Did a whimsical 1960s TV sitcom presage climate migration and a reversal of urban growth? We're not calling for a Godzilla-esque teardown of cities, but climate change is forcing a serious urban rethink. Jason, Rob, and Asher offer visions of better infrastructure, policies, and culture that you can embrace, even if your home is in the city.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
Did a whimsical 1960s TV sitcom presage climate migration and a reversal of urban growth? We're not calling for a Godzilla-esque teardown of cities, but climate change is forcing a serious urban rethink. Jason, Rob, and Asher offer visions of better infrastructure, policies, and culture that you can embrace, even if your home is in the city.
Warning: This podcast occasionally uses spicy language.
Sources/Links/Notes:
Jason Bradford
I'm Jason Bradford,
Asher Miller
I'm Asher Miller.
Rob Dietz
And I'm Rob Dietz. Welcome to Crazy Town where "Escape from New York" is not just a mediocre 80s movie, but prophecy.
Melody Allison
Hey, this is Crazy Town producer Melody Allison. Thanks for listening. Here in Season 6, we're exploring escape route pathways that just might get us out of Crazy Town. In today's episode, Jason, Rob, and Asher are escaping urbanism. And here's a quick warning. Sometimes this podcast uses swear words. Language! If you like what you're hearing, please let some friends know about Crazy Town. Now on to the show.
Jason Bradford
Alright. I have a question for Rob, and jump in you have anything to contribute. You may not, Asher.
Asher Miller
Yeah, never.
Jason Bradford
Well actually, you probably might.
Rob Dietz
Go for the whole episode, like.
Jason Bradford
No, no. I know you're the expert on 80s sitcoms.
Rob Dietz
Yes.
Jason Bradford
What was your favorite 80s sitcom?
Rob Dietz
Oh, that's a toughy. You know, I really liked "Different Strokes."
Jason Bradford
Nice. I actually don't want to hear that.
Asher Miller
"Facts of Life" or "Castle and McCormick."
Rob Dietz
Was that a sitcom or was that action?
Jason Bradford
But I want to take your mind back to the 60s, which I bet you saw these because WTBS, you know.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, Ted Turner kind of owned the city of Atlanta. He had a whole, you know, we could get this over the aerial, over the antenna. Turner Broadcasting System, they played all this old stuff. So yeah, I might know some 60 shows.
Jason Bradford
Okay, so there was this guy, Paul Henning, a writer and producer for CBS, who had three shows that happened in the early to mid 60s. All about urban rural, sort of like cultural divides, right. And I want you to rank them in terms of the quality. Which one is your favorite.
Rob Dietz
Can do. Okay.
Jason Bradford
"Petticoat Junction"
Rob Dietz
Okay.
Asher Miller
Wait, you actually know that?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, of course.
Asher Miller
Never heard of it.
Jason Bradford
Petticoat Junction.
Rob Dietz
It's the place where, you know, it's the junction where the petticoats all gathered.
Jason Bradford
Okay, Petticoat Junction.
Jason Bradford
Least well known maybe of them, but big hit. "Green Acres."
Asher Miller
It sounds a little illicit.
Asher Miller
Okay, I've hear of that one.
Jason Bradford
Awesome one. Awesome one. With a great song.
Rob Dietz
With Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor.
Jason Bradford
Fantastic.
Asher Miller
"Green Acres is the place to be." Because she really struck you as being a rural woman.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Well, that's the thing. She was the city person moving to the --
Asher Miller
Did she have an accident?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Bradford
"You my wife. Goodbye city life." That kind of thing. It was great.
Rob Dietz
Oh, excellent rendition. Okay, that's two shows.
Jason Bradford
Okay. The final one. Okay, I'm a little biased towards this one, honestly.
Rob Dietz
Hey, don't -- You're asking me.
Jason Bradford
"The Beverly Hillbillies."
Rob Dietz
Okay. Yeah, yeah. Well, okay look, if you're ranking theme songs, you gotta put "Beverly Hillbillies" at the top.
Rob Dietz
Is that an invitation for him to sing it?
Jason Bradford
Uh huh. Yep. "Come and listen to my story 'bout a man named Jed. A poor mountaineer. Barely kept his family fed. And then one day he was shootin' at some food, And up through the ground came a-bubblin' crude. Oil that is, black gold, Texas tea.
Rob Dietz
Could you stop it!
Jason Bradford
Okay. Sorry.
Rob Dietz
Post Carbon Institute, the oil connection there. That's pretty cool.
Jason Bradford
I think actually it has a lot to draw from, but we're not going to talk about the oil world and you know, blah, blah, blah. But --
Asher Miller
Those two are kind of almost the opposite, though.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Because one is, the city people go to the country. The other is, the country people go back to the city. Rank them. Rank them.
Rob Dietz
Okay so, like I said, theme song, "Beverly Hillbillies" number one. "Green Acres," two. "Petticoat Junction," three. Enjoyment of the show as my eight-year-old self or whatever, I would go "Green Acres," one.
Jason Bradford
Interesting.
Rob Dietz
"Hillbillies," two. But it's a close two with Petticoat Junction. I actually liked that show.
Jason Bradford
Excellent. Excellent. Okay.
Rob Dietz
It was community oriented.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I mean, one of the things --
Asher Miller
I haven't watched any of these.
Jason Bradford
I remember that what was funny about it a lot of was the mismatch of skills as people swap locations, right? And then also the different social norms they played upon that, you know. Granny was cooking coon in Beverly Hills, right, and the banker would show up and mayhem, right?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, you can't be cooking up varmints.
Asher Miller
Can't be stirring up racoon.
Jason Bradford
Or some suitor would come over for Ellie Mae and she'd wrestle him and throw him to the ground and pin him and these sort of things.
Rob Dietz
And you as a wrestler probably appreciated that.
Jason Bradford
I had a crush on her for sure.
Asher Miller
I'm sure that all Texans viewed that as a very accurate portrayal.
Jason Bradford
Well, there was a critique --
Asher Miller
Wrestling people that just walk into your house.
Jason Bradford
There is critique that it played upon stereotypes, but it played upon stereotypes in both directions.
Asher Miller
Equal opportunity.
Jason Bradford
Everybody got it. Equal opportunity. The haughty city people, they're --
Asher Miller
They're all white, though.
Rob Dietz
How come you didn't throw in Gilligan's Island where they don't go to the city or the country, they go to a deserted island?
Jason Bradford
It wasn't part of the Paul Henning trilogy.
Rob Dietz
Okay, sorry.
Jason Bradford
Okay. Alright. Given that 80% of Americans now are considered urbanites, which includes cities and suburbs, I think that we forget a lot about the rural folks. And in the 60s, there was still this transition, the post war period, where there was a lot of migration to cities from Post War America. So this was really tapping into that period in the 60s where the suburban sprawl was happening, and people were getting motor cars and all the appliances and stuff like that. But now, what you see now in these rural areas, I think, is a lot of the kind of left behinds, right? And the resentment they might feel.
Asher Miller
Yeah, we don't think about them except when elections come around, and they make city people unhappy with who they vote for.
Jason Bradford
Well, what's interesting when I think about it, is that at this point, everything that these urban areas need actually come from these rural areas. All the food, the fuel, the minerals. They're all extracted from these rural areas, manufactured, and then consumed in the urban ones. And so yeah, I feel like we really should be paying more attention to these areas. Understand why people there might feel left behind and upset. A little bit resentful.
Rob Dietz
Yeah no, that makes sense. But it goes farther than that, too. I agree with your point that the urban area is drawing all this resource from the rural, but nowadays rural towns operate the same way too. They're not provisioning themselves the way they used to in "Petticoat Junction."
Jason Bradford
No.
Asher Miller
Yeah, nobody knows how to make their own petticoats.
Rob Dietz
The point is, they're operating almost in the same way. Yes, they're provisioning does come from rural areas, but probably far flung rural areas to arrive at the Walmart, or . . .
Jason Bradford
Yes. Everything has been sort of turned upside down. And now the self sufficient rugged individualism of these rural areas is mostly gone.
Asher Miller
Now, I think if people have listened to Crazy Town long enough, or read anything you've ever written, Jason, they probably know that we have a critique about city life.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, we gotta plug your report, "The Future is Rural."
Jason Bradford
Thank you. Thank you.
Rob Dietz
Which the writer was good, but the editor was incredible in that project.
Jason Bradford
He was, I mean, the best editor.
Asher Miller
I think the person who did the cover art was . . .
