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Can We Stay in the Suburbs?Thoughts on suburban agriculture, peak oil, and climate change |
22 Comments |
| By Aaron Newton in Green Living, Peak Oil, Simple Living | March 4, 2008 | ||
There is little doubt that during that last 60 years we here in America have transformed our manmade landscape in a way that is fundamentally different from any form of human habitation ever known. While many have flocked to this new way of organizing the spaces in which we live, critics have noticed the shortcomings and have loudly pointed them out. It’s been suggested that the development of the suburbs here in the U.S. was a really bad idea. Author James Kunstler describes suburbia as, “the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world.” The ability of most citizens to own and cheaply operate an automobile means we’ve had access to a level of mobility never before experienced. The outgrowth of which has been a sprawling pattern of living that changed the rules about how and where we live, work, and play and how we get there and back. We are now more spread out than ever before, mostly getting back and forth from one place to another by driving alone in our cars. This could turn out to be a really bad thing.
As the cost of fueling those cars increases, it’s becoming obvious we’ve foolishly put too many of our eggs into one basket. And as America wakes up to the realities of a changing climate, it’s also painfully obvious that soloing around in a huge fleet of carbon emitters isn’t the most thoughtful way to transport ourselves from one side of suburbia to the other. The question is, as the expansive nature of suburban life becomes too expensive, both economically and ecologically, what will we do with this great “misallocation” of resources?Will we, as some suggest, simply abandon this experiment? The likelihood of moving everyone out of suburbia and into mixed use, walkable communities is quite remote. Likewise moving everyone from the suburbs out into the countryside and onto farms is unlikely. To be sure many, many people will move. Some people are already choosing to move to places where they can safely walk and bike to meet more of their daily needs. Others are choosing to reruralize, but completely depopulating suburban America is a project we have neither the fiscal resources nor the fossil fuel energy necessary to accomplish. It seems reasonable to assume that lots of people are going to continue to live in the suburban communities we’ve created all over this country during the last 60 years.
Will these places simply devolve into slums with roving bands of thieves stripping building materials and other valuables from abandoned homes and formerly homeless drug addicts burning them down while trying to keep warm? They’ll probably be some of that especially if the housing crisis worseness (and it will) and the government continues to address it largely by bailing out banks. From a recent article in The Atlantic,
At Windy Ridge, a recently built starter-home development seven miles northwest of Charlotte, North Carolina, 81 of the community’s 132 small, vinyl-sided houses were in foreclosure as of late last year. Vandals have kicked in doors and stripped the copper wire from vacant houses; drug users and homeless people have furtively moved in. In December, after a stray bullet blasted through her son’s bedroom and into her own, Laurie Talbot, who’d moved to Windy Ridge from New York in 2005, told The Charlotte Observer, “I thought I’d bought a home in Pleasantville. I never imagined in my wildest dreams that stuff like this would happen.”
That is to say, this is already a problem. And with more people defaulting on their mortgages and losing their jobs as the economy slumps we’re likely to see this scenario play out repeatedly. But it’s important to take a moment and assess the possibilities presented by the problem. That is, if we’re going to do anything other than whistle while a large number of the communities in this country turn into the slums of the 21st century, we’re going to have to comprehensively address the problem and that means starting with an assessment of not only the disadvantages of suburban America but the advantages we might have in this arrangement of living. Could the problem actually turn out to be the solution?
One of the results of a declining in the availability of oil and other fossil fuel resources will undoubtedly be a rise in the cost of food or even outright shortages of certain types of calories we’ve grown accustom to acquiring quite easily. Lots of people have written about this. It’s seems increasingly obvious that we’re going to have to grow food differently if we have any chance of adapting to a low energy lifestyle with any semblance of grace. Growing food means using land for some sort of agriculture. Exactly what land we use is entirely up to us. It’s worth noting that while David Pimentel et al have suggested that it takes 1.8 acres of land to feed each of us now. That number could be reduced to 1.2 acres per person while still meeting the nutritional needs of the average American. But by 2050 we are likely to have only 0.6 acres person both because of the rise in global population and the loss of land due to desertification, salinization and soil depletion. In the very near future we’re not going to have enough land to feed ourselves in the manner in which we’ve been doing so. Where will more “new” land come from?
