The Problem With Urban Living, Ft. Saint Andrew

a lot of these ideas and stuff. Um, I'm just crimp them from like all over the place, and in some cases they are a bit less I would say viable and others. But I do find like the work of for example, lu tech magazine, dot com and um and so on to be very inspiring in terms of all capabilities, Um, what potential there is an obsolete technologies, what the tech solutions exist for issues, and what we can do as people to just kind of make living

in urban sprawl or suburban hell a little bit less hellish. Yeah. That is definitely a topic close to my heart as well as someone who lives in a city. I would like cities to be less hellish. Yeah, that seems, and I would like suburbs and not exist. So internal more on the suburbs. We have to ally with rural America

and protracted people against the suburbs. Yes, yes, yeah, my my, my crank proposal has always been reintroducing Macedons and just like just having macedons, just like walking through and destroying buildings, because that's that's what the suburbs deserves. Mastadons is in the actual animals. Yes, yes, I thought you meant like the social media platform. No, no, I think we need to clone leopards so that they breed as quickly as rabbits and just let them loose. Wasn't Dr Defferend Schmootz

raised by lepids? Sure? Why not? I would Robertino, who doctor ches? No, Okay, let's just let's just let's just let's just let's just move on. Okay. I think I'm I'm, I think I think we are. We are roughly the same in the same age bracket. For television, we watched so I'M movies to catch up on. I'm very familiar with the Good Doctor. The platypus pilled, very very very platypilled,

as they say, platipilled. Let's right. So, um, there are a lot of aspects of my evil plan to make the entire tri state area more sustainable, but I think I would want to start with something that tends to consume a lot of the energy in cities, and that is like heating and cooling. I mean, for me, living in a tropical country, heating has never been a consideration. Um. I mean, the coolest it gets isn't like the I would say, like eighteen nineteen twenty degrees celsius area. Um,

And to me, that is like chili. That's like layering up kind of thing, because I can't handle that kind of cool um, which is kind of wild to me that I have a concern moving to kind of I don't think it's a handle it. It does, it does get, it does get much colder. I mean we when I was in Canada, we would have not not uncommonly have minus forty celsius weeks. So yeah, yeah, I experienced minus degrees before. I don't know, No, it is, Oh, it's fine, it's it's not a big deal. You just put on

an extra pair of socks. You're good to go. Okay, So when when it when it hits negative forty degrees fahrenheit. You've experienced negative forty degrees It's not like it's not like temperatures like negative negative forty. Negative forty fahrenheit is the temperature of the surface of bars are a sunny day. Negative fairness is the same as negative forty celsius. Oh is it they actually converted at that point? Yeah, it's like you just yeah, yeah, it's just your hain like

it's not even cold anymore. Like you just like your your face just hurts. It's It's great. Many time, I'm going to call out my my, my favorite meme again and have negative forty fahrenheit, negative forty selfius celsius clapping hands in the middle. Yeah, classics anyway, yes, yea, Honestly, I can't even conceive of that kind of temperature. Um I am an island boy, so that's how I operate, and as an island boy, um I had to say that. Like heat is very very uncomfortable. Humidic humid heat is

even more uncomfortable. Dry heat is also extremely uncomfortable. When you have a hot day combined with like sahara and dust in the air and no clouds in the sky. It is truly, truly miserable. I can't imagine, um, what life in a city would be like if um, you know, these sort of temperatures continue to climb as they are climbing, um, as we're seeing you know, global average temperatures rising by you know, a half degree or a degree or two

degrees celsie. That's just ridiculous, let alone three or four degrees celsius increase, especially compounded with the fact that in a city, there's this thing called the urban heat island effect, So cities are ten degrees c it's hotter than the surrounding countryside. And the reasons for the other numerous. You know, you have like vehicles emitting heat constantly, you have air

conditioners camping heat into the air. You have concrete covering every surface just like absorbing and radiating the sun's rays. And you have these urban canyons between tall buildings to prevent heat from escaping from and to keep it at