Jason Bradford
Unbelievable.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, yeah. I think if you like Crazy Town, you'd probably like "The Future is Rural."
Jason Bradford
Sure.
Rob Dietz
It doesn't use as many swear words and it's not quite as sarcastic.
Asher Miller
Yeah, because we did a find all and replace with the . . . And I didn't write it so a lot of of the F-bombs weren't included, for some reason. In any case, I think people can view maybe our take on urbanism with a certain bias. But I would say that, you know, we have a concern that urbanism will actually be on the decline. And we should be thinking about what that means. And that's what we want to talk about today on this episode. Escaping urbanism, right? Before we get into that, I think we should give ourselves a little bit of space to talk about some of the things that we maybe most enjoy or not enjoy about urbanism. But can we just lay first the foundation for kind of what the context is, what the situation is with urbanism.
Jason Bradford
Okay, yeah. We'll throw some facts out.
Rob Dietz
Let me throw some stats at you guys.
Rob Dietz
Let's do that.
Asher Miller
Okay.
Jason Bradford
Let's factify.
Asher Miller
So 83% of the U.S. population right now lives in urban areas.
Jason Bradford
Okay.
Asher Miller
Okay?
Rob Dietz
That's high.
Asher Miller
There are now over 275 million people living in cities. And that's compared to 126 million in the 1960s. So you were talking about, you know, those sitcoms being based in the 1960s. Think about that. That's more than doubled.
Rob Dietz
If only Paul Henning could create sitcoms now. I mean, we'd have some true --
Asher Miller
We can dig him up and see if he's available. So now, interestingly, rural population actually hasn't declined since 1960s. It's grown by, you know, a couple million. 3 or 4 million, or something like that. But the percentage of the rural population has dropped from about 30% in 1960 to 17% now. And we're talking about 1960 which was already after many, many decades of a move towards urbanism with what we saw with kind of the push towards industry, which we talked about before, right? Now, this is happening around the world, right. So now 50% of the world population lives in urban areas. It wasn't actually that long ago, I think, that there was a lot of news coverage of the fact that we passed 50% mark.
Jason Bradford
Crossed over, yeah.
Asher Miller
So we're now like about 57%. The fastest growth is happening in quote, unquote, "developing countries." And they saw that percentage increase in last 10 years go up from 44% --
Rob Dietz
See I think they got it wrong. I think the fastest urbanization is happening in urbanizing countries.
Asher Miller
So you had 44% of people in quote unquote, "developing countries" living in urban areas in 2012. 10 years later, it's over 50%. But I think the key thing here is that pretty much everyone assumes that this trend line is going to continue.
Jason Bradford
I have a graph in my report about that trend line and the assumption. So yes.
Asher Miller
I mean, we saw like, it was interesting, the United States and maybe in some other countries, we saw an actual weird temporary blip of people leaving cities. That was because people were locked up in their tiny little fucking apartments. They're like, "This sucks."
Jason Bradford
They might have been just Long Island or whatever, right?
Asher Miller
And the ones that could afford to go, right? Which we'll talk about is sort of the weird division in terms of income and wealth between urban and non urban areas. You know, some of them left. But the general trend line has been towards urbanization.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. We don't have stats on the number of urbanites who have country estates, but I'm sure that's been growing as well.
Asher Miller
Yeah sure, second homes or whatever. And then the UN, in a report just a few years ago, predicted that we'll see an additional 2.5 billion people living in cities in 2050. That's two out of every three people on Earth. And they also said that the number of mega cities, which is a population of over 10 million people -- Which just imagine, 10 million people, right? It will grow to 43 from 31 today. So 43 cities around the world having more than 10 million people in them. And some have well more than 20 million.
Jason Bradford
Yes. 30 million some of them. 40 million Greater Tokyo now, I think.
Asher Miller
So that's just the, you know, sense of kind of like what's been happening towards urbanization, urbanism, and what everyone's expecting is going to continue, right?
Rob Dietz
I often struggle to understand what numbers of that size mean. Like, you know, 10 million people. But I can picture say, New York City or a place that I've been. And if we're going to get into sort of the what's wrong with this picture phase, I gotta say for me, you know, there's a lot that's easy to throw out in cities, like around traffic or whatever. But for me, it's the hardscape. Like, if you can get to a high spot over a modern-day city, and you look out . . . I mean, on the one hand, it's incredible. It's marvelous. Like, wow, look at this gleaming place of glass and concrete and steel, and it's pretty intense how much we've been able to build. Like I say, on one hand, I feel like it's wonderous. But on the other, it's nightmarish too. Like, this hardscape makes it hard for anything to live. It runs the water off the landscape at a pace that the creeks and the rivers can't really handle. Part of me looks at it as an utter ecological disaster.
Asher Miller
No offense, Rob, but every time I drive into Portland, I'm like, I know somebody who lives here and is total jerk. The second thought I have is --
Rob Dietz
I'm taking a little bit of an offense, but . . .
Asher Miller
I said no offense. So you can't be offended. Those are the rules. No, I get bummed out. And it's not just Portland. It's like any city if I drive into an area. And obviously, I am biased. I'm not a city guy. I will be the first person to admit it. But I drive into these, it really does feel like this weight of concrete around me. And it feels so monotonous too, it s monochrome. It bums the shit out of me.
Rob Dietz
That's actually why I left Washington DC, where I lived for quite a while -- was that feeling of "Oh man, this place doesn't have a long-term future."
Jason Bradford
No, it all decays. Yes. I lived in St. Louis for a long time. And St. Louis was a city on the decline while I was there. It's kind of rebounded but you can go through parts of that city that look like a bomb went off. And it's just been the decay of people moving out, the white flight to the suburbs, you know, with the highway system they got, and all the usual stories. But it's amazing. All of it just crumbles, you know, if you're not constantly -- I was there and a bridge collapsed. Like a bridge. I used to drive over every day collapsed while I was there.
Rob Dietz
But that arch is still there.
Jason Bradford
The arch is still there.
Rob Dietz
They should keep that.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. But what gets me, and this relates to the hardscape, is the noise pollution. And so I was visiting you the other day and I walked out in the morning and was like, "Wow." I'm trying to listen to these birds. . .
Rob Dietz
Yeah, he's visiting me at my shitty urban house.
Jason Bradford
It was a great place. It's comfortable.
Asher Miller
Did you walk out and say like, "Everybody shut up! I can't hear the birds"
Jason Bradford
I was literally like, God there's probably a towhee over there somewhere but it's getting drowned out by this like, constant background hum. And it was kind of, it always stuns me that you can't ever get away from that.
Rob Dietz
I talked to a young person the other day who was sitting on my porch, and he said he was digging the relaxation because that hum that you're talking about reminded him of the ocean.
Jason Bradford
Oh interesting.
Rob Dietz
Which is like having to turn that around like I'm listening to traffic that's far away. But that low hum is like the waves sweeping into a sandy beach.
Jason Bradford
Interesting. Yeah. Well, it turns out that noise pollution has a huge impact on wildlife. And there's a really good Netflix show called "The Year the Earth Changed" where the BBC documentary people, David Attenborough and stuff, really showed you how important this noise is and how detrimental that is to creatures. So I recommend that.
Asher Miller
Yeah, there's noise. There's also light.
Jason Bradford
Light pollution is terrible.
Asher Miller
It's been documented. And it's a fascinating and tragic story of how the move towards more efficient LEDs right, which a lot of people in climate and sustainability spaces have applauded, right, because it's much less electricity, creates huge problems now for nocturnal creatures and birds because they're so damn bright.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. They use even less electricity when you turn them off. It's amazing.
Asher Miller
But people forgot that part. I think they forgot it. I think we've got to be careful because we're talking maybe a little bit about like, really urban kind of city environments. But there's another form of urbanism, right, which is not that dense skyscraper city, right, where people are living in apartments. It's the sprawl of suburbia. The arteries that extend out from those urban centers that most people actually live in. At least in a city like in New York, you know, people will live in small apartments. And I think we talked about that before, you can't stock up on so much shit.
Jason Bradford
You don't have a deep freezer.
Asher Miller
So you just go down to the bodega every day or every other day to get your food. Contrast that with people driving their car, you know, to Costco. And you know, the great enhancements they created now where you can order your fucking 8000 pack of, you know, Lays chips and get it delivered to your car. So you never have to get out of your car. That's a form of urbanism too.
Rob Dietz
Look at the naming of the perfect vehicle for the suburbs, the Chevy Suburban. It's a gigumbus SUV that you could pull up to the Costco and fill up.