The suburbs were born out of an idea that each man could have his own cottage in the forest, his own unmolested paradise outside of the nastys of the industrializing cities and still go to work in those cities each day. (Just how many of the problems we’re facing today are born out of us wanting to both have and eat our cake?) The idea was that a man could still earn a living in the dirty city but return to his pristine piece of land where his wife and children could be free from pollution, crime, brown people, noise and traffic. It never quite worked out that way, which is to say it has, since the beginning, failed to achieve what this experiment set out to accomplish; to say nothing of the negative aspects of this way of developing our countryside. But nevertheless, the end result is that a lot of people live on small amounts of land in communities that aren’t completely paved over with asphalt and concrete. Many of us here in this country have access to land albeit in small amounts. This provides us with the most important resource needed to address the rising cost of food- soil. In other words, the fact that we’ve chopped up much of the existing farmland that once surrounded major metropolitan areas in this country and parceled it out in fairly small sizes to many more people ultimately may or may not prove to have been a really bad idea. But, not only is it the hand we have now been dealt, it might turn out to have been a fairly nifty way of developing and maintaining a moderately democratic land ownership policy here in America. We still have, albeit in another form and with a reduction in the quantity and quality of soil ready for food production, a reasonable amount of land for growing food.
Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025—that’s roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.
What do you do with a surplus of more than 22 million large lot homes during a period of failing industrial agriculture and rising food costs? You establish new microfarms of course. Those people who do continue to live in the suburbs either because they can not move or because they don’t want to, could feed themselves by using this land to grow food for themselves and their neighbors. The food could be grown largely free from fossil fuel inputs and would be produced very close to the people who will eventually eat it. This solves two of the really big problems associated with the industrial model of agriculture. It provides a ready land base not for the reinstitution of plantation style farming whereby wealthy landowners who profited from energy descent reintroduce a horrible form of feudalism that enslaves the former paper pushing population of America who are likely to lose their jobs as the American economy continues to decline. No, this land has already been subdivided into manageable parcels that could serve as the basis for a revolution in agriculture.
Mention this idea to an ordinary citizen unaware of the prospects we face in the near future and you’re likely to get a host of responses about how unlikely or unreasonable such a solution might be. It’s likely we haven’t reached the pain threshed necessary to get the real attention of average Americans, but one response certainly will be that we can’t grow very much food by just tearing out our lawns. This of course isn’t true at all.
Several recent studies suggest that small scale, sustainable agriculture is actually more productive per unit of land than industrial farming. We’ve come to think of farming efficiency in terms of human labor, with the adoption of the idea that the fewer people doing it the better. But in terms of what the land can yield, we’re better off farming it intensely on smaller plots of land and the math is there to back up that claim. Yields can be substantial even on such small plots as would be available to the average suburbanite. The Dervaes family of Path to Freedom provides an excellent example of what is possible in our front and backyards. They live on an urban lot of about 1/5th of an acre. They cultivate about 1/10th of an acre or about 4,400 square feet. That’s 67 feet X 67 feet. In other words, that’s not much land and yet they consistently produce more than 6,000 lbs of vegetables annually. The four adults living there eat about 85% of their vegetarian diet from the yard during the summer months and are still able to get more than half of what they eat out of their gardens in the winter. This and they sell some produce to nearby restaurants. It should be noted that they live in southern California where the weather is extremely generous to those who growing food (and have access to water), but Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch point out in Four-Seasons Harvest: Organic Vegetables from You Home Garden All Year Long, even people living in Maine are capable of growing a tremendous amount and variety of nutritional, tasty food regardless of where they live.
