folder fanatic

"Bikepackers67" posted this gem of a video recently on the Politics & Religion forum: https://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php/729391-Sprawling-From-Grace. I thought that it would be perfect for people that like to visit here on this particular forum and was not aware of it's existence and the other post.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPS1y81b1Bw&feature=player_embedded

Dahon.Steve

Good Post.

Did you notice how they stressed lightrail as the solution to an autocentric society? I've said it before the key to transit oriented communities begins with lightrail and not bus transport. Unfortunately, hundreds of millions have been cut from transit and I suspect once gas reaches 5 dollars a gallon, we will see more cuts as states continue to defund systems nationwide for more road construction.

It's funny how Kunsler made a prediction about the fall of the real estate boom! Good one.

Artkansas 

Thanks for posting that. As I'm contemplating a move to Phoenix, its very cogent. I think that Phoenix is the poster child for sprawl because most of it has been built since 1960. I'm really wondering if a car-free lifestyle is possible in Phoenix.

Smallwheels

Watching this made me glad that there were civic leaders on board with better urban planning. It would be great if all elected officials would watch this video along with one geared towards solutions and how to implement them.

I disagreed with some of the information about alternative fuels. Otherwise it was a pertinent film.

axel

Thanks for sharing the link Folder Fanatic. I just saw this a couple days ago when Jeffrey Brown posted a link to it on energybulletin.net: https://www.energybulletin.net/storie...esource-limits
Excellent documentary. I love the urban planning/design focus. Lots of Peak Oil docs don't emphasize the design element enough. And some planning docs gloss over the energy issue. The tone is very subtly shifted as it goes along. After presenting the problem in the 1st half, it shifts towards solutions gradually - being careful to not sugar coat or gloss over anything. The tone ends upbeat and hopeful but with both feet firmly on the ground.

Would have loved to see more black people in the film but to it's credit it does have a strong representation of female experts. David Edwards film is well written with both a depth of thought and wide ranging focus. Charlie Samson offers a sober narration that delivers the goods without sounding preachy. The cinematography offers a lot of good footage of what is wrong with sprawl as well as showcasing the designs for alleviating it. The film serves up the peak oil truth without wallowing in it. It presents the info in a straightforward enough way for anyone to grasp but you never feel talked down to. The music maintains a mostly earnest tone - but I like how there was the occaisional peppering of old tv ads to provide comic relief and throw in some contrast.

I thought the End of Suburbia was a little bit more like preaching to the choir whereas this movie seems to partially target the car dependent masses who have begun to see some cracks forming in the veneer of our drive-in utopia.

gerv 

Thanks for the post. I watched it beginning to end and was struck with the immensity of the task. It's one thing to make incremental change... but another to re-configure the whole society. Basically, you would not only have to re-arrange about half the living spaces of surburbs, but you would also have to convince a big chunk of the population that their basic car-centric instincts (and all its basis in individualism and materialism) is a dead-end.

I think that's the big pushback. You'll certainly see some enlightened people moving near their transit stations, but a larger proportion will want the picket fence, the lawn and the big garage with a couple of cars.

Dahon.Steve

I rented Fuel on NetFlix and it was excellent. It's amazing how biodiesel can possibly replace gas to power automobiles but I wonder if it's really true. You see the movie still believes we can continiue motoring forever but with biofuels!

Dahon.Steve

https://www.carfreephoenix.com/

JusticeZero

Biofuels aren't the answer, barring a serious retool and infrastructure redesign. There actually IS a way to do it and keep driving around like we do.. but it's a BIG CHANGE that we have little if any real will to do. I could see it happening, but I just don't see any steps toward it being taken right now; everyone is googoo about electric right now. Before it was hydrogen. Maybe next time they'll take up this one.

The big problem with biofuels are twofold.
First, they already use a little bit of biofuel from waste oil. This is a great reuse application, but it doesn't scale. If everyone switched, it would be soaked up by the end of the workweek.

Second, if you switch to fresh oil, it still doesn't scale. If we switched to sunflower production, we could keep the famine-starved masses driving around until they withered to nothing from malnutrition, but nothing else would do. Also, the 'green revolution' that feeds everyone is based off of petroleum fertilizers, which means that that wouldn't actually help our oil addiction.

The only way to make it work would be sealed algae farming on a vast scale; floating islands totalling the land mass of a small continent soaking up sunlight in clear algae cultivating mats, growing special breeds of oil-producing algae on a massive scale, then feeding it to processing plants to extract the oil and convert it to fuel. We could probably actually do that; it might even help fix the global warming problem. But it is an absurdly large undertaking with a lot of unanswered questions, and it would need some substantial market redesign.

