
How Will We Live in 2015? The future is now for sustainable cities.  - makimaki
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/oct/08-how-and-where-will-we-live-in-2015
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hugh
I really can't stand the way the word "sustainable" is used. On a sufficiently
short timescale, everything is sustainable. On a sufficiently long timescale,
nothing is sustainable.

More importantly, talking about sustainability only makes sense if we're not
planning on any technological improvements. For instance, burning fossil fuels
for energy obviously is only sustainable on a decades-to-centuries timescale,
but that doesn't mean we need to stop; the question is whether it will keep us
going for long enough to develop good alternatives.

Cars, on the other hand, aren't intrinsically unsustainable on a thousands-of-
years timescale provided that they're powered sensibly.

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mojonixon
That's true to some degree. However, much of our infrastructure are designed
for 1000 year timescales but rely on technologies with far shorter timescales.

There are plenty of alternatives to powering our cars, but none currently (and
none on the horizon either) that are as good (cost effective) as petroleum.
The cost-benefit analysis will be changing, but we won't be able to adapt
because our communities rely on cheap fuel. People will have the unenviable
choice of paying an arm and a leg commuting, or letting their exurban
communities (and the massive investment they represent) fall back into farm
land.

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khafra
Y'know, suburban and exurban communities are a conundrum: They bear a lot of
the blame for the incipient energy crash, but they may be one of the average
joe's best assets in surviving it. It's similar to the systemic inefficiencies
in the Soviet system allowed an industrial buffer during their collapse (ref.
Dmitri Orlov's essays). This inefficiency will let people convert that half
acre of useless lawn into a garden bearing a good percentage of the food a
family needs, the same way durable goods piled up in warehouses because of the
Soviets' command-directed economy could be used and traded by those with
access. Turn the local park into less-intensively-improved land growing staple
cereals, and you've gone most of the way converting a suburb to a village that
can at least subsist at a 17th century level.

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ryanspahn
In six years .... not terribly different. Though we can look at current
technology thats up and coming and place bets that by this time such will be
popular.

Look at Facebook, it has been around since 04 and four years later we are now
just seeing the early majority hop on board. Adoption takes time and
bureaucracies slow new and better tech down. i.e. alternative energy and
telecommunications

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Shorel
2015 is too soon for us.

May be you mean: "How will Dubai be in 2015?"