And let us not forget all those paper pushers I just hand pink slips to earlier in this post. Our government and a lot of well meaning business-as-usual types are going to put together all sorts of plans to try and reemploy all the people who lose their jobs in the post carbon economy. There is already talk of a kind of “Green Works Project Administration” like the WPA seen during the New Deal era. At one time the WPA was the largest employee base in the country and was designed as a way to build up American infrastructure while reemploying those negatively affected by the Great Depression. Such an effort now could get much needed projects up and run in terms of new forms of energy that aren’t fossil fuel based. To say nothing of conservation and energy efficiency projects such as home insulation that needs to be done on a national scale. But this or any other response that doesn’t include a large measure of self sufficiency for the average American would be missing out on a great opportunity to redemocratize America. It is painfully obvious that we are at our greatest disadvantage when we are in debt to others for the basics we need in order to survive. Growing more of our own food in our own personal gardens, parks, school yards and community gardens is a great way to address this problem while providing for the nutritional shortfall likely to be experienced in the wake of the decline of industrial agriculture.
Luckily the sun is still shining and even those of us who live in heavily wooded neighborhoods have the option of modifying the canopy of those trees to gain access to sunlight. The soil is still under our feet and we can use it going forward to meet more of our food needs. The suburbs also offer a certain amount of impervious surfaces or surfaces that shed water. This is often a problem in many communities. The idea is that if too many roofs tops and too many roadways shed too much water during a rainstorm. The result is a high volume of water after a storm that has to be diverted out of these neighborhoods before rushing into our creeks, streams and rivers. This often leads to flooding and/or substantial amounts of soil runoff, the number one water pollution problem in many communities. I find it annoyingly amusing that while my county has storm water problems to such an extent that we are under EPA mandate to address this problem, we are simultaneously experiencing water restrictions due to the drought in southeastern America. In other words, we have two water problems where I live, too much water and not enough. It is too simple to suggest that we collect some of what we get where it falls and use it?
The point is that the structures of suburbia- specifically rooftops and roadways- could be used to gather the water we would need to grow food for ourselves. This could be especially important going forward as global climate changes throws weather curveball after curveball at us. The solution is to designing simple, elegant ways to collect this water for use during times between rain storms. 600 gallons of water can be collected from 1,000 square feet of rooftop in just a 1” rainstorm. Many McMansions are much larger and as such have the capacity to gather much more rain. It’s worth noting that 65% of the water we use in our homes each day goes to irrigation, toilet flushing and laundry. Rainwater could be used to do all three with simple filtration. Doing this could go a long way towards restoring the health of our waterways.
In his paper Garden Agriculture: A revolution in efficient water use, David Holmgren notes that “Australian suburbs are no more densely populated than the world’s most densely populated agricultural regions.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that American suburbs are populated in roughly the same way. This suggests to me that it is at least within the realm of possibility that the suburbs could be transformed in a way that helps us: A) take advantage of new soil for growing food, B) foster a redemocratization of America by offering a reasonable amount of food self sufficiency for families during the coming era of change and volatility and C) capture the rain water necessary to address the deepening water crisis being experienced worldwide. We may find that in a time in which we are unable to build out grand new responses to peak oil and climate change, agriculturally at least, we may not have to. We might do best to just stay put.
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Clifford J. Wirth said,
No only can we not stay in the suburbs, but we will die in the suburbs in the Peak Oil crisis.. This paper examines scientific and government studies in order to provide reliable conclusions about Peak Oil and its future impacts. Independent studies indicate that global oil production peaked in 2006 (or will peak within a few years) and will decline until all recoverable oil is depleted within several decades. Because global oil demand is increasing, declining production will soon generate high energy prices, inflation, unemployment, and irreversible economic depression. Regardless of the time available for mitigating Peak Oil impacts, alternative sources of energy will replace only a small fraction of the gap between declining production and increasing demand. Because oil under girds the world economy, oil depletion will result in global economic collapse and population decline. As oil exporting nations experience both declining oil production and increased domestic oil consumption, they will reduce oil exports to the U.S. Because the U.S. is highly dependent on imported oil for transportation, food production, industry, and residential heating, the nation will experience the impacts of declining oil supplies sooner and more severely than much of the world. North American natural gas production has peaked, importation of natural gas is limited, and the U.S. faces shortages of natural gas within a few years. These shortages threaten residential heating supplies, industrial production, electric power generation, and fertilizer production. Because U.S. coal production peaked in 2002 (in terms of energy provided by coal), the U.S. will experience significantly higher coal and electric prices in future years. The U.S. government is unprepared for the multiple consequences of Peak Oil, Peak Natural Gas, and Peak Coal. Multiple crises will cripple the nation in a gridlock of ever-worsening problems. Within a few decades, the U.S. will lack car, truck, air, and rail transportation, as well as mechanized farming, adequate food and water supplies, electric power, sanitation, home heating, hospital care, and government services. Full report available for anyone to publish at http://www.peakoilassociates.com/POAnalysis.html
winston smith said,
cute article but if the subject isnt about overpopulation not worth discussing. we are too many and each new birth is our competitor for all. lets address reality before you come up with a idea that cant work without zero population growth! the population of the usa alone has trippled since 1960. ozzie and harrient left the building in 1958. we are in overshoot so why not tell the truth!