the sort of street level. It's miserable, right, And the typical solutions, the individual solutions, the short term solutions, they just make the situation worse because, I mean, when you're feeling hot, I mean I was just feeling hot just now, and I feel on the e C. Right when you're feeling hot, you know you're doing on the e C. Or you put on a fan, but not to wash a fan. But the e C continues and fuels this vicious cycle of heating the outdoors to cool the indoors,

making experience spaces even more uncomfortable. So you end up with air conditioning use accounting for like one five of global energy electricity usage of building related global electricity usage. And do you end up with the thing that's supposed to be cooling us heating things even more because you know, as developing countries, you know they have access to one and more air conditioning, especially and you know toveloping countries

and to be in the hotter side of the world. Um, you know, the use of the air condition just continues to skyrocket. And um the International Energy Agency actually estimated that it would take the amounts of energy needed to cool buildings will triple by twenty fift which is equivalent to the current elecacy demand in the US and Germany combined. So on top of all that, you will have an issue of like heat and heat deaths, right, the deaths

and injuries caused by heat. I mean, heat stroke is becoming more and more of an issue in cities, especially when you know temperatures reach above twenty five degrees celsius. People you know, manual labels, people who work outside, people who just have to move around a lot, you know, experience the symptom the symptoms of heat stroke whenever there is like the spike in temperature, right and then even you know, if you don't experience like a heat stroke,

heat is exhausting. It is energy draining, is utterly sapping, and it requires a lot out of your body to keep you cool and prevent you from like eating. And surprisingly, this overheating is you is not just like you know, a tropical issue or like a hot country is issue, like places like Moscow had like an asthmating eleven thod people die due to heat wave in twenty ten. And so with all these heat waves and stuff, we need to like figure out what to do with all these

giant concrete buildings. I mean, and for some people, like eco brutalism is you know, wow, so cool to me personally, and this is just my subjective opinion. I find it ugly and disgusting and I hated, but you know each soon right. Brutalism discourse, I mean, what what do you all think of rutalism. I think Yugoslavia and brutalism was cool. Every other kind of brutalism is just like my opinions on brutalism boiled down to thinking the game control is fun.

I have stayed in a Yugoslavian brutalist architecture hotel, which was one of the weirdest nights of my life because it was clearly made. It was like one of these gigantic like people's hotels that was meant to provide everyone with vacations, and so there's like twenty thousand rooms and we were like the only three people there. So there was one person at the desk, and it's just favern of empty rooms such this. Everything felt like a liminal space. It was. It was very odd. It can be, it

can be very very uncanny. It wasn't like bad, it was like reasonably well constructed. It was just deeply strange. I mean, that's whet to spend the night. I think that's what makes the game control so cool, is that, Yeah, it plays with those uncanny feelings on brutalism while still being like very cool, like it's still is the game that Jacob Keller made a video. Vote right, yes he made a he he didn't make a video like I watched that recently. This is like the sort of oldest

house kind of thing, right right, right right? Yeah, yeah, I wanted to go that game because I mean that's what that's kind of like my issue a brutalism. It feels like a boss level in a video game, like you have to go through each level clear what's all dominians and it gets it Tot and Peter the boss. It's kind of unsettling, yes, and then like eism is just like oh what if trees tres Yeah, and it's like okay cool. But I mean like one of my

many occupations and I still maintain it seasonally. Um. I was a power washer and I hate moss, and so to see moss all over buildings just really bothers me, Like I just want to get, you know, my spring gun and just clear it all off. Um, and especially in like this climate, moss is like a very significant issue. So that that makes sense, you know. Yeah, one of my pet peeves among many. So I mean there's many different ways we could combat the when heat island effects

um that don't involve equo brutalism. And they can also help to facility, you know, creating more attractive spaces to live and to play. You know. UM. Obviously the solution isn't just like those every building that ever been built and make it more sustainable, you know, with vernacular materials and stuff. So of course new buildings should be built with those principles in mind. UM. But you know it's not practical to us even sustainable to destroy all the

buildings we've already built and rebuild them. You know, the best thing we can do is try to mitigate and adapt with what we already have. UM. Greenery and I know it's just roasting eco brutalism just trap slack trees and everything is an important part in that, right because you know it called it causes evapple transporation, which is like where what's evaporates and plants leaves and cools the temperature. Um. You know, it also improve people's like psychological well being, um.