Jason Bradford
I think you know, James Howard Kunstler wrote beautifully about this, where he didn't like a lot of urbanism too. Like, he would make fun of it. But the worst for him was the suburban sprawl.
Asher Miller
It's the worst.
Jason Bradford
And you could just look up James if you haven't read him before.
Asher Miller
He has a very famous TED Talk from many, many, many, many years ago. But yeah, he loves to show photos of what these --
Jason Bradford
And then comment.
Asher Miller
Do you know what I mean?
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
Well, you've said he writes beautifully. I agree. But he also writes cantankerously and humorously. And we've all corresponded with him before. His book I read well before I got into this activist space called "The Geography of Nowhere," which is all about the suburban sprawl. I still say -- I quote him all the time. Like, he was making fun of how schools in the suburbs look like German shoe factories.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Security prisons.
Rob Dietz
You drive around and you see them, and you're like "Yep. There's another German shoe factory. There's another high-security prison."
Asher Miller
My son's high school literally looks like a prison. Yeah, it's awful. So again, I just want to point out that 83% of the U.S. population lives in urban environments. But it's really 50% of Americans living in suburban communities. And here's the thing, I think almost everyone agrees, even though more than 50% of Americans live in suburbia, that suburbia sucks.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, it's the worst form.
Asher Miller
Yeah, exactly. And, in fact, a lot of people, you know, point out that suburban environments are kind of like the worst, you know, manifestation of unsustainable practices, right?
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Car dependency.
Asher Miller
Yeah. And so what they're really pushing in a lot of ways is urbanism as being much more energy efficient. You know, people's footprints are smaller. The amount of energy they consume for transportation if they live in a city is less, you know. Their material footprint in terms of like, the energy they consume for heating, electricity, and all that stuff is less.
Jason Bradford
Per capita. Per space. Yeah.
Asher Miller
So they're trying to encourage people to go into cities, right? But there's a concern there. And I think this is maybe something that's worth talking about. Well, what are the risks of being in cities? And one of the big risks that people are concerned about is the impact of climate change on cities. So maybe we talk about that a little bit, because there's this unanimous consensus that we're all going to be moving more to cities. So how do we make those cities more sustainable? You know, how do we make them more able to withstand climate impacts?
Rob Dietz
Well, with climate the key thing is the infrastructure getting annihilated, you know. If you've got sea level rising, and your city is built right on the edge of the sea, good luck. Remember when we had Douglas Rushkoff on this program?
Jason Bradford
Oh yeah.
Rob Dietz
And we were talking about, I don't know what the context was, but was this big giveaway where you could win a house on Miami Beach. Like an $8 million house. I was like, why would I want that. It's gonna be gone in a few short years. Can I just get the $8 million so I can buy a house in Omaha or something. But yeah, I mean, this is this is a real issue with cities with climate and the erosion of infrastructure. I mean, you've already seen, you just talked about a bridge collapsed, Jason. we've seen a condominium collapse in Miami. And that's before you're really having these kinds of severe weather impacts. So we're already in an infrastructure problem with our cities, and it's about to get a hell of a lot worse.
Asher Miller
Just look around the world. I mean, so much of the human population lives in coastal areas. It's hard to know what the true estimates are. But you know, we're talking about hundreds, 10s of hundreds of millions of people that are going to probably be displaced.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I think the stats are suggesting 10s of millions just in the U.S., and hundreds of millions, up to a billion maybe globally just in the coastal regions because of sea level rise. And that doesn't include other things like wildfires and severe drought, or what is it when it gets too hot? Wet bulb temperatures, all these sorts of things.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Basically your brain fries out?
Jason Bradford
Yes. So then the term that I've seen developed around this as cli-migration. It's an area of research. Some people like looking at maps of future climate versus contemporary climate. Current population in areas that are highest risk for severe climate change versus areas that seem to be rather relatively buffered, but have lower population density. And so right now, when you look at climate migration work, it tends to think about swapping one urban area for another. So for example, one of the earliest cities proposed was Duluth, Minnesota, which actually is on Lake Superior. It actually had a shrinking population because of you know, Rust Belt type issues. But the idea is like well, let's bring people back and just repopulate.
Rob Dietz
Half of Houston can move to Duluth, or something like that.
Jason Bradford
Well, this is the problem, you know. Duluth won't be able to handle half or Houston or Miami. But you get the idea.
Rob Dietz
Houston can't even handle half of Houston. Well, you know, some places are getting out ahead of the game. So have you seen the news recently? In Indonesia, the capital is Jakarta. It's one of the mega cities that you were talking about, Asher, one of the current ones. I think low on the list. They've got about 10 million people. But they're having a lot of problems there with poverty and crime, but also with subsidence.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Just really, they're sinking so fast. It's incredible, the stats.
Rob Dietz
So they've decided to start a new city called Nusantara that s being built from nothing, you know, starting from scratch on Borneo.
Jason Bradford
Oh great. Just tearing down more jungle I'm sure.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, just start a whole new green city.
Jason Bradford
Green city. Exactly. So what it looks like is that we're just going to double down on building more big cities. That's sort of what the plan is. Even though in 2020, there was this incredible report that came out. One of those ones that sort of shocks you and you realize it. There's this term that was thrown out in this report called "Anthropogenic Mass." That's a great term, I think.
Rob Dietz
You're an anthropogenic mass.
Asher Miller
Instead of the BMI we're gonna use that.
Jason Bradford
Yes. Well, you know what it is. If you in a city and you're looking around, you just see all the stuff. The stuff that you talked about, Rob. The gleaming shining glass, and concrete, and the steel, and all that. And the asphalt strips, and the cars, and all this. That mass, if you add it up around the world, is now greater than biomass. So all the trees, all the soil organism, all the grasses, all the . . . Anyway, that's just absolutely shocking.
Rob Dietz
So another way to say that shit is heavy.
Jason Bradford
Yes, all of our shit. And 33% of this is concrete, by the way.
Asher Miller
Right. And I think that that gets to an important point, which is we could say in some cases, we're going to do manage retrieve from some areas. I mean, the truth is that right now, I think we're early bargaining stage. We're just talking about the sort of climate impacts. And so you see cities like New York that are looking to you know, to build the seawalls to protect. And you look at what's happening in Venice, you know, what they're trying to do to protect that city, which would be tragic to lose Venice. So there are these efforts of basically like, you know, raise Miami a little bit, you know, so that it's not so much underwater. In many cases you can look at that and you can say, this is a fool's errand, waste of money and resources.
Rob Dietz
We just need 4.7 billion jacks. We'll put them all under Florida.
Asher Miller
Exactly. And everyone doing it at the same time. Let's coordinate, right. And so, you know, that's kind of maybe step one. Step two might be, you know, actually saying no, we have to retreat from these places. Like maybe what they're trying to do in Jakarta. Or we need to think about basically saying, we're not going to start a new city over here, but we're going to have people move from this city to another city. But as you're pointing out Jason, like massive amount of concrete and other material resources that go into building cities --
Jason Bradford
That all decay.
Asher Miller
That decay, and also concrete is a huge source of climate change.
Jason Bradford
Yeah. It's one of the worst.
Asher Miller
I know people are talking about trying to green concrete but the scale . . .
Jason Bradford
The scale, it's all pathetic. Any proposal you look at it s just ridiculous.
Asher Miller
Enormous. And then there are other vulnerabilities, right? We're just talking about the climate impacts and trying to think about, like, the climate equation of that little bit. But, you know, there are other vulnerabilities of cities, you know. And we've talked about this in the past, where -- We did this with our skyscraper episode, you know. Like, you basically have to create a hermetically sealed building, you know, and to get around you need an elevator that functions. So you basically, you're 100% reliant on complex machinery, computer parts, electricity being constantly available.
Jason Bradford
Right, if electricity goes out you can't get up and down.
Asher Miller
If things go out, you know. And it's not just because a storm hit you and you're down for a couple of days.
Jason Bradford
Well, you saw the "Yes Men" episode where they had the survival pods. Do you remember that? That was awesome.
Asher Miller
I'm sure you can get one of those and jump out of your 80 story --
Jason Bradford
That's what they promoted.
Rob Dietz
I think of people like Alex Honnold and Alain Robert, I think is a French climber. Basically, these climbers --
Jason Bradford
They'll get down the skyscraper.
Rob Dietz
They will own the top penthouses of all the skyscrapers because they're the only ones who can climb them.
Jason Bradford
So yeah, I think I have a little side rant that this brings me to. Because, you know, people are all stressed out about colonialism and resources, and these sorts of things.
