Cities completely abandoned in the post-oil world?

[Pops]

Make an experiment and imagine, oil would be at 1.000US$/barrel.

What would happen? No electricity and no water and no food in the city? Of course not. Food in the city could be 10% more expensive and water maybe 5% more expensive...

Come on, I didn't make it past Pie-Are-Square in grade school and even I know allocating fuel only 10% of total food costs, a 10x increase in fuel price would double the cost of food.

Processing and transportation are 80-90% of food costs and fossil fuels are involved every step of the way. Doubling food prices would eliminate many luxury expenditures such as restaurants and January tomatoes and pre-digested industrial gorp which today is the largest percentage of food costs and so make transportation (fuel) an even greater portion of the total.

Just for reference, if oil were at $1,000/bbl, and the demand for various finished products were equal, diesel would be around $25/gallon + tax (42+ gal/bbl + 10% markup) – what does that work out to? 7 euros/ltr? Plus tax? That isn't an insurmountable amount but it certainly isn't insignificant.

[glaucus]

Cephalotus wrote:

If you think that post peak oil = high energy prices people in the city have an advantage, because they consume much less energy than people living in rural areas, the bigger the city the less energy per capita.

That's a prevalent belief, but it's not even close to the full truth. I explain why in this post on my resource depletion related urban planning blog: https://planningdown.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/a-stampede-of-accelerating-elephants/

[Pops]

Regardless of your content, spamming us with links to your blog is poor form and against the rules, I delete numerous posters every day for the same. If you join in and add to the the conversation people will be attracted and your traffic will rise.

[Serial_Worrier]

As food supplies stop, imagine the horror of millions of people dying agonizingly in the mega-cities.

[glaucus]

Pops wrote:

Regardless of your content, spamming us with links to your blog is poor form and against the rules, I delete numerous posters every day for the same. If you join in and add to the the conversation people will be attracted and your traffic will rise.

I'm not interested in burning bridges. I wanted to avoid writing it all out and, in doing so, hijack the convo to settle a side issue. My apologies.

[glaucus]

Serial-worrier wrote:

As food supplies stop, imagine the horror of millions of people dying agonizingly in the mega-cities.

I'd rather not. I'm not sure this is likely anyway, barring an overnight crash scenario. But as I mentioned previously, third world megacities are precarious places. Resource limits in general and food supply issues specifically will manifest there before anywhere else.

[kublikhan]

I predict the opposite: cities will continue to exist and function in a post oil world. Cities were around for a long time before oil and will be around for a long time after. They are centers of commerce, residence, and social functions. The urge to flee to the boonies is the old "fight or flight" response and speaks more about our fears than rational thought. Even in times of dire strife, like the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Great Depression, the cities fared better than those living in rural settings. People migrated to the cities looking for food, jobs, and shelter. City populations increased during these hard times, not decreased. No man is an island. No matter how well prepared you think you are for times of dire strife, you will still need society to function.

As I was thinking about this topic, I was struck by the following realization, counter-intuitive but supported by evidence. The limiting factor in the survival, on both the level of the individual and the community, was not the ability to produce your own products and not even the available resources or lack of them. It was transport and infrastructure - the ability to trade, deliver your surplus elsewhere and from there get other things you need.

This is why rural areas and small towns in Russia took a very hard hit in the 90s, and may never fully recover, as some say. One would think it should be exactly the opposite - people would have gone into the remote villages and live off the land and the woods. However, even in the most self-sufficient household one cannot produce or make everything needed. And being in a remote location makes it difficult to deliver surplus to others in a timely manner for trading or exchange, especially with the roads being as atrocious as they were.

The lesson from this is that the desire to hide out in the boondocks results from a 'fight or flight' emotional response to a stressful situation, and in the long run is counterproductive. Instead, a survivor should network within the community, stay just close enough to major traffic routes, keep the transportation lines open and have some kind of vehicle at one's disposal. A truck is good if there is reliable fuel available (the rising prices of oil should be considered). A horse too, if things get that bad. It is best to be by a river or another body of water, it is very good to live by the bridge, ferry or a dock on one's property, and a boat.

One thing that is important to mention is that organized crime moved in very quickly to control all the trade and businesses. Mafia and gangs banded together based on location and/or ethnicity. Therefore, one shouldn't be afraid so much of people with guns who come to take your food away, but rather of people who come with guns and demand a regularly paid share of your profit or surplus.

The value of education didn't decrease. On the contrary, it increased, especially for certain professions. In truth the most valuable major in my college ended up being geology and geophysics. It was the easiest to get into but the graduates were snapped up by Russian and foreign corporations in the booming oil and related industry, to do the exploration of natural resources, and have on average done exceedingly well.

