tandempower

If it fails, it will be interesting to see how it fails and what happens with it throughout the failure process. First, I think the health-monitoring toilets would have to be optional. Next, I'm not sure what the intent of requiring people to invest their net worth is, but that price may come down a bit. There may even be parking areas for cars somewhere near the community, though that will depend on zoning and whether residents can travel to other areas car-free.

If 20,000 new residents start driving on local roads, congestion is going to grow quickly. Transit options would be helpful. Local governments could help by supporting LCF but it sounds like the current residents of the area favor a low-density quasi-agricultural lifestyle that is most certainly driving-dependent.

Rural sprawl is an interesting variation on urban/suburban sprawl because people in such areas like their A-LOS and often resist infill development that would lead to suburban levels of density because LOS will deteriorate as land gets developed into residential and commercial areas. Still, the question is how long such rural areas can be protected against population influx as prices rise in more populated areas and generate revenues to re-invest in buying up cheaper properties outside cities.

I think there definitely needs to be sustainable models for land-development as well as protections for undeveloped land as much as possible, but at what point should we stop current residents of rural areas from totally opposing land-uses that are geared toward achieving sustainability? Many such residents aren't just holding out for more sustainable plans; they just want to prevent population growth for the sake of having just a few cars on the roads and no one else. Is that legitimate or is it misanthropic?

Walter S

A lot of people, especially young, have a negative net worth. In that case giving up your net worth would be a pretty good deal.

Roody

Sorry, what is A-LOS?

tandempower

A level of service. "Level of Service" is a transportation engineering term that refers to how smoothly (motor) traffic flows. Congestion degrades LOS classification. It's been discussed in other threads. It's a nasty term that promotes sprawl and road-widening by prioritizing motor-vehicle traffic over other modes. There are some reforms currently going on to replace the LOS metric with designations that consider how well road designs and land use facilitates other modes besides driving. Hopefully this will result in overall better 'LOS' for those of us on bikes and/or using transit and walking; and make that option more attractive to more people so they will stop driving and improve motor vehicle LOS for others who are driving, such as transit operators (i.e. bus drivers).

Roody

Thanks.

So this is the basis of the legal difficulty (or impossibility) when studies indicate that a proposed bike lane would slow car trips by even a few seconds. Laws require that the LOS for cars cannot be reduced, regardless of the impact on LOS for non-motor road users.

Right?

And isn't this the standard that was recently changed in California? Any updates on that?

tandempower

Apparently it's worse in California because the smog problem was blamed on congestion with the idea that smog would be reduced by getting traffic moving, and getting traffic moving would happen by adding lanes.

I don't know how deeply it has sunken in that adding more lanes ultimately causes more congestion and deters people from transit and biking, which are the only sustainable solutions to congestion. I have heard there are very LCF-friendly reforms in the works, but also terrible resistance. It sounds like the same old story, in other words. By now, however, I think we have reached the point of land-use reform or war. I'm not saying there's specifically a motivation to wage war as a response to resistance to land-use reforms; just that whenever rural and natural lands begin to seem like they are under definite threat of further sprawl and development, recession and war happen. It's not necessarily that the people causing the war are LCF-lovers; they may just be population-growth haters who provoke wars as a relief valve for the economic mutilation of the planet as a whole. I know it sounds like a conspiracy about 'the elders of zion,' but it just seems like a logical thing to me, considering the history of economic changes and wars.

I-Like-To-Bike

Roody

We can only hope that people realize that starting a war to sustain life would be the stupidest thing that could ever happen. I don't think either side in Vermont will start a war.

But rural Vermont does seem like a poor location for this community, even though some of the technical details are very interesting and promising.

Walter S

Thank you. It's too deep for my shovel.

cooker

War may not be imminent but the concept is not so far fetched. Lots of American and international conflicts have been about land use, whether it is about the forced relocation of natives, or cattle range wars, or even the American Revolution itself which was partly about land restrictions and blocks on westward expansion. The Cuban revolution was partly about land reform and getting back land dominated by American corporations. Israeli settlements are another example where land encroachment is a key source of hostility.