Rob Dietz
Rightfully so.
Jason Bradford
Right, totally. And I know that a lot of liberals, you know, that live in the . . . They might be bicoastal or whatever. And they look at the flyover states, and these people are voting differently than they are, and they're grumbling about how, you know, our tax dollars are really supporting you people in these low density areas. We're supporting you with food stamps, and we're supporting you with the taxes to maintain your roads and telecommunications and all the grants you get. Because we make all this money and we pay our taxes. And you poor people, and these poor towns, don't pay your fair share. And I just look at this, and I go like, "Excuse me, excuse me." But that's all about money. The rural people are poor because of urban colonialism in a sense, this Internal Colonialism. And it affects our politics. But if you're in an urban environment, every single thing that you touch, that you buy in a store, is coming from some rural area. And some person has been paid, probably way less than you'd accept, to get that to you. Okay, so anyway, yes, you are completely dependent on the input from that external area and from that rural environment. And guess where your waste goes? Guess where your trash goes? So anyway --
Rob Dietz
It goes away.
Asher Miller
What do you mean? It all gets recycled, Jason.
Rob Dietz
So this reminds me, I like to visualize this stuff. So you guys know that show and that book, "Under the Dome?"
Jason Bradford
It's like "Truman Show."
Rob Dietz
Take a glass dome and put it over, say a large area on Earth. Yeah. And it's like, okay, what happens? How do you live there? Well, I like to think about, like, if you took a glass dome, or plexiglass and you dropped it like --
Jason Bradford
Polycarbonate?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, some kind of good material. Maybe a concrete one. I don't know. But you dropped it over Manhattan. How long can people provision themselves in Manhattan and continue to live and thrive? I mean, not real long because of what you're talking about.
Jason Bradford
A few days.
Rob Dietz
Until the bodega shelf runs out. Whereas if you dropped a big dome over where we're sitting now, you would probably last quite a bit longer because there's viable farmland, there's still intact ecosystem. It's not great. It would still be a struggle. It's not like we're ready to do away with trade and imports and exports.
Asher Miller
Does the internet still work through the dome? Because I still need my Netflix.
Rob Dietz
It's smoke signals.
Jason Bradford
You know, I wrote "The Future is Rural," and it has a lot of these elements in it critiquing the sustainability of cities. And then I will get comments like, but we have we have always had cities. And then I have to remind people that every ancient city has collapsed. Okay. For various reasons that you can read about Taint, or Jared Diamond, or whatever. But the other thing to think about is if you look though, at these pre-industrial cities in their prime, in their heyday, in their glory days, we can learn something about what allows a city to persist for quite a bit long time. And there's a few things that are important. A lot of these past cities -- they were very dense. So they weren't like the suburban sprawl, okay. But those dense places had land resources right outside the city. And so it's sort of the surface area. We can think of like the surface area to volume of that city was appropriate. So it wasn't that hard to get stuff in and out using donkey carts, or whatever.
Rob Dietz
That's my favorite video game, Donkey Carts.
Jason Bradford
And you can imagine, like, you know, if you've ever been Tuscany, Italy, where you got these like hill towns, or whatever. And it's just like, you know, Siena, Italy is just incredible, right? It's a city. It's a dense city, but cascading through the countryside, right outside of it are these farms and vineyards and stuff.
Rob Dietz
Plus the sea is there for . . .
Jason Bradford
Well sea ports like Venice, for example. There's a very wealthy city. They aren't growing a lot of food in Venice, but trade and is really easy because it's a port.
Asher Miller
Istanbul.
Jason Bradford
Istanbul, huge. That was one of the biggest cities in the world for a long time. And it's probably got the most amazing trade location possible.
Rob Dietz
Constantinople as well.
Asher Miller
Yeah, there's a lot of commonality between those two cities.
Jason Bradford
Now, the other way that people had cities in the past, were actually the opposite. They were very expensive cities. They were not dense. But these people were essentially, they were just like city gardens. These were horticultural societies. So ancient Mexico City was sprawling. It was about the size of contemporary Greater Los Angeles. But it had 1/10 of the population of Greater Los Angeles. And basically, most people were working as sort of these small scale farmers. So that's what we have to understand is that it was exceedingly rare in history to have a city even get to a million. Whereas today, obviously we talked about how many are mega cities of 10 million. But there's over 500 cities that are a million people right now.
Rob Dietz
A takeaway for me from what you're describing, Jason, is that there are different ways to arrange the city. And we'll get into this when we hit our visions for a different infrastructure in do the opposite. But you guys gently, by not offending me, introduced the fact that I live in a city. I suspect a large percentage of our listeners live in cities.
Jason Bradford
We don't want to offend any of them. They're important.
Rob Dietz
Well, it's not so much that. We offend people all the time. But it's more -- you get what you pay for here, people. No, it's more that not everyone can get out of a city. You know, like, if you think like an escape route is leave the city, some of us are kind of there for various reasons and are stuck. And so I just want to make sure that, you know, we're going to cover there are ways to escape the worst problems of the city while still being in the city. You know, there's all these things like different transportation systems. I mean, we know how much I've talked about bikes and loving them. And there's this idea of the 15 minute city. Where it's like, if you live in a city, but you could get to everything with personal transport, non-motorized, in 15 minutes. That would be pretty cool.
Jason Bradford
People will walk then.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, and I've had weird visions lately about cities with less hardscape. Like, could you just undo some of this road build-out that we've done.
Jason Bradford
Like City Repair in Portland did a lot of work like that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, and have like pads and trees and food forests and you know, that kind of stuff.
Jason Bradford
Sorry, if I sound harsh. I love Melbourne, for example. I've never been there, but they have the Australian Open. You know, I care a lot about cities, especially in Australia, where we're very popular.
Asher Miller
You're really kissing the Aussie's butts here.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, I know.
Asher Miller
I think it's a really good point, Rob. Because there's degrees, right? So we talked about how in so many ways, suburbia is far worse than dense urban environments. We also see differences in terms of how cities or different countries have gone about trying to make either the quality of life in cities better, or to actually make them more sustainable. And if you look at the relationship between transportation and population density, it's really interesting to see. Like, you compare some U.S. cities to European cities, for example. Or, look at Tokyo. And ours are far worse in terms of like the amount of transportation related energy that is being consumed in those cities. And I think a lot of it has to do with the history. And we talk a lot about infrastructure as driving things. Alot of our cities have evolved in the age of the car, right? We prioritize that.
Jason Bradford
We were the first to develop massive oil reserves.
Asher Miller
So many of these European cities, they've existed for hundreds and hundreds of years before fossil fuels came around, before the car came around. And so they're built in a way that's a lot more friendly to pedestrian use.
Jason Bradford
And that's why we love to go visit them while using jet fuel.
Rob Dietz
If you were to break it down, too. Like if you took a U.S. city and went to the core that was built pre-automobile, I'm sure the people living there are using less energy for transportation than those living in that, you know, suburban wasteland.
Jason Bradford
Or old New Orleans, or Old Boston, or even St. Louis has placed neighborhoods like that. It's incredible.
Asher Miller
Now, back to the Aussies. They're actually weirdly, you know, anomalous in kind of this charting. Because they're more efficient in terms of transportation and energy consumption than American cities, but they're also relatively new cities. So I'm not sure what the Aussies have done. Maybe our Aussie friends could tell us.
Jason Bradford
I think because they didn't have their oil reserve. They were developing post-World War II and they didn't have enough.
Asher Miller
It's too bad it wasn't coal fired cars. Yeah, too bad.
Rob Dietz
So we go on a critique of urbanism. But we also need to look at why we're in this situation we're in. Why does it draw us in? And I think one of the biggest reasons we get drawn into cities, at least here in the U.S. and my experiences, that's where the jobs are, right? Not just the jobs exist, but the high paying jobs as well. And it's important that, at least I think, to understand that's utterly sensible, right? I mean, you know, you're going to stay in the countryside and not be able to get the money and all the power that comes with that, and all the choices that it opens up. Pretty bad to say, "Sorry, stay put."
Asher Miller
Well, and this all stems back to industrialization. You know, we talked about it in our episode on industrialism and escaping that. You know, this is driven by the fact that, you know, we industrialized the economy, right? We mechanized a lot of things. We've created a situation where we wanted to consolidate labor and manufacturing into certain places to maximize efficiency. So we move people into cities, and we paid them higher wages to do that. We have created this downward pressure on wages when we industrialized, the food system, you know. Like, basically people left the farm, you know. It was a lot cheaper just to pour a bunch of fossil fuel energy on top of crops than it was to put human labor into it. So we actually started paying laborers a lot less, farmers a lot less. So yeah, it's really driven by kind of an economic system that we created and that we've mechanized living shit out of everything. And yeah. It's also no coincidence that, you know, Jason, you've talked a lot about the primary, secondary, tertiary economies, that people kind of set economic policy. You know, the industrialists and the economists who support all that, they get paid the highest wages because they're rewarding their own value in a sense.