And they just the nice look at um then I look at the keep things cool. In fact, they could help cause temperatures to drop by like two to three

degrees celsius in the like the surrounding area. I think people certainly was interpreted, but like this, this is one of the big things you can see with with racism in the U s. Where like you can literally like you can literally track racial device in a lot of American cities by the by the temperature because like people places where not why people live just don't have trees. And you know this this has like a just this sort of like cascading series of environmental and social effects

which are a disaster and environmental racism, yeah, yes, released stock. Honestly, if you look at the heat maps with some of these cities and you could literally see, you know, where poor black folks live. You know, you can see the places with less trees, the places next to factories with like talks like you're on a off and waste and

that kind of thing. It's just right there and it sucks, which is why, of course, part of any sort of efforts to improve cities and make things more sustainable would involve, you know, social justice and would involve responding to an addressing the compounding effects of like environmental racism over the

past several decades. So you know, and part of the issue again trying things back to environmental racism, is that a lot of the climate change policies that you know, ostensibly amend to fever, like high density urban and smart growth you know, like sustainable blocks and that kind of thing, they are not conceived or implemented in a way that

involves the people being acted by them. You know. In fact, a lot of these like sort of green um projects raise the cost of food, energy, water, transport, housing for people in the area. You know, they create these sorts of like gentrified neighborhoods essentially whether the original inhabitants can

no longer afford to live there. So if we wants to develop like a sustainable city or resiliencity, sustainable obvious again neighborhood, it requires social justice, It requires you know, equity, and you know, like the involvement of all affected through you know, consensus or democracy. UM just really shape the future that you know, they will be experiencing because they

the ones being affected by it. There a lot of other ways as well to heap proof as it were a city, UM reflective roofs and roads UM can also helped reduce the absorptive powers of UM solar radiation by concrete and asphalt. So in fact, in some cities like l A and in New York, there's this wide reflective coating that UM has been implemented in some five thousand meters square of roof space that saves an estimated two thousand two tons of CEO two per year from cooling emissions.

I mean, all it takes really is just like that sort of white reflective code, and it saves dividends in the long run. UM NASA had done some research on this and it demonstra e to the results demonstrated that a white roof could be twenty three degrees celsius or forty two degrees fahrenheit cooler than a typical black roof UM on a hot New York somebody UM and in places where like yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, it's kind

of like glossed the river. That is crazy, that is absolutely absolutely And then cities where like we're like of the land area is like asphalt. You can imagine how that sort of UM, that sort of reflective ceilon can impact UM the cooling or the heating of the area water. Of course, there's another like important aspect of cooling cities um in and louse, which was like okay, the Muslim

kingdom in Gabrian Peninsula in the fourteenth century. UM, they used to have these sort of like courtyards with pools and fountains. They would stimulate water evaporation and cool the air, and so like cities today, you know, take some hints from that. You know, you have ponds and pools and fountains and missing systems and stuff that can sort of

chill things out. I mean we see that being UM implemented in China, where you have like, for example, UM water misteres at like bus stops, which can chill the air and you know, cool passengers as they wait. UM. And they found actually that adding water features and like cool coatings reduces the cooling requirements of an area by twenty nine tot and also lowers the overall averaging at

temperature by one point five degrees celsius. So it's like, honestly wild, like these little things can have such a major impact on temperature. Speaking of like old methods of cooling, UM, ancient methods of cooling, there's this Middle Eastern shading device quality Mastra bil um or I think it's Mastra ba and It's basically an architectural element that is usually built by um wooden lattice work and sometimes stay in the glass. It's used to like catch and cool the wind through

like having these basins of water in them. Is I mean, so I could try to describe it. It's like a window jutting out of a building UM with sort of decorated by lattice work, with jars and basins of water placed within them to let the wind pasture. As the wind is passing through, it's caused an evaporative cooling, then it chills out the interior. And so these mastra beas UM.