foilhatgrrl said,
The only problem with this, is that most recent suburban developments have all the nice black topsoil scraped off, and sold, before the houses are built and sod is layed down on the inferior layer of soil. So soil rebuilding – or prohibitively expensive repurchasing of topsoil – must occur before yields are anywhere near decent.
I live in an old bungalow in a large city, with a small yard. Fortunately, the old topsoil wasn’t removed back in the 20’s when the former farmland became my neighborhood. Same can’t be said today, and that’ll pose a huge problem for people trying this model. Not that it can’t be done, but it won’t be anywhere near as easy as it sounds.
Aaron Newton said,
Thanks for all the comments.
Clifford, I knew it was only a matter of time before organizations like yours started showing up. I imagine you could help a great many people, organizations and governments prepare for peak oil and make money doing it; depending on what it is you have to say. I implore you though to do it without over freaking out people, if that is possible. I’m not sure if phrases like, “we will die in the suburbs in the Peak Oil crisis” are especially helpful as a comment on an article that suggests a course of action. We need to move people beyond denial and depression and into action as fast as possible.
winston, I agree that we must address the issue of just how many of us are already here. I don’t think however, that every article about mitigating the effects of peak oil and climate change has to start with a discussion about over population. Population is a very important issue but I think we also need to talk about our options for feeding those of us who are already here in light of what we’re facing.
foilhatgrrl, You are right. The state of the soil is a big deal. This is one of the nuts and bolts issues that the plan I suggest would have to address. And we have to do this both because the soil is so dead in so many suburban locations but also so that we establish practices that nurture the long term health of the soil, not an initial sucking out of what nutrients remain in it.
Dan Bashaw said,
Not at all unrealistic, in my view. Lots of challenges — topsoil-building being one, as noted — but there are a number of people working on the ‘burbsteading’ concept from different angles, David Holmgren being one of the most notable. (See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTYe8WloF1U)
We also need to keep in mind that since suburbs occupy the ‘market garden ring’ around traditional cities, there is every reason to believe that they can, should, and will be retrofitted for intensive gardening/farming once again in an energy descent future.
LJR said,
“They cultivate about 1/10th of an acre or about 4,400 square feet. That’s 210 feet X 210 feet. In other words, that’s not much land and yet they consistently produce more than 6,000 lbs of vegetables annually.”
Ummm. Square root of 4400 is 67 feet, not 210. It’s a big difference.
Aaron Newton said,
This is one of the reasons I love the Internet. LJR you are quite right. 210 X 210 is roughly a full acre! As you say my math was wrong. The mistake has been corrected. Thank you.
DaveRabbitt said,
Give anyone species enough rope and they will hang themselves….
America being the perfect example oh dear what a shame lol
iñigo said,
I´m writing from Europe (Spain), and maybe my views cannot be well expressed.
Suburbial life is a particular North American way of urban developement, based on easily available land, cheap gasoline, and a strong transport industry, together with the mith of personal independence in your own home. This will end when land is no longer easy to get, petrol becomes scarce, and having a personal, noisy, tranport vehicle is no logner affordable. As many of you point out, urban sprawl not only creates enviromental damage through car traffic, but also as loss of agricultural land. It´s a memorial of inefficiency. We cannot go on as nothing happens, like everything on earth is ours to squander. It´s a one way road. Thus, it is a dead end in the evolutionary scale.