Added to this would be the minor issue that the primary product would be vegetable oil; we can make engines to run on that, but the only ones that currently do date from the 20's. The original diesel engines were designed to run on vegetable oil; then petroleum diesel was made available cheaply, and engine designs were optimized to run on that instead, and the different weight and suchlike meant that after optimized, the engines will only safely run on vegetable oil if it is heated substantially before it enters the engine. That said, it is a simple enough chemical process, if needed, to turn vegetable oil and alcohol into diesel oil and glycerine soap.

What exactly the world is to do with millions of tons of soap is unclear. However, it was unclear to the world what to do with millions of tons of corn, and these days we use it for just about everything.

Another issue is that this relies of diesel engines. Diesel engines are great engines, they are very efficient. They also produce large amounts of fine particulate exhaust; if we greatly increased the share of diesel vehicles in our cities, asthma would go from being excessively common as it is now to being a vast epidemic and the health problem to define a generation.

Goupilandcie

Good film thanks for the post. Personally I dont think they emphasized population control enough.

On a seperate note I actually saw my apartment on one of the clips about light rail.

Artkansas 

Yeah, and that is the problem with the Rails to Trails movement in my opinion. It's good in that the right of way is preserved, but we need those rails.

folder fanatic

The only main weakness I saw in this video was it's pushing of or overemphasis on lightrail and passenger trains. It is an very important option, but not the be-all end-all solution to the private use motor vehicle. Bicycles and Work-cycles provide another very important short distance option and was not even mentioned in the video. Walking was mentioned mostly in passing or quick shots of people wandering about during events or downtime, not really going anywhere of importance. I think the future of cars will be more like the Dutch, Germans, and Scandinavians do now-drive when necessary, bike if it is the best way, or really walk and/or cycle, & use public transit to somewhere.

gerv 

Yes we should try to stay away from that single-mode style of transportation and, yes, the video could have emphasized that more. That's why it's important to get people out on bikes, even if they only do a few commutes a year. At least, the bike is in the mix and trips could possibly grow... at the very least it stops people thinking there is only "one way".

bragi

This film is essentially correct in its assessment of our (very serious) energy problems, but the second half of the film made me want to scream. Poor and working class people are forced to drive long distances primarily because of real estate prices, which is something the film completely ignored. . If you produce a nice, walkable community close to the core city, it's a very good bet that only rich people will be able to afford to live there, unless you're willing to have roommates or live in a hovel next to the freeway. Until decent places to live become the norm, and I'm not holding my breath, only the rich will be able to afford a sustainable (and human) way of life without huge sacrifice.

Roody

The more I study these matters, the more I think that the real solutin to social problems is to be found in economics. We need to find ways to make the right choice also the profitable choice. If i was young and I wanted to make the world better, i would study economics. I went with psychology. I help individuals, but i don't have any impact on larger problems. In fact, i'm even starting to think that many psychological problems actually have economic origins.

Ekdog

It looks like Mexico's days as an oil-exporting nation are numbered.

https://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/...-report-warns/

Sundance89

Thanks for sharing. This is an excellent doc and very well balanced. It's sad how we did this to ourselves in this country with very short sightedness, laziness and greed. The social aspect is equally as alarming as the environment and infrastructure.

We are always stronger together than we are apart. White flight has led to an unbearable strain on resources with traffic and commute time, and likewise, pushing lower income people to isolation has created some incredibly dysfunctional areas. The mixed cluster neighborhoods connected by a train system seemed like heaven for humanity to me.

newenglandbike

I couldn't agree more. The appeal of automobiles, even in areas with great public transportation infrastructure, is the sense of freedom and individualism associated with them (of course, this is mostly an illusion, carefully crafted by very shrewd marketing-- but it is nonetheless there and is powerful). Bicycles are ideal for filling in the inevitable gaps in any transportation map, and it sucks that this video completely missed that.

Sundance89

I can only think this was an oversight and not resistance given the consciousness and spirt of the doc. I was also waiting for cycling to be fused in with the rest of the solutions and it never happened?? But I bet upon the initial brainstorming and outlining of subject matters to be addressed in this doc, if someone had said we need to include cycling as a part of the solution, it would have been pursued. It goes to show that even like minded people are still not on bikes . . . yet.

gerv 

Unfortunately, documentary makers as well as government officials and pundits and just about everybody else focus on the "one" solution. Even some LCF people see just one transportation solution as being the answer.

The real solution is, of course, a mix of many solutions, each designed for a different range and set of ground conditions. Bikes work well under ten miles. Walking is fantastic under 2 miles. Cars, trains and buses work between 10 and 250 miles. Ion propulsion spacecraft work great if you are going to Jupiter.