They've been used since the Middle Ages by you know, the Coptic churches of Egypt and the Art Deco movement in Iraq, and and by you know the architecture um in bad Dad as well. And so these sort of construction methods, while they tend to be developed for you know, individual homes or individual buildings, UM, they can in fact be implemented um with even the aesthetics of Islamic geometry to help to cool a building and reduce its overall

seor twe mission MH. So I've been talking about heats in and cooling and stuff for a while now, and speaking of much, probably too amazing. It's seen off my ec rather though, I think I heard either either it was you, Andrew or maybe it was Robert talking about the ceramic kind of cooling idea. Yeah, I mean that's

the thing. And like the part of the American Southwest, like New Mexico, there's a lot of like swamp coolers that are basically working, right, Yeah, so I'm cool, So I'm cool those It only works in certain climates, right, Like you wouldn't really, I don't know, because it's if it's too it's too humid, it's not gonna work. You're

just gonna Yeah. I think there's kind of a broader thing there architecturally, which is that like we have a lot of sort of like like we we've we've lost still a lot of in the way we do architecture. We've lost a lot of the sort of like building we've we've lost a lot of sort of building techniques

adapted to specific locations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And like that's something that has to be reversed like immediately, because like our our current model of building houses, that of oil is going to get us all killed really what's what's the problem there? What's wrong? What's that? I mean and tough with that, right, not just vernacular architecture, but vernacular clothing. I mean it's I mean as again, so when lire in a tropical country, I see it for myself, Like

working people going to work. We're in like full long sleeve dress shoots and long long dress pans and you know, like formal shoes and it's honestly up you know sometimes like they have the whole tie like you pull up and everything. It's not it's entirely based on like European standards of professionalism, and um, it needs to be abolished.

Abolish dress codes all right, abolished like this whole idea that you know, we have to dress this particular way, um, despite you know, the temperature, because it's more professional or whatever for professionalism. Honestly, yeah, we we have we have podcasting or in the vanguard of this, but we need help to destroy professionalism once and for all. Yeah yeah, yeah, show up to work, can you be then suit? Um?

But yeah, like vernacular buildings as well. You know obviously you had in in Africa, in different parts of Africa, you would have different structures that will particularly ticult. You know, if you're in a in a trap coal reinforest environment, you would have a billing a steeler to you know, keeping mosquitoes out and maintaining a certain temperature within and maintaining comfort as well within or you know, in cooler regions you would have um, certain construction that would keep

heats within the building and prevent um excessive discomfort you know. Um. And they were also of course, like when it comes to like cooler areas, you will also expected to sort of keep yourself warm as well as you know, keep your building. Woman. In fact, it was more still keeping yourself personally warm, so keeping yourself lay it up even when you're indoors. And of course that's kind of lost today people are expected to just you know, turn on the heater and vibe for the months of winter. But

it isn't sustainable. A lot of things we enjoy today unsustainable. Keeps coming back to that, it yeah, speaking of things that we enjoy that are not at all sustainable, how about cause get rid of cause? Please get rid of cause. I mean, cause are very convenient in terms of like if you want to get somewhere very specific, um, you know, if there's a place you want to go, I'm the one you need to know. I'm a car. I'm a car. I'm a car. You know kind of thing. But my

little musical interview there, thank you for appreciating it. But ultimately, like they honestly aren't sustainable. They honestly on something that we can maintain in the nail even well potentially in the neighbors where the far future. I mean, people are already know the problems with gascars, really know my gascars are bad. But you know, things just just things are just sort of pivoted towards electric cars. And who electric cars, Let's get a bunch of electric cars. Who But electric

cars aren't better. I mean, the materials they require, the energy they require, it's quite frankly not sustainable in the long run, and it just lengthens the amount of time that we spend dependence on cause for shorts and long distance travel. And especially how in the States we've built our cities around the idea of a car, which has

expanded the urban terrain unnecessarily. And if you look at like all the space taken up like highways and overpasses, and how much of just like urban space has taken up but just been built around the idea of the car. It really kind of makes the whole idea of a city so much less useful. It's it's really it's really frustrating, and I think it's also working at the cars are

so unbelievably dangerous. Yea, yeah, yeah, we're very much used to like having these like death machines driving around at all times, and that that makes for like a very um cool like series of metal band song names or whatever.