Turning to other similar culture (electric cars to do instead of oil cars) will only put off the problem some years, because electricity also creates a footprint. Only through self reliance, austerity, enviromental care, and population control we may have a glimpse of a better future, or at least not so black.
Eric W. said,
Very Nice article…trying to be positive in this tough world.
As landscape gardeners, what our business tries to do is very similar…the combination of what Mr. Newton expresses and “re-habitating” suburban areas. It is interesting to note that there are more people in the suburbs that have recently expressed interest in edible and wildlife gardens and landscaping. And although there are so many suburban developments popping up and those interested in reclaiming land for food may be small, the numbers seem to be increasing. Whether or not the suburbs are a sustainable entity aside, there are at least people who live there who are attempting to lessen their footprint and grow food and recreate habitat.
As a response to the writer from Spain, I was recently there (for the first time) expecting a city/small town/ rural landscape. I was overwhelmed how the area around Madrid seemed no better than southern California or Florida with concrete apartment blocks and condos and major highways spreading out on to the plateau in many directions. I saw that in a couple other places as well. Is this an issue throughout Spain, I wonder, following the American lead?
Beck said,
Thanks for this positive vision of the new suburbs.
Both urban and suburban farming are practical and viable considerations. It reminds me of the victory gardens during WWII where millions of American grew gardens that supplied 40% of the nation’s vegetables. They did it in a short time period with a minimum of training. We have neighbors (here in the US suburbs where I live and raise my son) who grow organic fruits and vegetables that feed their family of 5 and have plenty left over to share with us and everyone else they know. Their amazing garden takes up a small sliver of land in their backyard, while their front yard is your typical lawn and flower garden.
It is not difficult to rehab enough soil for a garden. In one year (or less) you can compost enough food and garden waste for free to create a nice little garden plot. Many municipalities are already mitigating the solid waste problem by creating compost for you, available for free or at a small charge.
But there is much more to food production than growing vegetables and eating them in season. Harvesting, preservation and storage are key concerns. Turning produce into products, from bread to potato chips. If you are reading this while munching on a raw organic carrot- good for you. But most of us are not looking forward to a future where if you are hungry in February- all you can choose from is whatever is in the root cellar. (You do know that it is unlikely you will be able to produce your own dark chocolate from your suburban garden.)
If we are all spending our time planting, weeding, harvesting, storing, threshing and milling grain, baking bread, etc- who is going to have time for art, developing things like computers and the internet, free solar power and ways to connect us into a global community of peace and prosperity?
Don’t forget that in the US most suburbanites do not actually own their little patch of heaven. They are paying a bank a mortgage for about 30 years. If we run out of farm land, the banks will simply call in the mortgage loans, take back the land and sell it to agribusiness. No need to worry if suburban gardening could work out.
Hmm- the balance of power and economics is another topic for another post.
Thanks also to Dan for the link to Holmgren’s great vision of the future of suburbia.
PS- Aaron- the picture of the suburban gardening future looks cool- but it is too small for me to really see. Could you post a larger file size? Thanks.
Dennis Spath said,
In the Spring of 1942 I helped my Dad dig up our back yard on the Southwest side of Chicago, near Cicero, and put in a Victory Garden per President Roosevelt’s request. It helped that my Dad grew up on a farm in Wisconsin so we had a very productive garden, including potatoes and onions which lasted well into the Winter months and cabbage which he made into sauerkraut.
The first home I purchased was in Muscatine, Iowa in 1971. It was built into the side of a hill which had been stripped of topsoil and left only clay for a backyard….not ideal for planting veggies! The 1st Spring I dug narrow trenches about 10-12 inches in depth and 20 feet long, and filled them with a mixture of top soil from the top of the hill, commercial cow manure, and potting soil. For tomatoes I dug 16-18 inch deep holes along the fence with a post-hole digger and filled them with a similar soil mixture. The five tomato plants in cages produced hundreds of pounds of tomatoes.
Three rows of green beans provided more than enough for us and most of our neighbors, who we invited to come anytime and pick their own….as long as you keep picking they keep coming! I then learned about making “Cold Frames” where one could grow leaf lettuce, scallions, and fresh herbs almost year around, as well as start your own plants from seeds for Spring planting. There is also the option of “raised bed” back yard gardening, which enables optimum use of space in the most productive soil conditions.
