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  • From: Toby Hemenway <hemenway@jeffnet.org>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] regional diets/urban vs rural
  • Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 12:44:11 -0700


robert waldrop wrote:
where many urban inhabitants were born and raised in rural areas
and then moved to cities.

Not since about 1910. At that date, in the US, more people lived in urban areas than in the country, so they'd be "going home" to the cities. (US census data; by 1960, it was 2 to 1 urban/rural). Like nearly all Boomers and Xers, I was born in the 'burbs. The US Civil War (1860s) started the first big move to the cities, as farmers flocked to jobs in the factories created by the war. Then the 1930s saw a huge influx to the cities, as the US government, frightened by populist farm uprisings, deliberately bankrupted farmers and drove them into cities where they'd have to work for others and be dependent. The overwhelming majority of Americans from the WW2 generation on have been born in cities and suburbs.

The reason people in the US would migrate
from urban areas to rural areas, during a fossil fuel decline, is that
US cities, as presently constituted, are simply not workable communities
in the absence of nearly limitless quantities of cheap energy.

But neither are rural areas. My observation, and that of many researchers, is that urbanites are more sustainable than ruralites. A decline of fossil fuels will devastate rural areas, since they are vastly more dependent on the automobile than even suburbanites. I'm now a ruralite, and I have tripled my annual car mileage since leaving Seattle, since there's no public transit and everything is a 15-minute drive or more (my nearest friend is a 30-minute drive). Small towns everywhere have been gutted and replaced by car-dependent strip malls out by the highway; the 3 towns nearest me are utterly car-dependent; no food stores in town. And environmental consciousness is vastly lower in rural areas (rural counties vote Republican). There is no curbside recycling or garbage pickup--many of my neighbors simply burn their trash or dump it in the back 40, and few recycle. More people in cities are gardeners than in the country (US census). Here's a sad tale: an urbanite friend of mine gave some tomato plants to her farmer-parents, but was told the tomatoes would have to stay in the garage to avoid herbicide drift--they couldn't garden because all the crops for miles were Roundup ready. Most farmers and ranchers don't garden.

In recessions and depressions, urbanites have fared better than ruralites because food shipments are directed to population zones and the farm towns are choked off (according to Hazel Henderson, the US Economic Research Service, and others). Cities also have priority for electricity. So rural areas, as currently constituted, may be worse off in a crash. In a perfect world, where ruralites grew their own food--which they don't--distances still prevent the kind of mutual aid that can occur in city neighborhoods. I'd much rather be in a city than out here in the sticks when the oil runs out.


Toby
_____________________________________________
For a look at my book on ecological gardening,
Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture, visit
http://www.chelseagreen.com/Garden/GaiasGarden.htm


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