Post-Peak Oil urban areas, what will they be like?

I would imagine that suburbs would become transformed from the current low-density sprawl to high-density deveolpment around mass transilt lines connecting one inner city area to another. Governments would have to build a good train/maglev network to get food from farms to the city (maglevsw would probably be better snce they would be powered by electricity, ideally produced by nuclear, fusion, solar, wind, etc, instead of hydrocarbon-pwered trains).

the suburbs will likewise devolve. Multiple families will occupy deteriorating McMansions, while trying to farm what was once a lawn. Rural areas will be plagued by crime as hungry people do whatever is needed to get food.

Of course, the top 0.1% will live quite a lot better....

I regret to say that I'm not kidding. Unfortunately, I'm dead serious and expect to see it in a decade or so.

I disagree about the wealthy having it better, at least after the initial period. They will have armed support, but how long will that support continue, before they realize that they can eliminate the clients, and have it all for themselves. Why would anyone protect some rich fuck, whose greed may have helped bring about this calamity? This is why it behooves EVERYONE to simply work together.

I think we will also see something akin to the novel Snow Crash. As corporate entities take controls of areas in the name of the people they subjugate erm I mean employ. It will be the new feudal Amerikkka. You will stay fed and clothed at the pleasure of your omnipotent CEO as long as you continue to work for your sponsoring corporation - much as it is now.

Right now I'm seeing long term vacancies of habitable housing because fewer people can afford to live alone. Adults are doubling up with roomates rather than renting a place for themselves. Sad.

Soon: people living in storage sheds.

storage sheds. Its one of the many unreported stories that shows the abject poverty many Americans endure. Poverty and the growing underclass in America is largely ignored by the mainstream media. We wouldn't want people's consciences stopping them from spending more on the trinkets advertised on TV.

I do not see "anarchy" - nor do I see an idyllic "Petticoat Junction". But we will adapt and adjust. (My wife's suggestion - school and college textbooks will give way to textCD's and simple, solid state CD Readers).

I have already seen "out-of-town" business trips - including a round trip plane ticket, a rent-a-car, and a hotel room for a 2-3 hour meeting (stretched out to a full to justify the cost) condensed into 45 minute "web conferences".

And I have downsized from an SUV to a Prius; and we have moved from a 2800 square foot house to a 1200 square foot condo in a high rise that is in a planned community-transit village.

I realize that some people think it is un American to even advocate that we move from detached houses in the exurbs and three cars to a high density high rise and rely on transit -- but it is inevitable.

...the horror scenarios thrown around here. The oil wells won't suddenly dry up sending us back to the middle ages. I think the result of peak oil will be a severe depression, caused by slowlly increasing oil prices as the supply decreased year after year, lasting untill we reorganize our society to the new reality. The people planning to be subsistance farmers in the middle of nowhere are overestimating how fast the prices will rise after production peaks and underestimating the power of technology. Peak oil will cause a slow strangling of the economy, not sudden collapse.

where he rejects "technological quick fixes" and refers to us technoid geeks as "conucopianists."

I think Amory Lovins, "Winning the Oil Endgame" is much more realistic.

When you're knee-deep in the middle of the next Great Depression? We face a conundrum:

-People won't spend the trillions of dollars needed to gain us energy independence until prices are sky-high. Even at $3/gallon this summer there wasn't some mass awakening and outcry from the general populace. There was a lot of grumbling, a lot of finger-pointing, but very little acceptance of the fact that our car-based mode of living must be discarded for something better and more efficient. People cling to their cars and trucks and SUV's screaming "From my cold, dead hands" ala Charlton Heston even while they're paying $50/week on gas.

vs.

-By the time it actually does sink into the collective consciousness of the American people that we are hitting Peak Oil, we are already beginning to enter the next Great Depression. Unemployment skyrockets, businesses falter, and the government loses massive amounts of taxes we need to fund the building of trams, trains, nuclear reactors, solar cells, wind turbines, livable communities, etc. The resources needed to build all these things will also cost more to extract and refine without cheap energy like we have now. The US government will also be forced to pump up spending on police as crime rates shoot up, and on welfare programs to keep millions of newly homeless people from starving on the streets. I doubt banks will be very forgiving to the millions of unemployed suburbanites who bought or built houses outside their means with 30-40 yr loans and variable interest rates.

I agree with you that it won't go from idyllic suburban life to urban street fighting overnight. However, it may take decades to return to anything resembling a stable economy and social order. Even with technological fixes, you need the capital to impliment them. No other nations will borrow us the money when our economy is tanking and we're already swimming in national debt. Even the Great Depression of the 1930's took a decade to fully dissipate, and they had the benefit of cheap energy, more livable communities, far less dependance on oil, and a fairly low population on their side.

The wells are not going to go dry over night. The geology (and the distribution of where the oil remains) dictate gradually higher and higher costs for the last incremental barrel of oil -- and that is not an instantaneous process - either for an individual well, or an individual field, ot he whole world.

