mightychurch.com

What areas of Sydney do you think this could this happen in if the oil crisis hits on top of the current financial crisis? About 10 minutes.

http://kcet.org/socal/2008/09/foreclosure-alley.html

Personally, I’m guessing some of the McMansion McSuburbs out west are pretty vulnerable, especially if they are far from infrastructure like rail and shops.

Wow, it’s pretty incredible seeing those guys removing anything and everything left behind in a foreclosed house, and just how much stuff is left behind, how bizarre.

It certainly has the air of unreality about it - people living in these bizarre, McMansion homes in these new, contrived suburbs, all of which it is, it turns out, a facade, and then they have to leave with not much when reality catches up with them. What a fantasy land, how bizarre.

Like the reporter said - you hear about the numbers & statistics, but it’s quite another thing seeing the reality of it.

Also, can I just say I die a little inside every time a go out west into McMansion land? I don’t really care that people spend a lot on their house, it’s just the sheer lack of design, thought or consideration in the houses and suburbs out there that really turns me off. I mean if you want to build an awesome house, great! But why is having seventeen gigantic, beige rooms you never use a good thing? He who dies with the most floorspace wins?

Yep, that’s it, exactly!

The other effect of course is that there is no “soul” to the town plan that encourages these monsters. I mean, just looking at the area below makes you want to pull up a chair in the middle of the street, grab a coffee, and enjoy the mood of the carefully designed public spaces! Not!  ;-)

Yep, an environment to raise children in!

Whereas if we just allow people to live in up to 4 storeys above shops and Cafe’s, we create cheap accommodation, create “dense and diverse” living, and yet retain local parks and “some” homes with backyards. Remember, New Urbanism means that:-
1.Every family is just 5 minutes walk from a beautifully designed park, also a “public courtyard” or space, shops, post-office, and everything you need is in 10 minutes.
2.It was the development of choice for the last 5000 years, until we all became addicted to the car and we let developers take a whole region and just put in “suburbia”.
3. If we build it, they will come. If we just build enough rail, New Urbanism will naturally spring up around the transport nodes, also giving the local suburbs something to plug into (until they can eventually be rezoned and salvaged, turned back into local agriculture).

This is not just a “shopping” precinct, but a neighbourhood and lifestyle.

My boy sold his house above keilor in March last year and bought two basic but new cranbourne homes within walking distance of public trans and a shopping hub.  Moved out of the 400 to 500large per house to the 200/300large per house allotments that are in the transport/shopping hub ......it’s about two car household playing one car household…..my own ‘rough as you like’  financial planning methods has seen my family tightening their belts for two years now.  Myself, I had a solicitor go after my super last year and I was able to distribute it amongst my family by fiscal end 07/08…...cost me $7000 in legal and accountancy help but got out well ahead of the crash.
My wifes cousin has lived and worked in Hong Kong since he left his aussie govt job assisting PapuaNewGuinea govt years ago and has worked HongKong for 25 years since.  He is an accountants accountant and a partner in a global finance company.
End of 07 he was on my back to consolidate as he sold his own properties in HongKong. (my wifes his favourite cousin and he hastled me often)
He was the one pushing my sons house sale away from the mcmansion.  He told us to cash our super / or move it away from the stock market to gold if possible.(but not resources).......this was 07.

Tried my hardest to get through to my own older sister who sold her own investment property in melb central (even made the investment rags on the net as a coup in optimising your investment)  She went ahead and invested the money in mainly the mining sector .....this was early 08 :rolleyes:  .......then went on and extended holiday in Chili/galapagos through sept/nov ......hasn’t been terribly well since.  4 million bucks went in ......not sure how it’s going and haven’t asked :(

I of all people shouldn’t laugh as it’s my own sister ...but really! the greedy are getting theirs!.....I think the frugal amongst us that have been sensible in all their investments (personally use the Bendigo Community Bank Inglewood (‘tis our own community bank of which my wife and I are investors)) won’t be in too much strife if this gets deeper.

