

Stop the suburbs; I want to get off  - bootload
http://economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2010/08/cities_and_growth

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hudibras
I read this a couple times, but still don't understand the headline. He's
talking about Atlanta's growth slowing but other than a mention of "metro
Atlanta," he doesn't say anything about the suburbs. Plus, the city is still
growing; it's only the rate of growth which has decreased.

Writing for the Economist is a nice gig. You can cherry-pick any facts or
topics you're interested in, slap it in a blog or column with no byline and,
voila, the next day at the water cooler: "The Economist says..."

Short version: The Economist is Newsweek for people who don't want to admit
they read Newsweek.

~~~
_delirium
I find their blogs to be somewhat more filled with these off-the-cuff kinds of
articles and stats than their actual magazine is, though ymmv.

Though it does raise a question: is there a better free-market-oriented
magazine without going all the way to a libertarian one like _Reason_? I've
found overall the _Economist_ to be a bit better than the _WSJ_ , which seems
to cherry-pick its facts and slant its infographics a lot more, especially on
the editorial page (to the point where its data and charts sometimes verge on
outright dishonesty).

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markkat
Hey guy, it was racism that screwed up our city of Detroit, not highways. Get
it straight. Geesh.

~~~
enjo
At some level isn't that what far-flung suburbs are a reflection of?

~~~
markkat
Yes, we call it the white doughnut.

------
protomyth
At some point, the US really needs to get serious about large scale
desalination.

~~~
hypersoar
In order to have a long-term solution to that, we need a long-term solution to
energy.

~~~
pjscott
There are technically feasible medium-to-long-term energy solutions involving
nuclear power -- my favorite are liquid fluoride thorium reactors, but there
are other good designs -- and the waste heat from those can be used for
desalination.

To get some approximate numbers, here's a presentation from Dr. Per Peterson
at UC Berkeley:

[http://www.esd-ans.org/cms/index.php?option=com_docman&a...](http://www.esd-
ans.org/cms/index.php?option=com_docman&amp;task=cat_view&amp;gid=56&amp;Itemid=82)

A 1 GWe fourth-generation reactor, using efficient Brayton-cycle gas turbines,
could produce approximately 100,000 m^3/day of fresh water, without decreasing
the amount of electricity it produces or harming its generation efficiency.
About eight of those could supply San Diego (1.2 million people) with all its
water needs.

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ggchappell
So, a bunch of cities in the southern U.S. have stopped growing. Any chance
global climate change is the predominant cause? The U.S. saw a big population
shift southward in the second half of the 20th century. But if the southern
U.S. continues what seems to be a trend of getting hotter and stormier, we
might see a big shift back north.

