The astonishing story of how a movement’s quest for rural simplicity drifted into a formula for mass death By George Monbiot, published on monbiot.com, 4th October 2023 Tourism sells to you the story of what it has taken away. It markets the “traditional” and “unchanging” and, in doing so, changes it. As the old joke…
Lots to unpack in this somewhat ranty article, but also some food for thought.
urbanisation is a long term mostly voluntary trend
Is it? I think people experience very heavy economic pressures to move to urban areas, but so many of those available urban jobs are just bullshit jobs that don’t need to exist. Almost 10% (from memory) of American GDP is financial services, for example. It’s true that urban areas are more efficient by many metrics, but some of those metrics are also fundamentally capitalist.
Basically I think only those directly involved in food production (or nature conservation) should permanently live in rural areas.
Gonna have to disagree with you here. I live in a very rural community (1500 person town), and this just isn’t how people work. People who grow food still need hospitals, grocery stores, mechanics, schools (including colleges–many farmers have degrees in farming), hardware stores, tractor parts stores, plumbers, and so on, but most importantly, all people need and deserve community.
In my opinion, viewing humans as somehow apart from nature, such that we should pave small areas of the earth and jam us all into them, is a symptom of the greater problem. We are animals. Animals rely on and are a part of nature. We’ve been pretending that we’re not a part of nature for a while now, and that’s been a real fucking mess. To me, that’s the appeal of solarpunk, and how I found this community. Now more than ever, it’s fundamental that we re-imagine the relationship between humans, nature, and technology into one that’s symbiotic, not extractive.
There might be economic pressures, but all in all the pull factors of urbanization seem to dominate. Sure, some of the jobs are bullshit, but people by and large prefer them over farming jobs. Part of that is of course cultural and I think we really need to make agricultural jobs more attractive to young people, but in the end it is up to them to decide, and currently most seem to prefer city life.
As for a symbiotic relationship, sure I absolutely agree! However that symbiosis will have to take a vastly different shape than nostalgic patterns of a largely imagined past that most people would probably hate if really reestablished. And cities are not incompatible with the idea of symbiosis with nature, in fact given the total population we already have, they will likely have to play a central role in it.
Gonna have to disagree with you here. I live in a very rural community (1500 person town), and this just isn’t how people work. People who grow food still need hospitals, grocery stores, mechanics, schools (including colleges–many farmers have degrees in farming), hardware stores, tractor parts stores, plumbers, and so on, but most importantly, all people need and deserve community.
I think this deserved a separate reply. First of all how many of these people actually work inside the community as opposed to just live there and drive to work somewhere else (or work remotely)? As least in densely populated Europe that is the majority of the people living in these small towns.
Furthermore, most if not all the examples you mentioned do not require them to be present in that small town and in fact rarely they are. They are usually only available in the nearest bigger city. This can be inconvenient at times for these villagers, but it is much more efficient and its is rather the transport of those goods and people that should be improved, so that those city services become easily available to the people that need them.
Wait, so on what scale of population do we peasants deserve a hospital and a college then? I’m really not sure I like this. Cities are fine for the folk who like them, but forcing all humans to live in them (even just in your mind) is inhumane. Some people want to live in cities, some people want to live in rural areas.
Right now, there are a series of insufferable folk who live in rural areas and do remote work. And small scale farming. And worse, ponies. Will I be re-urbanized in your utopia? How would you try to sell that to me? Am I supposed to like my new utopian city bullshit job? I have a remote one already and I don’t like it, I wish it didn’t exist, and that the poor PMs sending it to me from New York or Hong Kong could dedicate themselves to gardening or working in a (digital or physical) commons library and playing with their kids instead, thank you very much.
Is it? I think people experience very heavy economic pressures to move to urban areas, but so many of those available urban jobs are just bullshit jobs that don’t need to exist. Almost 10% (from memory) of American GDP is financial services, for example. It’s true that urban areas are more efficient by many metrics, but some of those metrics are also fundamentally capitalist.
Gonna have to disagree with you here. I live in a very rural community (1500 person town), and this just isn’t how people work. People who grow food still need hospitals, grocery stores, mechanics, schools (including colleges–many farmers have degrees in farming), hardware stores, tractor parts stores, plumbers, and so on, but most importantly, all people need and deserve community.
In my opinion, viewing humans as somehow apart from nature, such that we should pave small areas of the earth and jam us all into them, is a symptom of the greater problem. We are animals. Animals rely on and are a part of nature. We’ve been pretending that we’re not a part of nature for a while now, and that’s been a real fucking mess. To me, that’s the appeal of solarpunk, and how I found this community. Now more than ever, it’s fundamental that we re-imagine the relationship between humans, nature, and technology into one that’s symbiotic, not extractive.
There might be economic pressures, but all in all the pull factors of urbanization seem to dominate. Sure, some of the jobs are bullshit, but people by and large prefer them over farming jobs. Part of that is of course cultural and I think we really need to make agricultural jobs more attractive to young people, but in the end it is up to them to decide, and currently most seem to prefer city life.
As for a symbiotic relationship, sure I absolutely agree! However that symbiosis will have to take a vastly different shape than nostalgic patterns of a largely imagined past that most people would probably hate if really reestablished. And cities are not incompatible with the idea of symbiosis with nature, in fact given the total population we already have, they will likely have to play a central role in it.
I think this deserved a separate reply. First of all how many of these people actually work inside the community as opposed to just live there and drive to work somewhere else (or work remotely)? As least in densely populated Europe that is the majority of the people living in these small towns.
Furthermore, most if not all the examples you mentioned do not require them to be present in that small town and in fact rarely they are. They are usually only available in the nearest bigger city. This can be inconvenient at times for these villagers, but it is much more efficient and its is rather the transport of those goods and people that should be improved, so that those city services become easily available to the people that need them.
Wait, so on what scale of population do we peasants deserve a hospital and a college then? I’m really not sure I like this. Cities are fine for the folk who like them, but forcing all humans to live in them (even just in your mind) is inhumane. Some people want to live in cities, some people want to live in rural areas.
Right now, there are a series of insufferable folk who live in rural areas and do remote work. And small scale farming. And worse, ponies. Will I be re-urbanized in your utopia? How would you try to sell that to me? Am I supposed to like my new utopian city bullshit job? I have a remote one already and I don’t like it, I wish it didn’t exist, and that the poor PMs sending it to me from New York or Hong Kong could dedicate themselves to gardening or working in a (digital or physical) commons library and playing with their kids instead, thank you very much.