Jason Bradford
One of the things that's gone up in cost faster than just about anything else is housing costs, right. And there's a huge like stress in our society for that. And you think about like, these cities have this demand, more people are showing up, there's a lot of jobs there, the jobs pay better, therefore, people can afford houses that are more expensive. But then there's these weird dynamics. I just find it it's outrageous. And, of course, then you need finance to get the house. You can't pay cash. Which means you're in debt, you've got a mortgage.
Rob Dietz
But those are good jobs.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, exactly. And so now you need a high paying job to maintain this mortgage for this very expensive house, which is your only choice if you're in the city to get a high paying job. It's just like circular kind of craziness.
Asher Miller
And just like the cities are sucking in resources, and they're sucking in labor, you get to a place where there is, especially with these densities, right, there's such housing pressure, and the costs are so high that people can't afford it. And then that creates this, you know, the surge of people leaving because they can't afford to live in the city where the jobs are. So they have to now live in excerpts, you know.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, and then commute in.
Asher Miller
And then they have to fucking live in their car, you know, to drive into work. And that's the whole highway system that we've reinforced. And it's just, we talked about it as sprawl, but it's basically this metastasizing dynamic.
Rob Dietz
That's one of the stats you forgot to mention. Before you said 50% of Americans live in the suburbs. Well, by 2050 50% will live in Suburbans, the car.
Asher Miller
Exactly. You're right. Which you know, I mean, at least, you know, we talked about downsizing.
Rob Dietz
It's a big car.
Asher Miller
It's a big car but smaller than a house.
Rob Dietz
Right.
Rob Dietz
This is a message to all you Crazy Townies out there. Sometimes Jason, Asher and I wish he could be here in the room with us when we're riffing on ecomodernist nightmares, the end of capitalism, the collapse of civilization, and lines from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies. Since you can't be here, maybe we could still be in contact in another way. If you've got a comment about the show or you want to throw some shade at us, or you've got a question.
Asher Miller
Or you have a suggestion of escape route stuff.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. Maybe you've got a story of your own you want to share. Go over to Apple podcasts or iTunes and leave us a review and write your comment there. In your comment, include your idea, whatever it is, and we'll think about sharing it in an episode.
Jason Bradford
How's this? "I'll be back." Is that any good?
Rob Dietz
Oh my God. That's terrible.
Jason Bradford
You try it.
Rob Dietz
"Get to the choppah!"
Rob Dietz
We're rededicating ourselves to listener feedback this season and I've got a --
Asher Miller
That was a mallet that almost fell on Jason's head. Keep going, Rob.
Rob Dietz
It's like a Three Stooges episode.
Asher Miller
Let's keep this in. Keep going. Rob.
Rob Dietz
Okay, so we're rededicating ourselves to listener feedback this season. And we got a note from Dean or Denae, sorry if I'm mispronouncing that. This person says, "I recently found Post Carbon Institute via r/collapse.
Asher Miller
Of course. That's the place to go.
Jason Bradford
I think my son's on that.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. It talks about that there was a comment in there providing resources. So I guess they found us there. "Just wanted to say that I appreciate your effort and podcast. My husband and I spend pretty much all our time talking about what you share on your podcast and the weirdness of how business as usual is still chugging along. Keep up the good work from your supporters and listeners in Nebraska."
Asher Miller
Oh, nice.
Jason Bradford
That is great. I'm so glad you have a husband who will, you know, talk to you about this stuff.
Rob Dietz
You guys are taking this the wrong way. I was thinking of it like, "Wow, you spend a lot of time processing Crazy Town episodes. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that we've done this to you."
Jason Bradford
Well, I think they found us recently. So they've been doing this for a while, I guess. And so I'm glad that they can talk to you know, they can listen to us instead of each other for a while.
Rob Dietz
True Crazy Townies so yeah. Glad to have you along. Thank you.
Rob Dietz
Okay, here we are in the Marvin Harris Memorial lens of doom. Quick reminder, this is about infrastructure, which is the physical environment and the stuff that surrounds us. It's about structure, which is the set of policies and rules that we follow. And it's about superstructure, the culture and belief systems.
Jason Bradford
Alright.
Rob Dietz
So if we're talking about the infrastructure of the city, one of the first things we got to just look at is, here's this density of human habitation. But in order to make that work, you gotta have this major modification of the landscape, right? And one of the things that I think about a lot, I mean, you could do all kinds of stuff. Look at the power lines, look at the skyscrapers, look at the communication systems. But the one that kind of strikes a nerve with me is the buried creeks.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, it's incredible.
Rob Dietz
Like, do you guys ever look at watershed maps? Like they're so cool. All the little streams and arterial bits flowing together into bigger streams. And when you look at a map of a city, you're sort of like, there's not that much water because so much of it has been buried. And there's actually an ecological restoration process called daylighting the streams, you know, where you're trying to actually get these things above ground again. It just feels like how irreverent and just ignorant and dumb were we to bury streams and put them into pipes?
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
If you think about the infrastructure, I was just thinking about how dynamic cities are, right, in terms of like culture and all that stuff.
Jason Bradford
All the wonder stuff.
Asher Miller
Yeah. But if you think about the infrastructure, not just of like dense urban cities, but the suburbia, which is where most Americans live, there's a homogeneity actually about it that has to do with this sort of this combination of kind of efficiency and scale, and also consolidation of business. So almost every fucking kind of suburban environment looks the same, right? You have these wide roads, these strip malls, all with their kind of like, you know, Applebee's and whatever --
Rob Dietz
You're right.
Asher Miller
Sure.
Asher Miller
It's hellscape. And it looks the same. It's like, where am I? I could be anywhere in the country.
Jason Bradford
The geography of nowhere.
Rob Dietz
You're right. Your landmarks become like the McDonald's arches or whatever, you know. Beacons of commercial crap, right? That's how you navigate the place.
Jason Bradford
Okay, let's move on to structure then. And these are the rules, right? Cities create this incredible dependency, right? The individual is now dependent, they have money, they have a job, they have money, but they're dependent for transactions, monetary transactions, that allow them to survive, to provide them the goods and services they need. And you're sharing then all this public space. So in order to survive, in order for this all to hold to be cohesive, there are so many rules that keep the peace, and legislate, and enforce. Like the police and lawyers, as well as these cultural norms you have to obey. So as soon as you get into a city, and this is what you learn with the Beverly Hillbillies showin' up in Beverly Hills, they all of a sudden don't understand the rules, right?
Rob Dietz
That's a documentary, right?
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
So then superstructure, right. I mean, I think this is probably fairly obvious, but you know, there is this ubiquitous belief that city life and urbanism is progress, right? Those things are just absolutely sort of wedded and connected to one another. And so the belief system that supports urbanism is sort of this mythology that one, cities are actually more sustainable.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. How many times have you read that article over and over where it's like, "downtown Manhattan is the greenest place in the United States."
Jason Bradford
Right, right.
Jason Bradford
And separate ourselves even more.
Asher Miller
Yeah. And we were talking about, you know, the impacts of climate on citie. And the idea is not like, let's move away from the complexity of cities, and the vulnerability of cities. It's like doubling down on it. And even the idea that the way we could save nature is all of us to like, move more into packed cities so we could save half of earth or whatever it is. You know, we can conserve these wild areas.
Asher Miller
Completely separate.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I think that ties in also to the culture of urban superiority. The word urbane versus provincial. The urbanites know they're urbane. And they know that hicks like Jason, and I guess to a lesser exent -
Asher Miller
Jason's a landed squire
Jason Bradford
Yes, thank you.
Rob Dietz
So he's not as much of a country bumpkin.
Asher Miller
He's got a PhD.
Rob Dietz
But I mean, that ties back to your sitcoms, Jason. I mean, that's like the Beverly Hillbillies. We're the Beverly Hillbillies. And the guy coming in from the city was out of place. They look down on their neighbors, right?
Jason Bradford
What was the name of the school you guys wanted to beat up?
Rob Dietz
Oh yeah, Tucker High School. We were Henderson High School and we had Farmer Day. I've mentioned that a couple times -- to denigrate those hicks that were from the rival high school. Utterly ridiculous.