What’s ironic here is that the Hall high density model has the overall effect of preserving rural land somewhere else, but of course not for the people in its immediate vicinity.

tandempower

I try to figure out what goes on in all the secret mental processes of people who plan and hire out these terrorist acts we are always seeing in the news that are designed to provoke military reactions, I think. I believe the people thinking up these provocations are reading the same news as the rest of us and they see stories like this one, where some person or people are making an effort to reform unsustainabilities and they are met not with constructive democratic cooperation but with resistance and a spirit of "go away, you're not welcome here" and I think hearts begin turning dark and the darkness might generalize against US Americans in general, or all North Americans, or all people in the developed world. But then I think there are other discourses going on around the world where other people of developed economies are saying the US is the problem and not them, so that steers hatred in an anti-American direction. That, in itself, would just be prejudice, but it puts the spotlight on the US in terms of attitudes toward global problems, so that puts undue pressure on people like those in Vermont confronted with this save-the-world project to approach it in a more constructive way, as if they care about changing the world for the better and not just about protecting their little slice of privilege. I'm not criticizing these people for having privilege, because I think we are all privileged in various ways, but when someone like this apparently inspired person envisions an opportunity to rekindle the good-hearted plans of his religious forefather in the area where that forefather lived, you have to have better reasons for resisting than just expecting his people to integrate into the local community. I.e. the community itself has to have reasons why 20,000 new residents living car-free would harm their way of life and be specific. They should have parameters for how to grow population sustainably and not just say, "no, go away." In short, they should at least acknowledge that if there is to be future population growth, a car-free and self-sufficient system like this plan entails might be the best possible scenario, and if it isn't, they should come up with a vision for what would be. Just resisting without having a plan for future growth of their own is just negativity toward expansion of human life and when people are negative about human life, it plants a seed of war, because war is the ultimate negativity toward human life. And, unfortunately, there are people in the world who aren't content to turn the other cheek and let such negativity slowly take its toll, but rather respond with their own negativity that involves planning and investing in mercenary actions that terrorize the world through our news feeds and provoke us into military responses that escalate the conflict and violence. I wouldn't call this issue in Vermont a straw that would break a camel's back, so to speak, but every straw leading up to the last one adds weight.

This is always my concern with development, that it displaces natural land. Unfortunately, I don't see every acre of natural land everywhere getting spared from development, so my contingency plan is to press developers to come up with development methods and land-uses that minimize the impact on natural ecologies. I look at motor-traffic corridors and see multilane roads that displace acres of trees and single-lane roads that are shaded by canopy on either side and, ideally, also by treed medians. I see paved bike paths that are even narrower with traffic slow enough that the path can curve around trees instead of requiring their removal. If I was developing a community within a treed area, I would favor minimal paving, minimal tree removal, and minimal motor-traffic, which would require car-free transportation to most houses/buildings and minimal access roads for motor-vehicles. The buildings themselves would also have to be built in a way that they could be positioned between trees without removing the trees, possibly with raised foundations to allow ecological activity to continue under buildings. This wouldn't be as good as leaving undeveloped land undeveloped, but it would be a lot better than clearing the land and then developing it, as is commonly done.

Walter S

You don't think a war that starts due to this car free community in Vermont is far fetched? What has ever happened in the history of the United States that would compare? We had a Civil War. Think something like that based on conflicts between LCF lovers and driving lovers is likely?

You agree? Tandempower somehow sees a repeating cycle of wars that happen in response to the "threat" of sprawl. Which planet are we talking about here? Did I miss a few wars?

I-Like-To-Bike

Planet Fairy Tale? Planet Screenplay? Planet Alternate Reality? Maybe, Planet LSD.

tandempower

It doesn't work like that. The way it works is that expansionary land-use pressures ensue and there are various responses. Very normative responses, such as middle-class migration to less-congested areas pass without drawing much attention. If you live in a growing small or mid-sized city, or a rural area that is gaining subdivisions or single-homes and other developments, there is probably little resistance. People don't usually start getting upset until some big developers come in wanting to build/expand (more) strip-malls, subdivisions, and/or expand highways. Suddenly people start defending their community, rural, and/or natural land, relatively low traffic congestion, etc. Basically people are just getting upset and resistant to population growth and land-use changes, but this kind of negativity builds up and contributes to a larger public discourse of anti-development.

