Almere? And this caused…
To give a Dutch perspective: Lots of Dutch people would not be found dead in Almere (founded in '76), for a long time it was basically a satellite city of Amsterdam where people went to sleep. Then in the mid 90's it started to change: companies realized that the daily traffic jam to Amsterdam in the morning and to Almere in the evening was a major obstacle, so why not relocate the company to Almere? And this caused…
I grew up in Hoofddorp, and it's fairly similar. Not a lot to do there. Rapid growing town where people sleep while they work elsewhere, although that has been changing. Also built in a polder, although a slightly older one than Almere.
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Not exactly. Almere is not walkable but it is bikable. The main issue is whether or not bikability can supplant walkability in terms of providing everything an urban area needs to thrive. For me, walking > biking > cars and you cannot create the same dynamic urban environment if an area is not walkable.
Yes, that's why I asked what a "walkable" city can provide in terms of providing everything an urban area needs to thrive, that a city with Almere's infrastructure can't? The way I see it, the city centre is perfectly walkable and thus can provide everything needed (the reasons it doesn't have more to do with Almere's history), while being accessible to everyone in the "suburbs" with practically zero of the downsides…
There is a lack of necessary dynamic spaces that change in character throughout the day as people flow in and out that you look for in great urban areas. There is no real mix of residential, commercial, park, and event space that create a dynamic living environment.
We can keep going back and forth but it seems like you don't really understand the value of having an entire city be walkable, not the the city center. Because just having a walkable center is not a great urban city; it's the definition of poor planning reminiscent of suburbs all over the world.
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Yes, that's why I asked what a "walkable" city can provide in terms of providing everything an urban area needs to thrive, that a city with Almere's infrastructure can't? The way I see it, the city centre is perfectly walkable and thus can provide everything needed (the reasons it doesn't have more to do with Almere's history), while being accessible to everyone in the "suburbs" with practically zero of the downsides…
I don't know if there is a language barrier going on but I'm explicitly saying that Almere is not a walkable city (in most of the residents being able to rely on walking to complete most of their daily tasks). The majority of neighborhoods where people live are ~10 blocks wide stretches of identical row homes pretty spaced out around a town center without amenities in their neighborhood. https://imgur.com/a/xgbRE15 T…
It feels like it :P I'm not asking if Almere is walkable or not, but why you think that it is bad that it is not.
In other words:
> We can keep going back and forth but it seems like you don't really understand the value of having an entire city be walkable
Indeed, I'd like you to explain this to me, especially in the context of a city that is bikable. What does it mean for an environment to be "more dynamic"? As far as I can see, people switch between residential and commercial areas, parks, and event spaces all the time - it's just that they take the bike to do so.
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Regardless, the relative price of food is usually a reasonable proxy for the amount of energy that went into its production. If the food from the urban farm is more expensive than equivalent food from an industrial farm, it probably took more energy to produce (and consequently probably released more greenhouse gases during its production).
I find your message confusing, when you say price, do you talk about final retail price or production cost? (fruits and vegetable are high margin products in food distribution) When you talk about energy, do you take into account human labour? Natural ressources are considered free in our current economic system, that is why it is cheaper to grow food by damaging the amazonian forest with nasty coal/oil fed machine r…