Jason Bradford
Now, here's something that -- Okay, so we're kind of dissing on cities. And I often get this response when we talk about this this topic, right? The concerns that we present, like limits, for example. You'll often get the, well, the Stone Age didn't end for the lack of stones. So the limits to building all this stuff. Like we're gonna double the anthropogenic mass and there's limits to that. No, no. We have technology, right. So it's that kind of thing.
Asher Miller
Yeah, we'll green it. We'll recycle shit, whatever.
Jason Bradford
Whatever. And then you know, we talked about adapting to limits and being truly sustainable in our lifestyles. We're gonna get into that in the do the opposite. The simplification, the kind of more rural, small organic farms. The whole like pastoral romanticism that we'll be accused, obviously. We'll get a comment like, "You all want us back living in caves, do you?"
Rob Dietz
Of course. That's all of our do the opposites. That's the first thing we propose. Go live in a cave.
Asher Miller
What people don't realize is we actually have created a whole franchise of do your own cave building.
Rob Dietz
I was not aware of this.
Jason Bradford
That'd be awesome. But tell me, who's the better caveman? The rugged Neanderthal you can imagine from the past or today's modern urbanite. So the modern urbanite wakes up in their own cave. They have their own personal cave, right? Maybe they share with the family. And then they --
Asher Miller
They've got like a 600 thread count of their sheets.
Jason Bradford
They do.
Rob Dietz
It's like a 4,000 square foot cave.
Jason Bradford
They're comfortable in their cave. And then they get into a mobile cave, and the door lifts on their garage, and they drive in their mobile cave. Then they park in another garage, and then they get into a little elevator cave that takes them to their office cave. And then they sit at their desk in their office cave all day.
Asher Miller
In a cubicle. Which is a little cave within a cave.
Jason Bradford
Right. And then and then they're like, I've been sitting on my ass all day so I gotta get some exercise. So then they get back in their little auto cave and then they drive to their workout cave. And then they're on a little treadmill, right, to get some exercise. Chasing something on the screen. Or peloton, I don't care. But get your exercise in your cave. And then they get back in their little transport cave and go back to their home cave. They don't really have to be outside much except for maybe some little flickers of transition.
Asher Miller
It sounds like a great life. At least you can regulate the temperature that whole way through man. You could be the same temperature the whole time.
Jason Bradford
I know. So I mean, tell me who's the better caveman. I mean, the caveman sleeps in a cave, might have a fire in a cave. But, you know, what are they doing? They're looking outside maybe under the clear night sky and studying the stars. Or they walk around, they know all the local plants and animals, right? They know fungi, you know. It's like, come on.
Rob Dietz
I think you just figured out how to deflect that question or that comment when it comes at you. Like, you're giving a talk and someone says, "Well, he just wants to go live in a cave." You just shout at them how they live in a cave and do that little description you just did.
Asher Miller
You already live in a cave.
Jason Bradford
Mic fucking drop.
George Costanza
Every decision I've ever made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.
Rob Dietz
Okay, here we are in the do the opposite. And I hope some of our listeners at least can empathize with me as a city dweller. I'm in the relatively small city of Portland, Oregon, but a city nonetheless.
Asher Miller
Did you just call it relatively small?
Jason Bradford
There's like two and a half million people in the greater Portland --
Asher Miller
It's like more than half the population the entire state of Oregon.
Jason Bradford
Okay, it's not fucking Tokyo, but give me a break.
Rob Dietz
Coming from our two rural friends. Sure. Yeah, it's a massive, gigantic, big city.
Jason Bradford
It is! It is! It's huge. It's 2.5 million people.
Asher Miller
It's a big city.
Rob Dietz
Okay, go on. Sorry. Well, this has taken some wind out of my sails. But despite all this --
Asher Miller
He's trying to put lipstick on a pig.
Rob Dietz
No, I'm trying to put a pig on the lipstick, alright? So, I think we got to look at how are there ways that we can make a go of it in the city. And you know, for some of our listeners, who, as we've talked about are in Sydney, or Melbourne, or Seattle, or York City, or whatever, we'd like to offer something. And so one of the ways I've been thinking about is kind of this application of permaculture principles. Like trying to cycle and recycle as much energy and material as you can. And in a city, there's actually some advantage, some more ability to do this. An example that I have in my yard, I've got these grapes that we planted when we moved in. And you know, for grape vines, you need something for it to climb on. And we had a fence and I made a trellis for these grape vines to go on out of a used futon frame that I found.
Jason Bradford
Right.
Asher Miller
So much garbage to reuse and repurpose.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. And it's I mean, it's not even, it's just a wooden frame, right, that worked well for this purpose.
Jason Bradford
Sure. They're all over. Find an alley in St. Louis and you can get all kinds of shit back there. For sure.
Rob Dietz
And I do think that the proximity of people being that close does set up for easy sharing, you know, right? There's a lot of crap I don't have to own that I can borrow from my neighbors who just love the way I come over and ask them for stuff all the time.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, that is nice.
Asher Miller
I guess maybe another way of saying what you're talking about, Rob, is that you could sort of downscale the intensity of your consumption and your participation in the entropy engine that is the city.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. It's like how much are you exploiting new resources out of the countryside versus hey, we've put in all this investment and built this massive place that's got a shit ton of stuff in it. What can I use that's already here?
Asher Miller
Yeah.
Jason Bradford
Okay. Well, good for you. Nice try.
Rob Dietz
And we have grapes. Yeah.
Jason Bradford
You have a few grapes.
Rob Dietz
Yeah
Jason Bradford
Yeah. Okay.
Rob Dietz
Bastards.
Jason Bradford
So, of course --
Asher Miller
You can look for a long time on those.
Rob Dietz
What a bunch of asses I work with. Geez.
Asher Miller
You're just pissed you left Corvallis.
Jason Bradford
About 20 years ago, I basically decided I was going to learn how to farm. So that was sort of my thing. Honestly, I decided, oh my gosh, I don't know anything. I can't take care of myself at all. I'm pathetic, you know. A lot of self loathing. And so I decided to learn how to farm. And luckily, I had a wife who supports me. If you don't have money, find someone who loves you who does. And I was able to --
Rob Dietz
This is your escape route?
Jason Bradford
Yeah.
Asher Miller
This is your advice to everyone?
Rob Dietz
How to be a gold digger.
Jason Bradford
Well, that gave me the breathing room, right, to learn new skills. And I think that's an important perspective is that some of us are going to have breathing room to do something really dramatic like that. Like what I did. And others are going to have to take more modest steps depending on your situation.
Asher Miller
I think it's true that it's really hard to give people sort of the do the opposite advice not knowing what their circumstances are. And I think a lot of it is circumstantial. It depends on the situation that you're in. You know, my case, I've been on a, I would say, gliding path towards less and less urbanism in my life. My wife and I lived in Amsterdam after she graduated college. Which is a city actually, I enjoy very few cities, but that was one I really did enjoy a lot. We moved back to California. We were living in Silicon Valley in the peninsula. And we're like, this is insane. I was working in San Francisco and doing that commute. Hated it. And we're like, we got to move out of here. So we moved up to Sonoma County, you know.
Jason Bradford
That's mellower, yeah.
Asher Miller
There's a whole transition there where we're still living in the city. The largest city in in that county.
Rob Dietz
Santa Rosa, right?
Asher Miller
In Santa Rosa.
Jason Bradford
That's a small city.
Asher Miller
Smaller than Portland, for sure. Yeah, for sure.
Rob Dietz
I grew up in the east and the south. Yeah, like the cities I was used to were Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington. So Portland feels like kind of a quaint city to me.
Asher Miller
But even, you know, I was there for 15 years. And even in the 15 years I was there, you know, we're talking about these trends -- I was feeling that the city was growing and becoming more congested. And it actually it kind of affected the way that people behaved. Just in like the worst of both worlds. In the sense of like, it wasn't dense enough. And it wasn't designed well enough to support people actually really living. I mean, some people lived downtown. But there's very little housing that was right in the heart of downtown. And in fact, in Santa Rosa, they cut downtown in half with a highway.
Jason Bradford
I know that's terrible.
Asher Miller
It's just awful.
Jason Bradford
Awful.
Asher Miller
Okay. So it was like, you still were completely car dependent. And we kind of hated that, you know. And we're like we're gonna get out of here. And now, you know, I'm also an example of a pre, in some ways, a pre-climate refugee. Like, worried about what was happening, seeing the trend lines, in terms of what was happening with the environment, going in the wrong direction. Going through a drought there. And so we moved to a much smaller city, which is still a city. Corvallis is still a city.