USSR Collapse - Russia in the 1990s

As the Depression deepened, cities attracted beaten people from all parts of the country. Farmers whose livelihoods had been foreclosed packed up their families and moved into the cities. Hoboes and other itinerants sought shelter in cities during harsh winters. City dwellers themselves were not immune to the rails of the nation. Thousands of unemployed residents who could not pay their rent or mortgages were evicted into the world of public assistance and bread lines.

At President Hoover's beckoning, charities had stepped in to help ease the burden on municipal resources. Hoover was a firm believer in volunteerism. Feeling that each community was responsible for aiding people in distress, Hoover created programs that bolstered morale and encouraged charity.

In 1930 the International Apple Shippers Association was faced with an oversupply of fruit and came up with a unique solution to a national problem: to clear out their warehouses and give the unemployed a way to make a little money, they sold apples on credit. The ploy worked. Months later a shivering apple vendor could be found standing over a fruit crate on the corner of every major American city. By the end of November there were six thousand people selling apples in New York alone. The trend spread, and suddenly there were pitchmen of all persuasions standing alongside the apple sellers, handling everything from patent medicines to gaudy neckties.

Many people planted subsistence gardens in vacant lots or rooftops to feed themselves when grocery money was really scarce. Twenty thousand of these gardens were reported in Gary, Indiana, alone.

City Life During the Great Depression

[cephalotus]

Cuba is often cited as a successful post oil society. It ususally has and is currently ranked higher in life expectancy and healthcare than the United States.

Yeah, Cuba, the good old peak oil porno....

Cuba consumes 176,600 barrel oil per day for 11,07 Million people.

That's around 6 barrel oil per capita at a GDP of 9,900US$ per capita (=1,700US$ GDP for one barrel oil consumed)

For comparison Germany consumes 2,495,000 barrel oil per day for 81,3 million people

That's around 11 barrel oil per capita at a GDP of 37,900US$ per capita (=3,400 US$ GDP / barrel oil)

Ok, Cuba consumes less oil / capita than Germany , but we still really waste that stuff and we still heat lots of buildings with oil. If you compare the German and the Cuban industry and the car culture and the climate I fail to understand, why Cuba is always used as an example for a country that managed peak oil. Imho they are wasting HUGE amounts of oil, compared to what they do with it.

Others might disagree, but in my opinion Cuba has not mastered peak oil, they are not even on a way to become less dependent on (cheap) oil. In relation to peak oil problems that "growing you own food" thing is absolute nonsense in my opinion.

Maybe countries with an oil consumption of less than 1 barrel per capita (and year) do exist and a GDP of at least 5.000US$ per capita, that could be called examples for an oil efficient country?

Source for all data: https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... index.html

[meemoe_uk]

>. Imho they are wasting HUGE amounts of oil, compared to what they do with it.
Of course. Societies hardly need oil to function. >96% of oil in todays society is wasted utterly. Even in a post peak society you can splash it around like sea water on a beach.

[Corella]

Guess Cephalotus and most others have their points ...it depends.
In Germany we now have a feeling, what the effort is to transform our houses into energy-saving ones. This guy tells something about mass-balances, if
we try gain seriously renewable energy: http://www.withouthotair.com

It will be a tough thing to transform infra-structure. Success is matter of organization and decision.

Nobody can tell us when and how quick the depletion will happen because it is due to political and economical circumstances. The more, the less countries being capable to export. Nobody can really predict us whether the economic-system can be transformed to a stable system and if so, how long it takes and what will happen between.
Given some more time many thoughtfull people predicted we would have and if societies come up with good decisions, i personally tend to agree Cephalotus.

[Pops]

At any rate, in the US at least, cities will remain the centers of population for a long time yet for the simple reason there is nowhere else for city dwellers to go.

Basically you will either leave or die and those who survive somehow will lead a lifestyle of vermin.

The countryside might as well be a barren desert to a majority of urbanites. In the SW US it IS a barren desert. Just because I can grow lots of food doesn't meant there would be lots of food for refugees, 95% of the time there is nothing edible even in the most abundant farming area. Much better to stay close to the established supply lines and relief agencies and whatever jobs and of course, dumpsters.

Of course I don't see a post oil world appearing overnight, so urban refugees wouldn't, like, erupt as locusts and blacken the sky across the land. It will be a long slog as surpluses and jobs evaporate and transportation becomes more difficult and people adapt.