I tried to tell some others on another forum that I’d been a loved member for years ......in their stock market thread…....and I ended up the crazy conspiracy loon so I stopped telling them. That was 07 and I gave up as I really know nothing about world finance (apparently neither did anyone else)

Is an interesting time though. 
We got my son to sell his concrete cutting business (commercial&domestic;) to his best mate who was into infrastructure ......he works as a subbie and is happier than ever.  They have 4 years of freeway alone ahead of them between burnley tunnel and bolte bridge without anything else….and airport /dams /desal plant etc
all infrastructure and where to be.
any young blokes out there looking to enter the workforce and only have minimal education and want/need a 100 grand plus / year .........go learn “hot gloving” and go get work on our power grid. You’ll be travelling all over this country but that never hurt anyone starting out.
anyone interested should google the rest ;)

Interesting story, and I wish mine matched it.

I knew about the potential, but did not quite know when, and which was going to hit first. But with family health issues and a business to run, I just never quite got around to figuring out how to cash my super.

Sadly, I knew about it from about 2005. My best man wrote about the combination of peak oil and financial crisis coming as the “Perfect storm approaches America”.
http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/2005/08/perfect-storm-approaches-america.html
I got him onto the oil thing in 2004, but he’s always had an eye out for economic theory. Sadly, I just did not heed my own advice. I was quite unwell at the time though. Not enough “Dr Who” or “Simpsons” in my life probably. ;-)

Dave, I wish I’d understood all the other stuff he’d told me but unfortunately I don’t understand this financial crap really at all.  I’m the poor end of my family but I sleep a little better than most.
We could talk about the neocoms etc and the spin that got us here ......but you end up being seen as a conspiracy loon as I said.
Lots of things wrong and still being denied .....I’m guessing the pain will be worse than any imagine.

‘Transport Hubs’ as mentioned above seems to be the key to ‘where to buy’
at the moment.

I still have a daughter with two children who is renting but owns her own serviced acre block in a small leafie country town and wondering when is the right time to build (looks alright at the moment I keep telling her ....but she is cautious like her dad)
and another daughter with one child who has the $160,000 house and a little equity.
.....both have own income but are struggling to save.

I may be retired and out of it myself but still I worry about our kids. :(

It mainly about securing maybe diversifying your personal income to protect yourself and family I guess…....trouble is everybody’s guessing.

I don’t really believe in conspiracy theories. Human beings are generally just not smart enough to pull them off. I do, however, believe in public misinformation, laziness, and corporate greed. These things can lead to a public “consensus trance” where we all agree that everything is OK — until it isn’t.

Heeeehehhehhehee! ‘not smart enough! heheheee

.....and there lays the problem! :rolleyes:

Thing that still kind of alarms me to this day… even after getting over my “anxiety stuff” from 2004/2005… is the cold, hard fact that 97% of our goods are freighted by truck. So if peak oil hits really hard, and the “Export Land Model” turns out to be as desperate as some think it will (basically halving Australia’s oil imports over the next 10 to 15 years) then we’ve got a LOT of rail to build, or a LOT more produce to grow more locally around our main cities.

But in your time, you’ve no doubt watched city boundaries gradually creeping out over once profitable agricultural land?

I’ll say it again…. 97% of our stuff arrives by truck.
We live in a very fragile society.

Interesting little photo essay on urban decay: Stores that are no more - Time. “Photographer Brain Ulrich’s images explore the haunted landscape of America’s devastated retail landscape.”

Yes Luke - very emotive photos. Seemed like I was in a sci-fi movie - and everyone had disappeared off the planet. All that was missing were some tumbleweeds blowing through the scenes. So many Bible verses come to mind about not building up treasures that only rust and decay. Thanks for the reflective link.

Wow, I wasn’t expecting to see this happen so fast? Naaah, it’s not the oil thing yet… just a small foretaste. One of the crankiest, funniest New Urbanists / peak oilers I enjoy listening to is James Howard Kunstler. I tell you guys, some of these episodes are fairly dark, but others are side-splittingly funny. The way James tells it the following headlines are just a foretaste.
http://www.kunstlercast.com/
(You can subscribe to Kunstlercast in iTunes… just download an episode that seems to interest you fore a taste).