Rob Dietz
I think we convinced you to come here.
Asher Miller
I was looking in this area. And, you know, it still very much feels like a city. It has a lot of downsides of a city, but it also affords a lot more opportunity to be connected to land and to still feel a sense of community. It sort of allows me to imagine living in a way where I'm much less dependent upon this sort of industrialized civilized system.
Rob Dietz
What I remember about your move, it was intense. Because you got here and then Santa Rosa burned like a few months later.
Jason Bradford
God, that's crazy.
Asher Miller
Yeah. And I was now responsible for that.
Rob Dietz
You weren't throwing matches and lit cigarettes on your way out of town?
Asher Miller
No, it was really weird. You know, four months later, friends, family, impacted people we know, a colleague a PCI, she lost her home in the fire. My in-laws had to flee in the middle of the night. Really scary. It got within a mile of our former home. And it wasn't that I predicted that fire to happen necessarily, but seeing the risks that were coming. And there was a lot of people when we left that were like, "Why are you leaving California?" And then we were getting calls afterwards like, "Tell me about your move."
Rob Dietz
"You guys got a spare bedroom?" Yeah, well, I mean, let's look at some visions then for different infrastructure. Like what can we do differently? And the first thing we could do is import Godzillas. So they'll just come in and wreck our cities.
Jason Bradford
Okay. I don't think that's gonna go over well.
Rob Dietz
I don't know. It might. It might.
Asher Miller
It has to be coastal cities, right?
Rob Dietz
Yeah, he comes out from the ocean.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, okay. He can come out of the Columbia River and walk up to Portland maybe.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, great. Thanks. No, I think it's different prescriptions for wherever you are. So if you're in a city, then the infrastructure is as much of that 15 minutes city vision as possible. Less of the hardscapes and trying to set it up in a way that does require less of that transportation energy that you are talking about, Asher. If we're talking about a suburb, as much of this idea in David Holmgren's book, "Retrosuburbia," where you take what you've got, but you start altering it to need less energy inputs.
Jason Bradford
You have some land to draw from in suburbia in many cases.
Rob Dietz
If you're talking about the country, you know, I don't want us to romanticize that the non-urban places are sustainable. In many ways they're a mess, too. The soil is all depleted. The only way to get around is a private automobile.
Asher Miller
Big ass truck, actually.
Rob Dietz
A BAT, big ass truck. So the idea in the country is more of the village, more of the Shire, right? We want to live like hobbits.
Jason Bradford
Correct.
Rob Dietz
Little holes in the hillside.
Asher Miller
Yeah, and in all of these different living arrangements, having less dependence on consumer goods and services, you're more reliant on local sources for your livelihood.
Rob Dietz
Or futon frames to construct your trellises out of.
Asher Miller
Sharing economy and mutual aid stuff, repair shops. It's not just food growing. It's sort of all of that. Yeah.
Jason Bradford
And, you know, I think if there was more of this livelihood in place type of economy, there would be less people in the sort of tertiary sector we talked about. You know, it's interesting, America has 25% of the world's attorneys and 5% of the world population. And that's almost a requirement for the complexity we have.
Asher Miller
To sort of go off, this is a little tangent, but, you know, flying spaghetti monster. Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Jason Bradford
I don't know anything about it.
Asher Miller
Oh, it's fantastic. Well, the guy who started that -- This is a long story, but he basically was joking about weird correlations between things. So he showed a chart that showed that there was a correlation between the number of pirates and global warming because they both started at the same time. Pirates and the rise of global warming.
Rob Dietz
And then the premise is that yes, piracy is what's responsible for the --
Asher Miller
So what you're saying is, you know, 5% of the world populations is the U.S. and there 25% of the lawyers. It's the same thing with emissions. So I think you can infer there that all lawyers are responsible for emissions.
Rob Dietz
And there's a pretty close, I think that's true, close link between lawyers and piracy. Similar career.
Asher Miller
I'm sorry to all of our lawyer listeners.
Jason Bradford
I have friends and family who are attorneys. I'm not trying to make this personal. I'm just saying --
Rob Dietz
You already did. Sorry, buddy.
Asher Miller
You're gonna get sued, buddy.
Jason Bradford
Well, my favorite cartoons is these two peasants, and they're outside their little hovel or whatever. And there's these two attorneys that are standing with their like suitcases and their suits.
Rob Dietz
Briefcases.
Jason Bradford
Briefcases, yeah. Not suitcases, briefcase. And one peasant is saying to the other, they seek food, but all they can offer is representation. And it's my favorite because it's this infrastructure, structure, you know, kind of like this disconnect happening. And I think that's true. Like, right? If we have this change society, we're going to need a lot less attorneys. There'll be a lot more informal rules that take place and more autonomy, less administrivia. I think most of us feel overwhelmed by kind of the bullshit of complexity of our society. And there will almost be a relief.
Rob Dietz
I long for some administrative simplicity, especially in the world of insurance. Whether you're talking about medical, auto, home, whatever it is. Like wouldn't it be nice if you knew what you were buying, you knew what you were paying for? How refreshing that might be.
Asher Miller
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to go on a tangent about this. But like, you could definitely see a possibility that we're going to see a reversal. We're talking about the reversal of urbanism, we might see a reversal in terms of like how people get the kind of insurance support that they need. I remember John Michael Greer wrote a great piece years and years ago, about the societies that you said, Jason, in small town America. The Long Fellows halls and --
Jason Bradford
Oddfellows.
Asher Miller
Yes, sorry.
Jason Bradford
Longshoremen.
Asher Miller
Longshoremen, ha! I was thinking about poetry. And they would actually pool funding together. They would provide health insurance for one another, you know. They basically created their own mechanisms for doing that. So because you have relationships with people, you can figure out your own agreements with things. You don't need to have a lawyer draft a contract between you, you know. Or have a big insurance company, you know, doing stuff all the time. On the superstructure side, you're talking about living in cave, right? So, no wonder. You live in a cave, you're not exposed to nature really at all. No wonder we worship, you know, we worship the things that give us, you know, that are beamed into our lives. And that's technology for the most part.
Rob Dietz
Yeah. You guys ever been in one of those sushi restaurants with the conveyor belt that brings --
Asher Miller
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
That's what I worship. The food just comes right to my face.
Asher Miller
Exactly. But you know, if we're not in that kind of built environment, it actually allows us to be exposed. You talked about listening to birdsongs.
Jason Bradford
Right, right.
Asher Miller
Do you know what I mean? Seeing stars at night.
Jason Bradford
Yes.
Asher Miller
You know, it could reorient our cosmology or understanding of our relationship with the rest of the world and our place in it, and allows a different way of being and believing what we're here for. And not necessarily what we worship, but what we value.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I think this ties into what people are at their core. Like, we're sort of ingenious creatures, and we look around at our landscape, we're like, "Oh, I can fit in here by doing this or that." Building things that are commensurate with the space we live in and that use the materials nearby. And I think people are pining for this different way of interacting with ecosystems, with nature around them. And this is going to sound kind of sad, but one of the reasons I think that is from some of the YouTube videos I've been watching recently. There's this subculture of what I would call bushcraft type videos. Like, I watched this one of this guy essentially putting a water wheel in so he could mill logs and create a little cabin. And he did all this with hand tools. It's like, it's incredible artistry. It's totally small scale.
Jason Bradford
And these guys video this stuff. That's what's amazing too. They do all this and somehow their videoing.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, I don't know how they're dealing with all that. But it's sort of like a middle path, right?
Asher Miller
Don't you find that slightly ironic?
Jason Bradford
Yeah I find it just wonderful. I've seen those too. I love them. What's interesting is I've traveled around the world, Latin America, Madagascar, Southeast Asia, South Pacific Islands. And I've been to these places where you look and you go, "Oh, these people that are living here built this," you know. They built their own home out of the materials around them. And it is absolutely fascinating. And so I even had a student at OSU call me --
Rob Dietz
Oregon State.
Jason Bradford
Oregon State University -- Call me wanting to build his own home on my farm to live in for his last year, senior year. Because he said, "I can do this. I know what materials we would get and it would take me some time. "He never did. He kind of didn't plan it enough ahead of time. But the idea that there was a 20-something year old kid who was like, "I want to build my own home out of local materials." Like, oh my god. I haven't seen that here. Like I haven't seen something like that here. But I've seen it other parts of the world. So frickin' why not, right? It's a lot cheaper than the average home in Corvallis, which is like half a million dollars.