Gideon said,
One problem that was brought to my attention this weekend is that most of the houses here in NJ are so old that they have or had lead paint on them. This has come off over the years, and now most back yards are so contaminated that children shouldn’t play in them and gardeners should be very careful in what crops they elect to grow (plus all the neighbors who’ve been using pesticides all these years to ward of weeds in their nice little lawns).
Matt Mayer said,
It would seem to me that the lead paint would only be around the house, which is an unlikely location for plantings anyway. But it is something for people to keep in mind.
As for the pesticides in the lawn, I believe it takes 3 or 5 years for a commercial farm to be certified organic after they stop using the chemicals. So if you want true organic I guess it would take that long, but most Americans eat produce from chemical fields anyway. I don’t think residual pesticides is that much of a concern for them.
casey said,
I agree with quite a bit of the article. I spend a large amount of time studying the environment, energy, and resourse sustainability. I’m in the process of finishing by bachelors in Criminology and minoring in environmental studies with a resources emphasis. Anyways, I plan on becoming as self sustainable as I can…as a suburbian I plan to do what I can for myself down to growing some or a quite a bit of my own food, installing photovoltaics on my house, maybe a couple chickens and/or a cow (although they are very innefficient in terms of food production lol), my girlfriend has got a sewing machine, and I plan on stock-piling resources and composting….learning how to can and all that…I think the situation is very serious….WAY more serious than A LOT of people think it is and especially are prepared for…I don’t know…it seems really hard to see the way of life that everyone is so accustomed to now somehow not existing anymore…suburbia is going to die out unless its operation and practices are changed to a community conservation effort…something where people are banding together to make a stand and try to see just what it would take to be self sustainable..people helping each other and knowing how to have food and clothing past driving to the store….it will take a serious shift from buying our sustenance to creating it..something I think A LOT of people are going to have problems with…..
memmine69 said,
What exactly has pollution killed in the last 30 years? And what affect has it been on you personally? How has pollution affected you?
iñigo said,
In response to Eric W, the answer must be YES: Spain is enthusiastically following the USA lead in urban “evolution”.
Spain used to be a dual country, with large capitals (Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia) made of apartment blocks or condos, and then small towns and villages. Only the well off could afford individual houses with a garden in the outer neighbourhoods.
Recent “developements” have led our country to follow the American way of life, and enormous expansions of semi detatched boroughs have appeared out of nothing, in a passion for urban sprawl. Hardly any town or village in Spain, no matter how remote, is now free of real state developement. Farm land is now becoming scarce in some places.
This has been fuelled by the good economic performance and the pressure of immigration (10 % population increase in 10 years!). Thus, inner city areas, which used to be cherished to live in, are now left to offices, business and low income immigrants.
Highways are crisscrossing the country.
As I pointed out, this is based on every family owning more than two cars, cheap gasoline, and the devil to mend it in years to come.
If you ask me, this is a pity and a shame.
NPR Looks At American Suburbs And Climate Change » GroovyGreen.com - Start Today :: Save Tomorrow said,
[...] Can We Stay in the Suburbs? [...]
Heather said,
Many folks are already working to transition their communities – check out the Transition Town Totnes – 26 communities (and counting) lowering their carbon footprints and working towards self-sufficiency: http://envirovore.com/content/view/102/1/
luke said,
it is obvious that the problem with civilization is that people have become so dependent on the government and major corporations to live that they would not know how to survive without them. we are born into a society that turns us into creatures of convenience. the convenience of driving a car instead of riding a bike, the convenience of buying our food in a microwaveable box, the convenience of the throw away and dont worry about it aspect of our culture. this is what is killing this earth and us. but the fact is people will not change we are to stupid as a civilization that we would rather fight each other than to work together to progress life as a whole. we need to stop looking at each other and trying to tell the differences, we need to see that we are all life and that we need to work together to live in harmony with one another and this beautiful earth that gives us life.
joaquin said,
It is a hard balance to adjust the nowadays life to an older system without so much environment impact, but hopefully new technology will make things more efficiently
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