Anyway, from Luke’s treasure trove of images comes the following link….
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884756,00.html

The American suburb as we know it is dying. The implosion began with the housing bust, which started in and has hit hardest the once vibrant neighborhoods outside the urban core. Shopping malls and big-box retail stores, the commercial anchors of the suburbs, are going dark — an estimated 148,000 stores closed last year, the most since 2001. But the shift is deeper than the economic downturn. Thanks to changing demographics, including a steady decline in the percentage of households with kids and a growing preference for urban amenities among Americans young and old, the suburban dream of the big house with the big lawn is vanishing. The Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech predicts that by 2025 there will be a surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (on one-sixth of an acre [675 sq m] or more) in the U.S.

Environmentalists will celebrate the demise of sprawling suburbs, which left the nation addicted to cars. But all the steel, concrete and asphalt that went into making the suburbs can’t simply be tossed out in favor of something new, even if it’s perfectly green. That would be worse. “As much as possible, we need to redirect development to existing communities and infrastructure,” says Kaid Benfield, director of the smart-growth program at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Otherwise, we’re just eating up more land and natural resources.”

The suburbs need to be remade, and just such a transformation is under way in regions that were known for some of the worst sprawl in the U.S. Communities as diverse as Lakewood, Colo., and Long Beach, Calif., have repurposed boarded-up malls as mixed-use developments with retail stores, offices and apartments. In auto-dependent suburbs that were built without a traditional center, shopping malls offer the chance to create downtowns without destroying existing infrastructure, by recycling what’s known as underperforming asphalt. “All of these projects are developer-driven, because the market wants them,” says Ellen Dunham-Jones, a co-author of the new book Retrofitting Suburbia.

Not every suburb will make it. The fringes of a suburb like Riverside in Southern California, where housing prices have fallen more than 20% since the bust began, could be too diffuse to thrive in a future where density is no longer taboo. It’ll be the older inner suburbs like Tysons Corner, Va., that will have the mass transit, public space and economic gravity to thrive postrecession. Though creative cities will grow more attractive for empty-nest -retirees and young graduates alike, we won’t all be moving to New York. Many Americans will still prefer the space of the suburbs — including the parking spaces. “People want to balance the privacy of the suburbs with more public and social areas,” says Dunham-Jones. But the result will be a U.S. that is more sustainable — environmentally and economically.

Was I right or was I right? Yet this trend has hardly started…. another 5 or 10 or 15 years will see the real game unfold.

Hi David McKay,

Peak Oil Peak Oil
Do you buy ethanol E10?
Sounds cheaper and I look at the mighty 3 cents per litre, but Choice magazine says it’s dearer because it uses up more fuel!
What do you think?

I think cars are not really the way to go because:-
1. They involve too much “embodied energy” ... the energy it takes to construct them and their infrastructure (highways, roads, car parks etc) is about half the energy of the whole car system, and the other half is their fuel.
2. Cars, even high tech Prius or Electric Vehicles, all require certain “rare earths” and we are starting to run out of all rare earths in the next few years. This century is “peak everything” not just peak oil… and rare earths like indium, hafnium, gallium, etc are all on the way out very shortly!
3. So we have to prioritise the WHOLE metals system on recycling and efficiency, because we are running out of everything.

Based on a recent United States Geological Study, Lester Brown informs us that we will exhaust known stores of several vital metals within the next two to three generations, based on a reasonable estimation of 2% growth in extraction.1 While recycling efforts have accelerated, virgin materials are still being harvested at an alarming rate.

