Suburbia

I spent much of today reading about the failure of suburbia in the USA. Interesting the various scenarios that came up in the comments in particular. I think I wasted a whole afternoon on it and still am not really convinced of any of the forecasts although quite a lot of them had good points to make.

None of this really applies round here as the city I live in is rather small and only has one smallish outer suburb which should survive quite nicely by itself.

The points that most interested me were those relating to items we may not have again and I began thinking along the lines of electronics and plastics. On the whole they are right in that things cannot continue as they are but there are other ways.

This got me thinking about recycling and plastic and other resources too. It seems to me that there will always be some of these things available for general use as long as we can mine our landfills. I think it should be possible to continue to make high technological items as far into the future as we can exist as long as we treat things with a bit (a lot) more respect.

Some stuff doesn't need high tech and in fact would be better with a lot lower tech. I mean who really needs a household clothes dryer when it is just as easy to hang washing on the line. It should be possible to have a community laundry for those emergencies when the sun doesn't shine. To say nothing of our vast over use of plastic bottles, bags and chemical additives which appear in everything from cleaning fluids to liquid soap and even food!

We don't need to travel vast distances on fancy holidays and, as a matter of fact this is only a recent phenomenon. Most of our grandparents would have stayed near home or done day trips and picnics. Around this country there was always the family crib (holiday house) usually on a lake or sea front. These were cheap and unpretentious and housed numerous families of cousins, brothers, sisters, their offspring, their friends etc. (Our own family crib was exactly 3/4 hour away and there we spent our three weeks holiday every year.)

I have come to the conclusion that what I would like to see is a society that lives locally and in communities with access to world communication via computers etc but that still has roots deep in the local economy and soil. I don't think we all need to be farmers or market gardeners. That would be a waste of the many other talents that abound in humanity. There should be a place for artists and musicians, dancers and actors and scientists of all kinds. My utopia would have a place, however lowly, for every person living in it so that nobody need go hungry or unappreciated.

Not half asking for much am I :)

And yet this should be possible even in a less than perfect way.

Perhaps we should tell the speculators, bankers and commercial pushers to go do something useful for a change and then ban hoarding of resources and big business for profit. Any necessary monopoly should be owned for the people by the people. (water, power for example).

sing for your supper and live life to the full always with the mantra of doing no harm to yourself or the environment and try to leave things the better for your existence.

viv in nz