But you’re just threatening, so I guess it’s okay! (:

Yes, I agree with Derrick’s broader point (and yours) that cities aren’t sustainable. And I think we all know when something is a city and when it isn’t (it’s a lot like pornography that way, only less fun). It just annoys me when sloppy logic is used to support ideas that I would like to believe in. Derrick’s definition of a city is sloppy.

Cities (or Civilization) occur when people practice agriculture. Agriculture refers to a method of planting food that requires catastrophe to the land; floods, fire, tilling, etc. It requires this because the kind of food grown involves mostly grass and other plants that grow during the first phase of succession, which means you must deforest a region in order to plant.

Because an Acre of grass can produce more calories than an acre of forest, you can artificially inflate a human population above what the diverse forest would have sustained.

This system fails quite easily as a drought or disease can destroy an agricultural peoples only food source. In response, agricultural peoples build food storage units and grow more food than they need. When any population has more food than it needs, its population will expand to meet the food. This creates a positive feedback loop of people planting more food than they need for their ever-growing population. At some level of population density villages turn to towns, towns turn to cities and you now have a civilization. The people merely act as products of deforestation and grass growing. Even if people did permaculture, we would still never come close to matching the food production needed to sustain the great numbers of people. And even if we did, what of the continuous growth happening elsewhere? Where would those people move too? (the products of agriculture I mean)

Though Derricks definition of city may not sit well with you, it doesn’t change the conclusion that cities cannot sustain themselves because the land cannot support the density of people living there, and the culture in which cities become possible can never work sustainably. I can guess you already know all this but I just wanted to write it down for readers that don’t understand how & why cities can never work.

Forced hugs… sick and wrong? Did I ever tell you that I think the world of you?

I don’t mean moving more people into cities from otherwise sustainable villages. I mean consolidating sprawling cities so that the land currently used for lawns could be used to support the folks living in the cities.

Forced hugs are sick and wrong. It’s on the same continuum as forced sex.

There’s no greater sign of a psuedo-community than people forcing themselves on you in fake-friendship in an attempt to stop those nagging doubts that something isn’t quite right with what they’re doing.

So rather than taking down the cities, why don’t we move more people into them?

The more people you move into the city, the more resources they will need from outside of it.

I agree with you, DeAnna, that you can draw a boundary anywhere in order to determine the sustainability of what lies within the boundary. But I think Jensen’s definition still holds true that if the thing inside the boundary sucks from its surroundings (even if they fall within the boundary) without giving back, then it’s a city, and it’s unsustainable.

Certainly, a group of people could gather together and live in an area that they draw resources from and give back to at the same time–even give back more than they take. I call that a village, not a city.

In the case of cities, one just needs to draw the boundaries differently and some more options present themselves. What if the boundaries were drawn around Portland and enough of the surrounding countryside that the whole system could be self-supporting? Now, let’s look at why that surrounding countryside *isn’t* being used to sustain the citizens of Portland. And it turns out that the problem isn’t the city at all, it’s a much bigger issue having mostly to do with international trade, government subsidy systems, and suburbs. (And as a side note, if more people would move into the city instead of taking up valuable farmland with their suburban culdesacs, there would be a lot more room to create a sustainable city. So rather than taking down the cities, why don’t we move more people into them?)

I’m just saying is all.

Always good to view time and time again how Derrick Jensen imparts with you the true meaning of ‘Sustainability’.

Cheers for you!

Christine