So, while Lester Brown also recommends the cost-efficiency of EV’s running on wind electricity & biofuels, I’m personally against the car society!
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2008/Update75.htm

Instead we should:

REZONE for New Urbanism,
RAIL to city centres (electric Trains, trams, trolley buses and a few emergency services vehicles and delivery trucks),
REDESIGN Industrial Ecosystems to turn “waste into food” (biological waste into local agriculture, industrial waste into local metals and materials),
REPLENISH the soil with Biochar (and closed nutrient agricultural / sewerage cycles),
RESTORE local ecosystems (because businesses will be relying on locally grown produce and materials),  and
REDUCE global population by using 5% of the world’s military budget to give 3rd world developing nations all the adequate requirements of life, thereby causing a global demographic transition.

If we don’t do the above soon, the results could be quite traumatic.

Dave: naughty naughty.

Do you drive one of these car thingies? do you buy ethanol petrol?

I do. I bought a Mistubishi Station Wagon 6 cylinder beast before I knew about peak oil. The embodied energy in the car means I’ll probably save society some energy just driving it for the next decade until we finally see what happens. (The little I do drive, anyway. Working from home and living pretty locally means I only do about 8000 to 10000km a year. Also, we have 100% green electricity here AND a solar water heater to try and bring our energy costs down, AND a wood fired heater for winter. Still we are energy pigs running a business from home).

E10? From memory, what you quoted sounds about right… cheaper, but less bang for your buck so maybe about the same. Depends which energy reports you read.

Now remember I’m no scientist but an activist that reads a lot of executive summaries… so don’t ask me questions too specific about the formulae/ conversions / energy equations. Better to join Yahoo’s ROEOZ for all that jazz, or wiki it, or go to Energy Bulletin and click on the side energy panel to see what the latest headlines are for your inquiry.

However, the following might help.

*****
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
Ethanol-based engines
Ethanol is most commonly used to power automobiles, though it may be used to power other vehicles, such as farm tractors and airplanes. Ethanol (E100) consumption in an engine is approximately 51% higher than for gasoline since the energy per unit volume of ethanol is 34% lower than for gasoline.[14][15] However, the higher compression ratios in an ethanol-only engine allow for increased power output and better fuel economy than could be obtained with lower compression ratios.[16][17] In general, ethanol-only engines are tuned to give slightly better power and torque output than gasoline-powered engines. In flexible fuel vehicles, the lower compression ratio requires tunings that give the same output when using either gasoline or hydrated ethanol. For maximum use of ethanol’s benefits, a much higher compression ratio should be used,[18] which would render that engine unsuitable for gasoline use. When ethanol fuel availability allows high-compression ethanol-only vehicles to be practical, the fuel efficiency of such engines should be equal or greater than current gasoline engines. The mileage (miles-per-gallon) is therefore usually 20-30% higher than a gasoline-only engine.[19]

A 2004 MIT study[20] and an earlier paper published by the Society of Automotive Engineers[21] identify a method to exploit the characteristics of fuel ethanol substantially better than mixing it with gasoline. The method presents the possibility of leveraging the use of alcohol to achieve definite improvement over the cost-effectiveness of hybrid electric. The improvement consists of using dual-fuel direct-injection of pure alcohol (or the azeotrope or E85) and gasoline, in any ratio up to 100% of either, in a turbocharged, high compression-ratio, small-displacement engine having performance similar to an engine having twice the displacement. Each fuel is carried separately, with a much smaller tank for alcohol. The high-compression (which increases efficiency) engine will run on ordinary gasoline under low-power cruise conditions. Alcohol is directly injected into the cylinders (and the gasoline injection simultaneously reduced) only when necessary to suppress ‘knock’ such as when significantly accelerating. Direct cylinder injection raises the already high octane rating of ethanol up to an effective 130. The calculated over-all reduction of gasoline use and CO2 emission is 30%. The consumer cost payback time shows a 4:1 improvement over turbo-diesel and a 5:1 improvement over hybrid. In addition, the problems of water absorption into pre-mixed gasoline (causing phase separation), supply issues of multiple mix ratios and cold-weather starting are avoided.