Then, of course, there are people who want more/better jobs, business revenue growth, etc. who are pro-development. They are getting upset with the anti-development people, whom they consider unrealistic. As the conflict builds, the spirit of war grows. Some kind of relief valve is needed to solve problems for both pro-growth and anti-growth sides, but what? Most people just use their mental creativity to devise more and more clever ways of putting down the other side, but some people are thinking up plans for development to occur without offending opponents. This is difficult because some people don't care how friendly development is to the environment or otherwise; they simply don't want it to happen near them. Then the question becomes how people are supposed to live without any development whatsoever? Are population interventions the only answer at that point, or is some other way forward possible?

The reason war comes on the agenda is because no side is just going to roll over and let their opponent(s) have their way. Each step toward pushing forward from any direction results in a negative reaction and retaliatory spirit growing among opposing interests. Compromise only occurs if all sides can agree on path(s) forward that they consider reasonable. Otherwise, negative reactions persist and grow; and war is the ultimate manifestation of negative reactions coming to full fruition.


Think of it the other way around: is there ever a threat of war when encroachment into protected lands is not perceived as a threat?

cooker

This planned community might cause local hostility but in fact, rural and agricultural communities and farm and wilderness land are under much larger threat of encroachment by sprawling, low-density suburban development - I think that is where tandempower was seeing the potential for war.

I don't think that is so far-fetched, although perhaps a few decades away. It's part of a larger looming conflict between driving and eating.

tandempower

It's more general than that. War results from the build-up of oppositional attitudes and resistance to encroachment, regardless of what the encroachment is. Rationally, we have to progress to live and some people can thus have a rational, reasonable discussion about what forms of progress are least offensive, will cause the least harm, are most sustainable, etc. Others, however, will just decide that the way things are is how they want them to be and any growth or progress should just go somewhere else. This displaces the pressure to grow and progress onto others, so the more it gets deflected, the more people build up an attitude of hostility.

To avert war, there have to be solutions to social problems and positive attitudes toward finding and implementing those solutions. Once there are no solutions possible and/or people completely give up on the hope of finding/implementing them, or they decide that cultural/economic change is just unrealistic, etc.; then the negative spiral starts where potential problem-solvers keep getting dismissed as daydreamers, economic policies focus on distributing money to the protected class, and conflict ensues in various ways that eventually build up to war.

I am tempted to mention specific politics here but I won't, especially considering election time is approaching. Suffice it to say that a big part of politics is to avoid contentious issues like shifting away from driving and reducing economic dependency/stimulus because so many people just expect to keep driving and getting paid enough to afford the costs of doing so. So, on the one hand, we're unlikely to ever hear politicians openly talk about such unpopular solutions to widely-denied problems, and on the other, those problems are so widespread that the problems they create are going to continue getting worse and cause conflicts in other ways. Then, as crime, conflict, and war pressures grow more intense, scapegoats will be blamed, such as weapons sales and radicalism/fundamentalism instead of looking at the deeper root causes of economic and social problems prior to when people turn violent and go weapons-shopping to act on their frustrations.

Eating never reaches a disaster point for most people because most people will resort to crime, conflict, and war before accepting starvation. There are a few people in the world peaceful enough to starve when they run out of money, but by the time they do, economies have already inflated their currencies and shifted investments away from those who ran out of money.

Walter S

If war breaks out I plan to buy a car so I'll be on the winning side!

tandempower

Military service is voluntary since the draft was abolished. You join the military when your credit prevents you from living otherwise during the recession. Of course you could also join if you have some hope of creating peace again through supporting military efforts, but it just depends on how you view the cause of the conflict and what can or should be done about it. Either way, buying a car could just push you to the point of joining out of economic desperation that much faster and you might not achieve anything good once you join besides supporting others who had to. In my view, there are better ways to solve global conflicts than winning wars - but since many of not most of the reforms I envision will probably never gain enough popularity to make a difference, war might be inevitable and whether you buy a car or not won't really make a difference in the big picture, except keeping you more out of debt if you don't.

mconlonx

I think you are a good argument for alternative universe theory.