We are seeing it now -- and the smarter and more entrepreneurial "economic agents of change" (how's that for an "MBA buzz word" - and I am not an MBA - just an engineer with an econ and systems analysis/operations research/cs minor) are moving forward - just like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and Larry Ellison and Bill Gates and Andy Grove and Dan Midan and others did 30 years ago.

Don't look to GM or Ford or ExxonMobil or TexacoChevron. Look below the surface.

On edit: At $3.00/gallon -- you see the kind of discounts GM and Ford and DaimlerChrysler had to give to move SUV's, while the waiting lists for the Honda and Toyota hybrids jumped, and Ford moved up its production schedules for its hybrids. -- And go to the engineering journals - or the - lots of "little things" - that in total are major - are happening.

I can't remember which of those two authors I agree with more, but I will say that our current bankign practices have something to do with our predicament.

Currently, money is created when it is loaned into existence by private banks. This newly created money demands repayment of principal plus interest. Problematically, the interest hasn't been created yet. To pay the interest, someone else must get a loan, and the first borrower must, by hook or crook, get someone else's principal to pay his loan.

We are inextricably stuck in a debt trap.

The solution is to move from debt created money to credit issued money. I suggest that the central government simply issue money, in limited amounts, to balance the inevitable increase in demand for money. The U.S. Treasury could simply spend money into circulation, or it could issue it on a per capita basis.

In order to not be inflationary, the newly issued money 1) couldn't be used to create other money through the deposit creation multiplier and 2) couldn't be issued faster than the demand for money increases, about 3% per year.

Fortunately, in order to effect change 1) above, fractional-reserve banking would have to be outlawed, destroying some $8 Trillion of bank-created money. In order for this act to not be catastrophically delfationary, that money would have to be replaced. Conveniently, that money would neatly balance our national debt.

Edited for HTML.

This guy will be your neighbor. Kind of a pompous ass (like your typical DU pedant), calls himself 'Lord' something or other:



This is the neighbors son who is always trying to steal the gas from your garage. His Dad says the person behind him is just 'his friend'. Yea, right.



Here's the neighborhood carpenter you can call to patch the holes 'Mr. Mohawk' keeps making in your garage. Kind of annoying when he comes to help because he is always saying 'I'm just here for the gas' (he also seems to have become hyper-religious lately, strange guy).




Seriously, I think the suburbs will fare better than the urban core due to lower density and open area. Being a Civil Engineer, I do not hold out much hope for mass transit. Too capital intensive and inflexible. There are low energy personal transport options, if we would only develop them (Twike concept, etc.).

The problem with suburbia is not as much the sprawl, but the inefficient vehicles we use to navigate suburbia.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=266x203

Part Three:

The Future of Suburbs and Public Transportation.

I go through the above to show you how we became what we are. To eliminate the Automobile would have to reverse most of the above. Public Transportation has not been viewed as a serious transportation option for most commuters since about 1964 (and I am being generous, I believe we have to go back to the 1920s to see HOW our society has to be structured when we abandoned the automobile). 1964 is the start of the Mall Age of America AND the rule by Suburbia. While the Inner-city would adjust to an oil-less age rapidly (everything tends to be in walking distance and with oil scare most stores will return to the urban core) how can Suburbia switch? I have less concern about Rural America than Suburbia for Rural America can always go back to horses and a life style of going to “Town” once a month (more often when the crop is in). Even Rural industry can adjust by just having the workers move back to the Company towns that still surround most such existing rural industry (Or moving the industry to the inner-city). Most “Rural Industry” tend to be on rail lines anyway so not much a problem for them. Rail tend to be more fuel efficient than Tractor-Trailer AND can more easily convert to electricity as a source of power)

Thus Suburbia is the problem. Bicycle are NOT much help (Please Note I am referring to bicycles in SUBURBIA, I see them as very valuable help in the urban cores AND even rural America). Now Bicycle are quicker than walking, most suburbs have separated work areas from where people live by distances that are to far to bike EVERY DAY. Furthermore most of these work sites are NOT on a rail line so truck transportation is their lifeline (i.e. if oil becomes so scarce that Tractor-Trailer owners can no afford to buy oil, these suburban work shops will die, even if the workers can bike to work).

One last note, when I mention Trains using electricity as a power source, I know you still need some sort of energy to produce the electricity, but that can be Natural Gas(which like oil is in decline), coal, Solar, wind, Hydro and even Nuclear. Thus you have more option than just oil.

In the final review the best solution will be an adjustment to a clearer Urban-Rural divide with what we call Suburbia slowly dying. People will have to move closer to their jobs and those jobs will move closer to the cheapest transportation that will exist at that time (probably rail, but can be barge or ship and even bicycle or horse).

Suburbia will retreat to the old inner cities. Some Suburbs retreating to the new urban cores that exist around some of the malls that exists today. These will survive only if connected to the inner city by a LRV system (Or other rail connection), but once that is up and running you will see people moving closer and closer to these urban cores. For example I see the malls all building apartment complexes for their workers over the existing parking lots. This will permit people who can no longer afford to operate a car to move closer to their work. As more and more people abandoned the Automobile, do to the increase in oil prices, these people will fill in the areas around the old malls developing what the old downtown of 1900 had, shops and workers. After a while the mall will cover all of their parking lots with such apartments as people other than workers decide to live next to the mall. Just like today’s growth of Suburbia is lubricated by cheap oil, the existence of expensive oil will lubricate a retreat from Suburbia.

