Catastrophic Economic Crash

This site is not just about natural disasters. Human human created disasters are something that mankind has had to deal with for as long we've been around. The obvious things are war, nuclear war and climate change. But also, I considered carefully the idea that a massive economic collapse was also possible and should be included on the list. This kind of disaster can come in two forms. A short term depression style disaster, where a ten year downturn with mass unemployment can kick in, sending inflation sky high and leading to cues to get basics like bread from a government agency. The second kind is much deeper than that. It drags in other factors as well. For instance. London, or at least some of London, lies within a flood plain. If London found itself without access to its buildings, and all that infrastructure was condemned overnight, then resulting economic costs would be a more permanent disaster. But is it possible for the economic model of the free market to have a total collapse, to the point where we cannot return easily? Mass starvation. Chaotic criminal activity. Collapse of Police and emergency services. Collapse of government. The kind of economic crisis, precipitated by a disaster, perhaps even a global one, which leads to collapse of the structures of government and civil society. We've seen them before in times of war. We've seen it up to point both in Germany between WWI and WWII and in Zimbabwe recently. How do we rescue ourselves from a chaotic collapse of society? This isn't an easy question to answer. Immediate decisive action towards setting up as many of the essential aspects of government would be the first thing to do. A place where key players know they need to go to. A need to have an alternative emergency economic model already agreed upon and ready to be used in times of crisis. In others words an emergency plan. One such plan I have invented will be available from www.newneutral.org in the coming months. It involves a clone economic model, which replicates a real one, but is not affected by the fickle cycles of booms and busts. Something more stable. It also involves a system which issues funding for large public projects and does this in a unique way (too complex to explain in a blog).

In the depression, the billionaire John Rockefeller, decided to build the Rockefeller Centre, which was a huge building project, bang smack in the middle of New York. He took a risk with his fortune and his reputation, believing that a large building project would stimulate the economy and kick start a recovery. It did. His gamble paid off, leading to the boom in the following decades. For this reason he's still hero to this day to many who are aware of the history and to those who are still around to remember it. Large public works can lead to an economic boost. But with the latest crisis the sources of private funding are the very sector in the economy which are causing the downturn. So this isn't always an option.

Water Security.

Many people are now discussing water security as the issue hots up. It will be the hottest of issues as demands for fresh water increase with rising population and increased usage. Because it is not just water piped into homes that is the issue here. In fact water piped into homes only accounts for a small proportion of the fresh water we use. Much of it is used in agriculture and industry. Much of the fresh water from around the world comes as run off from mountains and hills feeding into rivers and lakes. The rivers are then used to irrigate crops, taking the water from the river before it reaches the sea. For this reason many of the worlds largest rivers are not actually reaching the sea much anymore. The Yellow River in China is one example.

So how does an increasing population adequately supply itself with enough water to supply its industry, its homes and its agriculture? For example Coke, the most popular soft drink in history, with an addictive quality, takes nine parts of water to create one part of Coke. In some areas of California for example, there is a stretch of prime arable land which has been artificially created by engineers and farmers. It should be an arid stretch of land. But they take water from a number of sources including underground aquifers and water this large piece of land so that it can produce all manner of vegetables, crops and fruits. However because of the population demands and limited water supply, these two parts of the human system are now competing for this water at increasing levels. In fact this land may have to be abandoned and crops shipped in from else where.

Part of the solution is knowing what to do with water that has been flushed into the sewage system. Stuff that we have used just gets wasted and flushed into the sea. And desalination plants are expensive to build and run and can only really supply sea side towns and cities, because of the huge costs of pumping water inland. Recycling on the other hand can borrow natural filtration systems. They take the water coming from sewage and feed that water through a treatment plant. They then run the water through the ground and into the underground aquifers. They then collect it and run it through a treatment plant again before re-feeding it into the pipework to homes and businesses. It is essentially what happens to water anyway. Its just a system borrowed from nature and put to work by humankind. The engineers who proposed the Californian scheme say that the water is purer than treated rain water.

Desalination plants are another option. However the energy needed to produce the filtered water is enormous. Over the years countries like Saudi Arabia and Australia have built them and made them so that they use less energy than before. But the energy levels are still unsustainable high. It makes the water more expensive for the end user. The costs of pumping water from desalination plants is also high, adding yet more cost to the end user. So without a sustainable energy source desalination plants can only really be used en-mass in two circumstances. One that the water is delivered locally, i.e. to seaside towns and cities. And two if the energy they use comes from a sustainable source.

I think that recycling is the best chance for water security. Because as well as river systems not reaching their delta's anymore, but underground fresh water aquifers are drying up very quickly indeed. It will be a matter of decades before our usage levels outstrip the replenishment from natural sources, if not sooner. If not now. We need an overall, global agreement on water with plenty of funding for engineering project and we need to begin this process now.