Asher Miller
Yeah. Alright, so where are these visions being achieved? What are examples that we see around the world. Who's doing it? And I was just thinking about -- on sort of different scales, right? So there's the individual scale. There's lots of examples of people kind of doing that on a homesteading basis, you could say. There's the global eco village network, which is a network of eco villages all around the world. And some of them are quite large scale. There's some, they even have these kind of hubs in some countries around the world where they have these concentrated collection of eco villages that actually work with one another. Do you know what I mean? So they're not isolated. They're not disconnected. But they're more like that Shire example that we were talking about. Where they're growing a lot more their own food. There's more sustainable infrastructure in terms of like homes that they build, you know. And that's, in a lot of cases, people kind of stepping outside of urbanism and going off to places or maintaining communities like that. But then you look at examples of suburban manifestations of this, and back to Sonoma County where I came from, our friend Trathen Heckman started a group called Daily Acts. And they do amazing work. There's now lots of people doing all over Sonoma county. But it started in a town called Petaluma. And basically, it was just neighbors helping neighbors transform their small suburban plots of land to become -- Using permaculture to produce as much of their own food and harvesting water. And just in these incredible landscapes, you know, and doing it collaboratively. So you're not doing it on your own right. They would do these these workshops together. They would do these tours of other people's properties. They would have these work parties that they would do. These big mulching parties and other stuff.
Rob Dietz
I really like this idea of thinking like a homesteader no matter where you are, but then having a collaborative team of people around to help you with it.
Jason Bradford
Well, that's the way it's done. If you look at peasant communities, right? You mentioned the Shire, you know, for example. Like you can actually go visit these Hobbit houses in New Zealand and tour them and they're wonderful.
Rob Dietz
The hobbits invite you right in. Elijah Wood is just right there.
Asher Miller
You gotta pass through Mordor on the way, unfortunately.
Jason Bradford
But some of these eco villages almost like approach that in terms of, you know, the natural building materials used and stuff. It can be quite spectacular and lovely. But again, yeah, often what it is, is people will come together and do like the Amish barn raising type thing. Or they call these perma-blitzes where you just come in and help someone get their yard set up. The other thing is to realize that there are all these peasant cultures around the world that are struggling for one reason or another, and if you can find a way to help them. So I know some people that go and provide some health care for people in Guatemala, and they put in these masonry rocket stoves that help really dramatically cut their wood use, and there's pollution in their homes. In Wales, there's the one planet development programs that are going on that help people move to rural areas and plan for and implement, essentially a sort of, you know, small homestead eco village type situation where they're mostly doing livelihood in place.
Asher Miller
Yes, the majority of the world now is living in urban environments. But there's still many, many people who aren't. And if we're thinking about examples and you know, places to learn from, it's looking at the Global South, the communities that have not become overdeveloped, yet. They're maybe maintaining a more traditional non-urbanized way of life and particularly indigenous communities. So it's actually sort of in all of our interest to support those to continue to exist because the more we urbanize in a sense, the more we're all participating in the destruction of the natural world, which is gonna lead to the destruction of our world.
Jason Bradford
And placing demands on their landscapes for the production of the coffee from them.
Asher Miller
Exactly. Or rare Earth minerals.
Jason Bradford
Exactly. These people get just destroyed by our demand.
Asher Miller
So supporting groups like cultural survival, and other organizations that are working to protect, you know, the traditional way of life of indigenous communities I think is really key. So I gotta say, like, some of these examples we're talking about, I mean, they're wonderful. Jason, what you're doing is great here. We talked about Daily Acts, and the Global Ecovillage Network and other examples of things that people are doing that students who wanted to build his own house dwelling, you know, on your property. Those are great, but they're such small scale, you know. And if we're recognizing, we talked about climate, driving, you know, huge challenges to urban population centers all around the world. And we're saying that cities in large part are unsustainable the way that they're constructed. And we're going to be seeing a reversal of that. Are we preparing for this at all? You know, we're talking in some ways about people sort of voluntarily stepping out. You know, de-urbanizing themselves, even if they stay in an urban environment. But like, what are we doing to prepare for this movement of people coming out of cities or to support that to happen?
Jason Bradford
Absolutely nothing. I mean, I get it. So I know. I tried to prep this show and find these examples that are inspiring. And at some point, you kind of go, but yeah, we're talking about the need for maybe tens, hundreds of millions of people to relocate. And to decarbonize and learn all these skills, and you know, they've got to watch the YouTube videos that you're talking about on bushcrafting. And they've got to come into a new place and adapt. I don't know. I mean, the problem is, is that the superstructure that we live in now won't accept the situation. Like you said, we're in the bargaining phase, right? And denial and everything. There's a lot of phases we have to go through to get to thinking about this correctly. And eco modernism is highly favored. So what you're asking is, if society wasn't completely bonkers, and would maybe listen to some of this stuff, what would we say? Is that that's what you're getting at?
Asher Miller
Yeah.
Rob Dietz
Well, I think the vision is there for us. So you guys know how much I love geography and looking around on Google Earth and stuff. And I was talking to some folks in Ohio, and it's amazing. You look at the sort of Cleveland to Akron corridor. These big urban areas. And to the east, you've got forests and Appalachia. To the west, you've got all this farmland. And I was scrolling around looking at the farmland and I kept going. Like, you can go on across to the west, and you see Indiana and Illinois and Iowa. All these states that are, when you take the bird's eye view, they're ecologically decimated.
Jason Bradford
Yeah, it's very sad.
Rob Dietz
They're just like corn and soy farms. And most of those are owned by corporations. They just own huge swaths of the Midwest. Like the vision there is we could repopulate this place. A lot of the towns there have gotten to be places that weren't well cared for, weren't well loved. It's like, if we were to have repopulation, you could see those towns becoming vibrant. If we could somehow turn the farms over into places that had healthy soil and could produce for the long term. That integrated wildlife habitat so that you had --
Jason Bradford
The prairie back.
Rob Dietz
Yeah, you know, and you had some of that. Like tall grass and short grass prairies. Like, it could be really amazing. So I feel like the vision is there for a different infrastructure and a different structure. But like you say, Jason, our culture and beliefs aren't there to get those things.
Jason Bradford
No. It's currently building giant gleaming glass cities and keep letting the machines do what they're doing out in the rural areas.
Asher Miller
But here's maybe where there might be a crack or a slight shift in the Overton window. And that is, I think people recognize, I'm talking about the United States. I don't know what it's like in another countries, necessarily. But we do have a political divide in this country that has to do with population density in many ways, right. And if we recognize that that divide is leading to such consternation, partisanship, hostility, potential violence, which we've talked about before, and the way to address that is not to necessarily double down on those things and invest in a power struggle, right? Because as you said before, the cities may be rich financially, but they're poor in terms of resources. You're not going to win that fight. So if it's about a reconciliation and understanding, and we also have a situation where that's a political environment. We have a situation where I think there's recognition on the part of federal government and state governments and many places that we have to address the climate crisis. We have to mitigate climate, we've got to think about climate resilience and adaptation. And there's dollars and programs set to that, including, like climate Conservation Corps. So, you know, if we shift a little bit of our thinking and understanding about what that looks like, so say we address climate, not just by trying to get people into building solar panels and wind turbines. You know, and maybe you're not even just going and trying to do forest stewardship stuff, which is important. But actually sending people into the agrarian part of the country to learn skills and to rebuild these communities actually making an economic program where you're actually having a cultural exchange too. Where maybe you're taking well intentioned college students or recent graduates, and you're sending them into these environments to build relationships and to build resilience of those communities and rebuild food systems and regenerative agriculture. I don't know. That sounds maybe pollyannish.
Jason Bradford
But I'd vote for you, buddy.
Asher Miller
Oh, thank you. You and maybe my wife.
Rob Dietz
No, I think it's a really cool idea. But the key is, how do we get it going? And I've got a great idea.
Asher Miller
What?
Jason Bradford
What?
Rob Dietz
Everybody needs to get out there on YouTube. Start watching some Green Acres episodes, so that you get primed how to live an agrarian life.
Jason Bradford
That's genius, man. I'll vote for you, too.
Melody Allison
That's our show. Thanks for listening. If you like what you heard and you want others to consider these issues, then please share Crazy Town with your friends. Hit that share button in your podcast app, or just tell them face to face. Maybe you can start some much needed conversations and do some things together to get us out of Crazy Town. Thanks again for listening and sharing.
Jason Bradford
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