As that happens, I think small towns will revive somewhat simply because getting to and from the rural local and small town to the big box store in the city will be prohibitively expensive. What commuters there are will be either ride-sharing or using transit so their opportunity to shop will be smaller as well.

The advantage of the city big box over the small town shop is selection and price but access is the key. Most rural dwellers either work in the city daily or can cheaply and comfortably go to shop whenever they wish. But the broad selection, high turnover and low unit overhead will be offset by the cost of travel for those living/working outside the core in a high cost, low surplus future. Maybe Neighborhood Walmarts will be king here I don't know but I can imagine small local business popping up again because making a few bucks is better than making none.

[Lore]

I would think that the WalMart model would no longer work. Either would the Dollar Generals of the world. They both depend on long and wide distribution of select products in volume that result in fast inventory turns.

I agree the process will be slow unless you get something like a severe pandemic. Otherwise I too expect commerce to once again be more local. Just don't count on anymore blueberries in winter from Chile.

[Pops]

YeahBut, long, wide & fast are all relative. Mom&Pop General Store still must get their Whatzits somewhere and the distance from the factory in Milwaukee to SW MO is just as far for M&P as for Wally. Wally would still have the advantage of scale by buying more, stocking smarter and, importantly, delivering more efficiently to the NeighWaMart in each trip, tons at a time as opposed to M&P's small individual orders from however many different suppliers who bring by 10lbs of product at a drop. Right?

JIT has a to do with fast containerized transportation being cheaper than high priced commercial real estate to build huge warehouses for carrying large stocks. In an expensive transport environment (and cheaper commercial RE market) wouldn't warehousing make a return?

I don't know.

[Serial_Worrier]

Serial-worrier wrote:

As food supplies stop, imagine the horror of millions of people dying agonizingly in the mega-cities.

I'd rather not. I'm not sure this is likely anyway, barring an overnight crash scenario. But as I mentioned previously, third world megacities are precarious places. Resource limits in general and food supply issues specifically will manifest there before anywhere else.

Actually I see the same mass-starvation phenomena happening in the world suburbs. I see mass diefoffs everywhere. Billions of corpses will litter the land.

[glaucus]

I'm really skeptical that many city dwellers in the western world (particularly in the US) are going to starve simply because they are physically removed from the location that their food is grown. For one thing, city dwellers by and large have higher incomes than rural dwellers. Therefore, they are able to pay more for the food, goods, and services that rural dwellers will be more than happy to send their way. Along the same lines, isn't that what happened during the potato famine? IIRC, many Irish farmers gladly shipped out their produce to higher-paying Brits at the expense of their countrymen's lives. The same could happen within the grand ole' US and I'm damn near certain that it would happen on a worldwide basis thanks to globalization. Of course, should savings and wealth be totally wiped out by hyperinflation, all bets are off.

Second, what would stop urbanites from moving from failing cities to well-functioning ones? Again - there will be a few pressures which act on all cities equally and I highly doubt that all cities will experience the same set of issues homogeneously and to a degree that renders all of them unliveable. Therefore, it's conceivable there will be mass population redistribution based on a plethora of challenges - think climate refugees, sunbelt diasporas, etc. over a few decades. It probably won't look much different than the migration of folks from the rustbelt to the sunbelt over the latter half of the 20th century - just in reverse, and for diametrically opposite reasons.

I think rural will largely remain that way, though some old industrial mill towns and smaller cities scattered throughout will get a boost from resource depletion. The suburbs will 'ruralize in place' for those who remain. I wouldn't be surprised to see a sharper distinction in general between city and country as Kunstler describes, which would be a welcome change in my mind.

It's interesting to contemplate the strengths and weaknesses of big box vs. mom and pop in a descent scenario. But the dynamics there are so complex I'm not sure we can say for certain that one or the other is going to win out. However, it's pretty evident that retail of all types will take a beating and that both city and country people alike will share increasing poverty. That's a thread that will run through everything. Perhaps the better question is: "Would you rather be poor in the country or poor in the city?"

[ralfy]

Cuba consumes 176,600 barrel oil per day for 11,07 Million people. That's around 6 barrel oil per capita at a GDP of 9,900US$ per capita (=1,700US$ GDP for one barrel oil consumed) For comparison Germany consumes 2,495,000 barrel oil per day for 81,3 million people
Maybe countries with an oil consumption of less than 1 barrel per capita (and year) do exist and a GDP of at least 5.000US$ per capita, that could be called examples for an oil efficient country?
Source for all data: https://www.cia.gov/library/publication ... index.html

One should probably look at resource consumption overall rather than just oil imported, as a country with large amounts of money can buy goods manufactured elsewhere in order to maintain a middle class lifestyle.