Brazil's Future Town

Brasilia is a new town created by visionary architect, Lucio Costa, who around 1956 was given the go ahead to build the new socialist capital of Brazil, by the president of Brazil, Juscelino Kubitschek De Oliveira (President of Brazil 1956–61). This new town spread out a like a bird across the plains at a site that was miles from the nearest city. It was revolutionary because the apartments that line its central road, were designed so that someone at the top society could live next door to someone at the bottom of society. It was supposed to disperse people evenly, so that poor neighbourhoods wouldn't develop and richer neighbourhoods would not become isolated from the others.

The city of Brasilia was first thought to trace its conception back to the Brazilian saint, Dom Bosco who on August 30, 1883, had a dream of a city there at the site, where he is buried, and where Brasilia now stands. He says " Between parallels 15 and 20 there was a long and wide depression, in the vicinity of a lake. Thus spoke a voice, over and over again: "... when they come to explore the riches buried in these mountains, here will rise the promised land of milk and honey, of inconceivable wealth..."

This is made as the first real beginnings of the capital which was built 73 years later. However, the reason why I bring it up here, is that the socialist vision ultimately failed when the socialist government was ousted a few years after the city was completed. It has meant that with the ensuing capitalist government, the poor did indeed end up in shanty towns a few miles out of Brasilia, having to take long journeys into the city to service the rich who now occupy the best apartments along its wide boulevard. I think, for Future Towns, which shares the idea of dispersing the classes so that patches of wealth and protected 'gated' communities, and patches of poverty and crime, don't build up. Brasilia, sadly now has satellite towns, which are unplanned and very poor indeed. Exactly the opposite of Costa's vision. In order for social equity to exist outside of one town and without having to bus in labour to better towns, leaving the unprotected normal towns outside of the system, it is indeed necessary to build more Future Towns instead. Ideally, it is my intention that a Future Town should have as much of its labour, skilled and unskilled in the town to begin with. If the socialist vision of Costa at Brasilia was to work, the Brasilian government would have had to build more planned towns to cope with the inevitable rise in population, as people naturally migrate to capitals, to have grievances aired, to seek wealth, recognition or power or to search for employment. So my question is and should be, will a Future Town within a free market be able to support unskilled labour within its boundaries? It should do this, if the build up of shanties servicing the town are to be avoided.

Big Buildings

There are two major buildings being talked about at the moment that deserve a mention. I advocate big buildings. They reduce sprawl and make better use of resources, especially in domestic housing. However, two buildings now on the drawing board, one a serious reality and the other a vision of a future, have caught my eye and have probably caught the eye of most of the construction industry.

The Crystal Island.

The first is of course a Foster building. The Crystal Island (below) is a building planned for Russia and is to all intents and purposes a town in one building, providing all the aspects of a town, from shops to services. In fact if the commissioners of this building had any sense, they would classify it as a town and collect local taxes to maintain it.

The Xceed.

The second building I want to mention is the Xceed, a building being discussed in Japan. This building even dwarfs the Crystal Island. It will cost between $300 and $900 billion and will house between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people. It is the size of a mountain (see below).

This building is impressive and really scares me (in a good way). I love the idea of enclosing a city into a structure. However, besides the cost both the Xceed and the Crystal Island run contrary to the idea of disaster proof buildings. Large buildings drain a lot of energy and raw materials, and shouldn't be encouraged over a certain size. Secondly the buildings physical integrity can only take it so far over a point where the buildings will collapse under their own weight. A lot of architects and engineers believe that they can build large buildings whilst maintaining integrity during earthquakes or impacts. But the fact is they can't. The physical restrains will mean that structural integrity will only last so long before major engineering repairs would need to be carried out. Within a capitalist economy it would not be possible to build a building that would be so economically as well as structurally unstable. It would be like the very large engineering projects of the past. The Titanic; the SS Great Britain the giant cargo ship built by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, which killed Brunel and never made a fully laden voyage before heading for the scrap yard to be dismantled. Or the Channel Tunnel, straddling the UK and France, under the English Channel, which only started making a profit this year, a full 20 years to begin to make money for the owners. Large engineering projects within a free market economy need to be limited in size to make them financially viable, and with very large buildings, they need to be limited in size to offset the physical restrains of materials and the way they cope (or not) with natural stresses.