Ethanol’s higher octane rating allows an increase of an engine’s compression ratio for increased thermal efficiency.[16] In one study, complex engine controls and increased exhaust gas recirculation allowed a compression ratio of 19.5 with fuels ranging from neat ethanol to E50. Thermal efficiency up to approximately that for a diesel was achieved.[22] This would result in the MPG (miles per gallon) of a dedicated ethanol vehicle to be about the same as one burning gasoline.

Since 1989 there have also been ethanol engines based on the diesel principle operating in Sweden.[23] They are used primarily in city buses, but also in distribution trucks, and waste collectors use this technology. The engines, made by Scania, have a modified compression ratio, and the fuel (known as ED95) used is a mix of 93.6 % ethanol and 3.6 % ignition improver, and 2.8% denaturants.[24] The ignition improver makes it possible for the fuel to ignite in the diesel combustion cycle. It is then also possible to use the energy efficiency of the diesel principle with ethanol.

[edit] Engine cold start during the winter
The Brazilian 2008 Honda Civic flex-fuel has outside direct access to the secondary reservoir gasoline tank in the front right side, the corresponding fuel filler door is shown by the arrow.

High ethanol blends present a problem to achieve enough vapor pressure for the fuel to evaporate and spark the ignition during cold weather. When vapor pressure is below 45 kPa starting a cold engine becomes difficult.[25] In order to avoid this problem at temperatures below 11 ° Celsius (59 °F), and to reduce ethanol higher emissions during cold weather, both the US and the European markets adopted E85 as the maximum blend to be used in their flexible fuel vehicles, and they are optimized to run at such a blend. At places with harsh cold weather, the ethanol blend in the US has a seasonal reduction to E70 for these very cold regions, though it is still sold as E85.[26][27] At places where temperatures fall below -12 °C (10 °F) during the winter, it is recommended to install an engine heater system, both for gasoline and E85 vehicles. Sweden has a similar seasonal reduction, but the ethanol content in the blend is reduced to E75 during the winter months.[27][28]

Brazilian flex fuel vehicles can operate with ethanol mixtures up to E100, which is hydrous ethanol (alcohol with up to 4% water), which causes vapor pressure to drop faster as compared to E85 vehicles, and as a result, Brazilian flex vehicles are built with a small secondary gasoline reservoir located near the engine to avoid starting problems in cold weather. The cold start with pure gasoline is particularly necessary for users of Brazil’s southern and central regions, where temperatures normally drop below 15 ° Celsius (59 °F) during the winter. An improved flex motor generation that will be launched in 2009 will eliminate the need for this secondary gas storage tank.[29][30]

[edit] Ethanol fuel mixtures
For more details on this topic, see Common ethanol fuel mixtures.
Hydrated ethanol × gasoline type C price table for use in Brazil

To avoid engine stall due to “slugs” of water in the fuel lines interrupting fuel flow, the fuel must exist as a single phase. The fraction of water that an ethanol-gasoline fuel can contain without phase separation increases with the percentage of ethanol.[31]. This shows, for example, that E30 can have up to about 2% water. If there is more than about 71% ethanol, the remainder can be any proportion of water or gasoline and phase separation will not occur. However, the fuel mileage declines with increased water content. The increased solubility of water with higher ethanol content permits E30 and hydrated ethanol to be put in the same tank since any combination of them always results in a single phase. Somewhat less water is tolerated at lower temperatures. For E10 it is about 0.5% v/v at 70 F and decreases to about 0.23% v/v at -30 F.[32]

In many countries cars are mandated to run on mixtures of ethanol. Brazil requires cars be suitable for a 25% ethanol blend, and has required various mixtures between 22% and 25% ethanol, since of July 2007 25% is required. The United States allows up to 10% blends, and some states require this (or a smaller amount) in all gasoline sold. Other countries have adopted their own requirements. Beginning with the model year 1999, an increasing number of vehicles in the world are manufactured with engines which can run on any fuel from 0% ethanol up to 100% ethanol without modification. Many cars and light trucks (a class containing minivans, SUVs and pickup trucks) are designed to be flexible-fuel vehicles (also called dual-fuel vehicles). In older model years, their engine systems contained alcohol sensors in the fuel and/or oxygen sensors in the exhaust that provide input to the engine control computer to adjust the fuel injection to achieve stochiometric (no residual fuel or free oxygen in the exhaust) air-to-fuel ratio for any fuel mix. In newer models, the alcohol sensors have been removed, with the computer using only oxygen and airflow sensor feedback to estimate alcohol content. The engine control computer can also adjust (advance) the ignition timing to achieve a higher output without pre-ignition when it predicts that higher alcohol percentages are present in the fuel being burned. This method is backed up by advanced knock sensors - used in most high performance gasoline engines regardless of whether they’re designed to use ethanol or not - that detect pre-ignition and detonation.