Also, this might not simply be an issue of "mastering peak oil" but adjusting to a resource crunch. With that, I'd look at ecological footprint indicators vs. biocapacity, etc. For example,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... _footprint

The goal, then, would be an ecological footprint of 1.8 global hectares, i.e., following biocapacity per capita given the current global population. That, of course, will have to drop as global population increases or if resources are made inaccessible or damaged due to pollution, climate change, etc.

[ralfy]

One more thing: oil consumption and even ecological footprint are, of course, not the only factors to consider, but also the ability to maintain basic needs amid low levels of consumption. This is going to be very difficult.

Consider, for example, the Philippines: more than 300,000 mb/d and a population of more than 90 million, with a per capita GDP of more than $4,000. And yet it has a poverty rate of between 60 to 88 pct, a lack of various basic needs, etc.

[argyle]

When the decline sets in.. I think that both the rural villages as the cities will be hell-holes in the long run.. just different in their challenges.. (for example, villages can more easily provide in water, food, sanitation,.. but have less access to hospitals & other services/goods.)

I'm not so worried about food really, even though I live in Belgium (flanders) which is very densly populated. If we cut out a lot of waste, less meat for example but more grains, potatoes, etc.. (like how people lived around/before the industrial revolution, or even my grandparents in the 1900's), there should be plenty of food.. Except for the "major" cities of Brussels & Antwerp, I believe that there is enough farm land around cities to provide us with what we need. Every villager & small city occupant will have his own garden, chickens, rabbits,.. to process most of their "waste" into something editable.

What would worry me more is the lack of access to modern medicine, vaccines, etc.. A lot of elderly and sick will perish somewhere down the slope of peak oil production.. A small infection could even be the end of your life..

I don't believe/think that people will die of starvation (not enough to eat).. but the attrition (death vs births) will be much higher due to a less broad menu (vitamins, minerals,..) and higher death from simple infections, viruses, diseases..

Both large cities vs small towns/villages will have their challenges..

Personaly I've chosen for a small village (where I know 70% of the ppl in some way or another), close to some smaller towns(5miles), and about 15miles from a larger town.
Investing/learning in making you less dependent on the system (active & passive PV), well insulated house, well, garden & orchard & greenhouse, animals (eggs, meat, milk, wool,..), small woodlot (only for cooking atm), basic tools & supplies,...
Investing/learning in something that will bring you resources/money even in a very basic economy. (property to rent out, farmland, woodland, ...) or have skills that will be in demand.

My problem with skills is that with most the ones I can learn, I will not be as good as the ones that are doing it now for a job.
For example, I build my own house (almost did everything myself), but I will never be as good as a self-employed construction worker/carpenter doing it on a daily basis. So I see that marketability of that skill as very low. So I'll try to look for "niche" markets for things don't make sense yet to do in current environment, but might be hard to get by or are in demand later on. (distilling alcohol maybe?)
But it's still very hard to predict what skills will do well, and work for me (vs the competition) so I try to invest in property that might generate resoruces/wealth and that are nearby (easier to control). It is still good to have those skills (construction, gardening, sewing, fixing 1000 different kind of things, etc) to keep your own cost down though and depend less on other or the system.

[Pops]

"poor in the city or poor in the country" That's about the long and short of it, all the debate is simply people trying to reassure themselves in their own situation.

The hardest part of transitioning won't be in the circumstance we end up, we're bound to be better off than where we started a couple hundred years ago. Surprisingly there were lots of cities before oil and oil has helped us learn a lot since and we have a lot left to fix big problems. The hard part will be in the individual transition. Even aside from the bigger questions about energy intensive infrastructure the immediate problem for most will not be availability of water/food/shelter, it will be earning an income to purchase those things.

How does a dress shop advertising designer boy like me make his living in a world with no dress shops or newspapers? What does an used car salesman sell when there are no cars? How does a new construction super eat when there is no new construction?

A bit dramatic? Not unless you are in one of the boats that no longer float. The jobs recession of 2000 is still very much with us, the trickle down isn't and the stimulus hasn't, at least for J6p ...





http://seekingalpha.com/article/340171- ... ion-growth
http://www.ericforsenate.com/2012/03/mi ... s-squeeze/

[Fishman]

"giant "mines" from which scrap metal can be retrieved for use in smaller, less grand purposes" Finally, a purpose for Detroit. Where "income distribution" and "wealth disparity" corrections have worked so well.