Nanotubes are of course lauded as the answer. But this technology is expensive and unproven and I doubt would be able to be used in a large construction like the Xceed idea. I believe that town and city sized buildings have a natural social and structural limit, and that once this limit is discovered (because we don't know what it is yet), then we can begin to experiment. Experimenting with peoples lives and the economies that build large buildings, is not the way to go. Besides earthquakes, high impacts in wars or from asteroid strikes, would utterly destroy the building and if those two things don't do it then economics will. A neglected super sized building is just as dangerous as one threatened by earthquakes - if not more so.

Longevity of Materials

Wood can only last so long as a building material. Sooner or later it will be useless. Maybe fifty years. Isn't it more sustainable to use a material that lasts a long time and easy to repair? Most materials (including concrete) can be reclaimed and reused. Also, from a disaster proofing perspective I would never feel secure in a straw bail, timber framed house. It can be blown apart by high winds or destroyed by fire. Isn't that why we switched to bricks in the first place? A collective amnesia I think. A building should be built for longevity and resilience and if it takes a bit longer to demolish and reclaim its materials, so be it. Let's not be lazy about reusing materials.

Foster + Partners.

The environmentally conscious building movement is in a state of collective amnesia, and its taking hold. Eco-towns are springing up all over the place including one in Abu Dhabi, which is walled city, with enclosed streets for pedestrians only. Designed by Foster and Partners (seemingly the only architect in the world at the moment), it's enclosed streets shade pedestrians as they wonder around, with small cars on monorails to take passengers around the town (see pic). The project is funded by petro-dollars and will house a eco-power R&D community. It is an answer to ecological problems with self-sustaining solar power supply and waste recycling systems etc. But they have not taken into account the disasters that will and have in the past, come about as a result of climate change. Rising sea levels, storms, dry prolonged periods, maybe earthquakes etc. If you really want a sustainable town you must look at the disasters and unusual weather events that come with it, at least. If not all possible disasters.

Working with Wood as a Sustainable Building Material

Wood from sustainable sources is a great favourite of green building specialists but I don't like it as a sustainable building material. Wood is a great material, with fantastic aesthetic qualities and great beauty. But as a source of sustainable building material, it failed to convince me, along with the all advocates of properly sourced wood from sustainably managed forests. For a start if you take it to its logical conclusion, wood maybe renewable, but how much wood would be enough to build or contribute to housing all over the world? Sustainable forests + unsustainable forests wouldn't go far enough, especially when good fertile land is at a premium and competing with food and low carbon fuels. No, wood is a bad idea for building houses. The wood would have to be intensively farmed, not taken from sustainably managed. Also, in the wider context wood is flammable and weaker when reacting to flooding, earthquakes and impacts, and so would be no good in a disaster proofing context.

I believe that wood should be removed as an option in sustainable building methods and materials. At this early stage I think it's fine, but governments all over the world are pushing sustainable building practices onto statute books and planning laws, so at some point there will be a cry from the green lobby to say enough is enough and when that happens wood from any source would not be an option.

Sustainable Building

Green building as a concept; as a movement has been riding high in the last year or so. It has been realised by the great and the good that to properly insulate and to sustainably supply energy to all buildings will achieve the Kyoto targets that we signed up to, all on its own. For this reason and because it is cheapish to properly insulate homes, (relative to new energy sources and the technology that supplies it) it is seen as a great way to cut back on carbon emissions. However, while the world gears up to this idea and as businesses sign up to the principles, and as newspapers and TV news and Mr Schwarzenegger et al put their weight behind the ideals of climate change, the world 'sustainable' has been kind of passed over without proper attention. In essence, as I am sure you all know, sustainability is about preserving the ability of future generations to have the means to survive at a reasonable rate of comfort in the future. What we do shouldn't destroy what future generations can do, in terms of resources and so on. But what sustainability, if we use the word in its full sense, really proposes is that we sustain human life, whatever it takes (within reason). It means that our lives as beings are as precious to us now as they will be in 1000 years time when we are all dead. There are some in medicine that claim we will soon unlock life expectancy and live for two hundred years onwards almost as long as we like. Or at least the technology and knowledge we have will be able to do this, whether we choose to or not. So not only does sustainable living involve us and what we do now, but it also involves the unborn future generations in the far off distance. It may also involve us with medical marvels leading to indefinite life expectancy as well. However, this all depends on what 'sustainability' really means . The ability to survive just about anything that is thrown at us by nature, or each other perhaps. To 'sustain' life, is often to save it from an array of disasters which may just hit one continent or just one town, or all of them. For example, the kind of disaster that we are creating now with climate change, is exactly what sustainability is alluding to. Not just to stop extreme weather and flooding from happening in the first place, but ensuring that when it does happen we can cope with it and we can survive it. And to do this, we need sustainable i.e. disaster resistant building: Hence the existence of Future Towns and this blog.