[edit] Fuel economy

In theory, all fuel-driven vehicles have a fuel economy (measured as miles per US gallon, or liters per 100 km) that is directly proportional to the fuel’s energy content.[33]In reality, there are many other variables that come in to play that affect the performance of a particular fuel in a particular engine. Ethanol contains approx. 34% less energy per unit volume than gasoline, and therefore in theory, burning pure ethanol in a vehicle will result in a 34% reduction in miles per US gallon, given the same fuel economy, compared to burning pure gasoline. This assumes that the octane ratings of the fuels, and thus the engine’s ability to extract energy from the fuels, are the same.[14][15] For E10 (10% ethanol and 90% gasoline), the effect is small (~3%) when compared to conventional gasoline,[34] and even smaller (1-2%) when compared to oxygenated and reformulated blends.[35] However, for E85 (85% ethanol), the effect becomes significant. E85 will produce lower mileage than gasoline, and will require more frequent refueling. Actual performance may vary depending on the vehicle. Based on EPA tests for all 2006 E85 models, the average fuel economy for E85 vehicles resulted 25.56% lower than unleaded gasoline.[36] The EPA-rated mileage of current USA flex-fuel vehicles[37] should be considered when making price comparisons, but it must be noted that E85 is a high performance fuel, with an octane rating of about 104, and should be compared to premium. In one estimate[38] the US retail price for E85 ethanol is 2.62 US dollar per gallon or 3.71 dollar corrected for energy equivalency compared to a gallon of gasoline priced at 3.03 dollar. Brazilian cane ethanol (100%) is priced at 3.88 dollar against 4.91 dollar for E25 (as July 2007).

[edit] Consumer production systems

While biodiesel production systems have been marketed to home and business users for many years, commercialized ethanol production systems designed for end-consumer use have lagged in the marketplace. In 2008, two different companies announced home-scale ethanol production systems. The AFS125 Advanced Fuel System[39] from Allard Research and Development is capable of producing both ethanol and biodiesel in one machine, while the E-100 MicroFueler[40] from E-Fuel Corporation is dedicated to ethanol only.

OK all, here’s your 15 minute movie challenge.

This guy was a neuroscientist, and then a successful businessman in a Fortune 500 company with a large house and kids in a private school. He discovered peak oil data, spent years researching it, and now is presenting this online “Crash Course” and DVD for free.

How is America’s coal supply is doing?  What about the world’s uranium? How’s copper production? How are our fisheries? Check it out…
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-18-environmental-data

You can download the entire 3.5 gigabytes of the 3 hour DVD and burn it and watch it on your TV for free if you wish. (And copy it and give it away for free, or even SELL it for $10 each, all with the producer’s permission).
http://www.chrismartenson.com/make-your-own-crash-course-dvds

This one’s for you Dave L:

Huge panoramas of a long, entire street of abandoned houses

Last week I read in the morning paper about a street here where 60 out of 66 homes were vacant or abandoned on a single block. The reporter called it a “ghost street.” Yesterday I found myself in the area. Other than an errant sofa, the street was completely empty, almost peaceful. I took a photo of every house on the north side of one block and then stitched them together. If you were to compare the current international housing crisis to a black hole sucking the equity out of our homes, this one-way street near the northern border of Detroit might just be the singularity: the point where the density of the problem defies anyone’s ability to comprehend it. These homes started emptying in 2006.

