I can't count the number of times someone has posted a slam against the US here for having more people in prison than anywhere else. You sure you want to roll with that one?

That's not what I said. It may be true or not, I don't know. I'm pretty sure we do a lousy job of rehab once they are in prison.

We also do a lousy job of taking care of our young compared to other developed countries.

I think you are right, Mos. I am feeling very defensive and vulnerable lately. It's hard to get back to feeling good about your neighbors when your property is attacked every week.

Maybe hardening our sugarhouse seems a little paranoid, but we have been attacked at least 5 times.

It feels like we are descending into the bunker mentality.

I am going to take some time off next week and the week after, so maybe things will mellow. Maybe...

I don't really want to abandon this position. Maybe there's a middle way.

How sad.

Are you in the country, exurbia, the suburbs or in a small town or city?

The violent neighbors up the road cruelly invited us to their violent family post-Halloween party/Haunted Hike, where we met many of their violent children, grandchildren, killer babies and a vicious great-grandmother (also a neighbor, from the other end of the road).

killer babies

I live in a small town and own land outside of the town center in the hills. That's where our sugarhouse is.

There seems to be a lot of pressure on the poor lately, so maybe we are a target of their frustration. We are barely hanging onto our lower middle class existence, but we make it better than most because we changed some things to allow us to live on less when we saw peak oil coming.

I have decided that I can't change them, but I can re-arrange some things to make it harder to shoot up our shack in the future.

That's the plan anyway. I am going to try to get a group together to work on the probems we face in our town.

That will work to get the neighborhood together which may be essential for survival if things get really bad.

And you used to be a love-child?

Nah, I've always been legitimate.

Hey Ludi, you see this?

Plowing Detroit Into Farmland
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Today’s idea: Detroit’s “massive failure” makes possible a radical transformation of the blighted city, an article says, including shrinking it down to its urban core and turning much of the place over to crops. And an ineffective government is actually a plus.
F. Costantini for The New York Times Fords into plowshares? No, this is an old Chrysler lot.

Cities | Could Detroit pull a reverse Joni Mitchell — unpave its parking lots to put up a metro-agrarian paradise? That’s a glib yet hopeful way to think about the urban experiments envisioned or under way in the city, as described by Aaron M. Renn in an article in New Geography.

Renn says the sheer size of Detroit — a largely vacant urban prairie bigger than Manhattan, Boston and San Francisco combined — makes it a prime test case for the “shrinking cities” movement. And so an American Institute of Architects study imagines Detroit reduced into a metro core surrounded by green belts, “urban villages” and banked land.

Already, Urban Farming, an international outfit that has made Detroit its headquarters, is said to boast some 500 small plots under cultivation to supply free food to the city’s poor. “It wouldn’t surprise me, frankly, if Detroit produces more food inside its borders today than any other traditional American city,” Renn writes.

Even raccoon- and pheasant-hunting is not unheard of within the protein-poor city’s limits. Yes, a retired truck driver reportedly shoots raccoons and sells them as food, at $12 per carcass to feed a family of four.

Such is Detroit today. But in what many see as a nightmare town, where a house can cost less than the TV you put inside, loftier dreams can also be dreamt — especially, Renn says, when government doesn’t get in the way: “In Detroit, the incapacity of the government is actually an advantage in many cases. There’s not much chance a strong city government could really turn the place around, but it could stop the grass roots revival in its tracks.” [New Geography; background: The Week]

That is an awesome article. Detroit is turning back into countryside again. I think it's going to be the fate of most industrial cities. People will need to learn how to live there again.

The prices of most real estate were attractive enough to start to farm the place again.

If you can buy a house for a thousand, put a thousand into equipment and grow a market garden you can make it work.

Crisis means opportunity for some people.

With depleted and poisoned soils.

And don't forget the roving gangs of thugs.

I'm not rushing into Detroit to farm, but I guess there are people who are doing it.

It's hard enough in Maine.

Ludi,

I think that this is closer to the scenario I was contemplating here a while back than rioting gangs. Or maybe it is just a precursor.

Here is another tidbit. Something similar is going on here in Philadelphia. They can't tear down the old abandoned houses fast enough, it takes a long time to clear through the legal system to get the demolition permits. Our previous Mayor made is a cornerstone of his administration to speed up the process. Still there are something like 40,000 abandoned houses in Philadelphia alone.

Still, there is no where near enough land to feed everyone. There is only enough to feed a small portion. If the social support system goes down sufficiently then these people will need to look elsewhere for the basic necessities of life. I think what I was getting at, riffing off of Mos' ideas, was that these inner city people can and will make life less certain for those in the fringing communities and so on.

If you feel like being depressed.....there is a movie on the web from England called "A World Without Water." It is not entirely fair handed but does chronicle the commoditization of water in three third world countries: Bolivia, India, and Detroit. Most people won't sit through the showing.

Nope, no riots.