In Rural Areas I see the return of the horse and increase rural population. Modern Farming techniques require huge tractors. With fuel expensive, the horse can be competitive but only if the present large farms are broken up into the smaller farms such farms were only a couple of generations ago. Today, a Horse can compete with tractors on farms of less than 50 acres (but you can not survive as a farmer on such a small farms, most farmers who are full time farmers are farming 500+ acres, and to do that you need a huge tractor AND oil to run that tractor). Once oil is to expensive, the economics of farming will change and that will lead to a slow return to smaller farms.

One area where overlap will occur is some of the Mall Age and post Mall age Suburbs. I see the Post-Mall Age Suburbs (and the Mall Age Suburbs not close to a LRV Line) being abandoned and return to farm land. With decrease yields do to reduce use of Natural Gas derived fertilizers we will have to do so to just to feed our present population. Thus as you travel from the rural farm land to the urban core. you will see acres and acres of small farms than move right into urban areas with small yards. Than as you near the urban core you will enter an area of Apartment buildings (no more than six stories high) around a central shopping district (a old mall or an old inner city center). The Cities will be dispersed but compacted, connected by electric rail service (on both LRV system and the old locomotive systems that will convert to Electricity).

In review you see we have only been living in a Automotive dominated society since about 1925, which means it has taken us 75 years to get to where we are. Once we start to convert to non-automotive society it will take us just as long and will require a slow increase in the price of oil (which is expected). Thus whenever oil production peak occurs, that is when we will start the long and “interesting” switch to a post-automotive society.

sure I will.

I'm sure this would work:

www.carfree.com
surrounded by parkland and largely organic smallhold farming communities.
Pay for transit by capturing the real-estate value it creates, through a land value tax.
Encourage employment and productivity by reducing taxes on employment and productivity.

I see surface trams run along existing roadways, I particularly like Ultra-light rail running on shallow footers. I also think that, in urban areas, there should be no fare for tram-use, just like elevators in buildings. Again, pay for the operating costs by recapturing the value it creates - pretty much the same way they pay for it in buildings.

A more direct - and expensive - transit option would be available for a fare: Personal Rapid Transit. I've heard this described as packet switching for people, it involves a network of slim elevated trackways, small 3 person cars, and direct express service from every station to any station. The promoters calculate the operating cost at about $0.22/mi, and the energy use at 1/5th that of an automobile (less than a metro subway).

It's not like we didn't know it was coming, they told us it was. It's just that we didn't think it would be so mundane, no fireworks, no nothing, just a line of broken down SUV's stuffed with cold suffocated dead people clutcing their little Ronald Reagan icons, their dollars, and their Bibles.

Does anyone have some good jerkey recipes? I have extra hardwood, but probably not enough to do the whole batch. Any tips for drying meat? Should I marinate it first? I have plenty of salt, dried hot peppers, some fish, and various sorts of seaweed. I could possibly trade their belongings for other sorts of spices.

I'm thinking of a setup like this:



Thanks for your advice,

Hunter

Urban areas are actually much more energy efficient than rural or, particularly, suburban areas in the US. Dealing with less oil will certainly cause problems in day-to-day operation of a city -- think about sanitation when garbage trucks can't make as many trips -- but it won't cause anarchy to break loose. However, there is one area that nobody really talks about that WILL cause major disruptions, and that is FOOD.

Take New York City as an example. Years ago, New Jersey became known as the "Garden State" because it literally was a garden for metropolitan New York. It was a state with a thriving agriculture industry to supply the food demands of New York City. If that were still the case, then food in NYC would not be as big a problem.

But it isn't the case. Now, NJ is the nation's capital of divided highways, housing subdevelopments and strip malls. Most of the rural agricultural hinterlands have given way to suburban development. The majority of NYC's food is no longer brought in from NJ and the surrounding NY counties, but rather from 2000 or more miles away. And it is transported not by rail, but by truck.

This is a recipe for disaster. When fuel prices go up high enough, not only will it become harder to grow food using modern petro-dependent methods, but it will also become nearly impossible to transport it the significant distances to reach urban centers. A city with a population of over 10 million people, like New York, could face a crisis of starvation largely unknown to Americans.

We can always learn to live without cars or modern conveniences we take for granted. One thing we cannot live without is food, and our modern agricultural system has more holes in it than a piece of swiss cheese.

believe it or not, and it has to do with, among other things, real estate. If food prices go up due to a lack of subsidies and the effects of expensive oil, 2 things happen: 1) it becomes relatively more economic to farm, especially in 'high rent' areas like New Jersey and 2) it becomes relatively more economic for developing countries to grow their own food.

As oil, and thus all consumer goods, increases in price, production will shift from the current model: labor efficient production in the cheapest location to a new model: labor efficient production closer to the market.

Perhaps NYC will see an exodus, as people leave seeking more affordable food - much like they are already doing in Washington DC in relation to seeking more affordable housing.