Some of the peakniks imagine whole cities like Las Vegas simply being abandoned due to the heat of the desert and lack of essential local agricultural lands that are still viable in a post-oil world, not to mention the lack of big spenders due to generally less mobility and frivolous cash.

I’m yet to be convinced, but it makes for interesting “risk mitigation” scenarios. (I read “Day of the Triffids over Easter and am now reading “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy”). However, maybe Obama has finally been convinced by some of the peak oilers? High speed rail may be coming to America.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/17/135253

David McKay - 20 March 2009 02:07 PM

Dave: naughty naughty.

Do you drive one of these car thingies? do you buy ethanol petrol?

Hi David,
I thought of you when I was reading Scientific American this morning.

Keasling is also looking to engineer microbes to produce what he calls “second-generation” biofuels such as butanol, isopentanol and hexadecane. Though similar in structure to ethanol, these fuels behave much more like gasoline. They contain more energy per volume; a car driving on a gallon of ethanol will go only 67 percent as far as a car on a gallon of gasoline; on butanol, it can go 80 percent as far. And unlike ethanol, these fuels can be used directly in jet and diesel engines.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-next-generation-of-biofuels&page=2

Speaking of New Urbanism, check out these “earthbag homes”. (Like sandbags but filled with earth and clay and whatever.)

http://www.greenhomebuilding.com/earthbag.htm

Doesn’t this stuff just appear more “homey” and smack of Anakin’s quarters on Tatooine?

Check this talk out! From TED 2004, the world’s best public speakers (on all topics)
Great dissection of suburbia and suburban culture, and VERY funny.
Warning: F word included.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/james_howard_kunstler_dissects_suburbia.html

One more reason to adopt New Urbanism instead of trusting in techno-fixes.

on slashdot:

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/25/2121248

“Over at BusinessWeek, Ed Wallace is creating quite a stir, reporting that not only is ethanol proving to be a dud as a fuel substitute, but there is increasing evidence that it is destroying engines in large numbers. Before lobbyists convince the government to increase the allowable amount of ethanol in fuel to 15%, Wallace suggests it’s time to look at ethanol’s effect on smog, fuel efficiency, global warming emissions, and food prices. Wallace concedes there will be some winners if the government moves the ethanol mandate to 15% — auto mechanics, for whom he says it will be the dawn of a new golden age.”

More urban decay for you Dave: 15 housing projects from hell

Despite the title of this list, several of these housing projects were designed by some of the world’s most famous architects and lauded at the time. The undeniable squalor of 19th Century slums combined with modernism to produce and attempt to clean things up and create a crystalline utopia. The end result was often an anti-septic vision of hell, a place devoid of organic spaces and evolved social interaction.

These towers in Paris are particularly freaky:

The word suburb, ‘banlieue’, conjures up something very different in France to the US. Burning cars and desolate tower blocks, rather than SUVs and low-rise strip malls. These superficially rather interesting looking towers are visible from Paris’ financial district, La Defense, and are a reminder of what lies outside of the Peripherique.

US cities may have to have large chunks bulldozed in order to survive!

The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

Personally I don’t think they’ll return it to nature, but eventually be forced to get into local agriculture.

I wasn’t expecting to see this kind of report for another decade or so!?
Maybe this kind of transport is not too far away? ;-)

Masdar ecocity is being built from oil money just outside Abu Dhabi. This NY Times piece raises some interesting perspectives.
* Cars are banned inside the city
* (electric ‘pods’ run in tunnels under the city)
* As a result, it feels a bit like Disneyland
* Super-smart architecture everywhere to reduce air-conditioning costs in the desert. EG: North South streets maxmise shade from East-West arc of the sun, wind towers funnel higher, cooler wind down through the tunnel into the streets, super-dense city construction means everything is walkable and cyclable.

But here’s what really caught my eye:

(This is not only a matter of sustainability; Mr. Foster’s on-site partner, Austin Relton, told me that obesity has become a significant health issue in this part of the Arab world, largely because almost everyone drives to avoid the heat.)