But the death statistics on funny when it comes to cause. No, and like the average transport transportation time having cars has not actually decreased, Like the amount of time it takes to get from place to place based on like where you live in your city has not actually decreased because

now everything has just spread further apart. So a hundred years ago would take you know, like a fifteen minute trek to get to like you know, the market or something, it can take often times longer, especially if you're driving in like rush hour traffic to get just just just like a couple of miles, where even in some cases a decent job gets you there faster. Um, just because of how we've just designed the cities all around these rolling metal death cages. Um. Yeah, it's not it's it's

not great. It's one of the reasons I don't current they have a car. Yeah, and that's kind of that's something that's shocking to a lot of people when I tell them that, really, I have no intention, if for buying a car, of ever owning a car. It's not something that I want. And I mean I live relatively close to like some of the major transport um arteries of the country, and you know, try Not has like

this unique ish transportation system public transportation systems. So we have these privately owned maxi taxis that um they're like vans with seats in the back um and you know, you could you just kind of jump in um depending on where they're going with route are taken. Um. And they're they're convenient enough for me and for my purposes, so I just you know, I go where I need to go um with them. But they're also gas guzzling in efficient machines. I mean, they're better than you know,

all those people driving cars. I mean as an island, you know, like I don't know why we're so obsessed with having more and more cars in the road, UM, but at the end of the day, they still aren't the best in terms of sustainability and in terms of viable, reliable, sustainable transport. UM. We also have like personal taxis as well,

but they have the same problems as regular taxis. And what's frustrating is that we used to have a train line UM that went along the entire east west corridor of the country, and that's where most of the people internet along the East West corridor UM, but that was destroyed in the nineties sixties, I think to make way for highways and a priority bus route. So instead of having a nice, convenient, cute little tree and that we could seek to go from place to place, you have

to rely on buses and maxis and taxis. And cause, yeah, that is quite that's not cool, that is quite not good.

Quite quite grim because we need to reconfigure. Seriously, I would love for them to bring back trains, so he was to take a train you don't have to rely on I mean, government bureaucracy makes all things unreliable, but I think a train would have been slightly more reliable than a bus, very much on the pro train on the on the pro train train, a fewer, a few fewer, fewer moments more happy than writing the Portland's Max line and streetcar in a no place costume. It's very it's

it's very fun. I think also, like another thing about about cars, right, this is just it's just just on a very pure political level, like cars is the thing that allowed suburbs to exist, and the existence of suburbs has produced just generation upon generation of like frothing reactionaries who are the source of like enormous percentages of the world's problems. And so if you get rid of those places,

you produce less of them. Yeah, which is just a political benefit for anyone who wants to not die exactly exactly. I mean, we don't think about it because theres already

so many things to think about. But if you actually sat down and pondered the death tool of like cause, um we really and really brought to the forefront and really need it less of a necessity, I think one more people would be open to the idea of rejecting cause, to keeping them as at most benign a novelty UM that maybe one or two exists in the entire community,

UM for use if needs be. UM, But otherwise, I I don't see how each and every person in the world owning their own car, is that all the best way to go. Also, cause are kind of ugly to me. Yeah, we really didn't design them to look cool, which just it's I mean, there's some cars that look kind of cool, like some of the more classic ones. But and that's partly a right. They're getting uglier to me. And they're

also getting larger, you know, like stuff people like. They're raising their grills more and more so, like you're basically a pedestrian killing machine. We've effectively undone most of the benefits of making cars for for passengers by making them much more dangerous for pedestrians, which is entirely a marketing choice.

Like if you like, the fucking trucks they were making twenty five years ago are just as useful, um and in a lot of cases more useful for like practical farm work, for hauling and whatnot than the trucks they're making today. They haven't meaningfully gotten better, They've just gotten a lot larger for no real reason other than it

makes people feel like big men. Well, and then you get these fun you get these fun you can you can look at the marketing people like explicitly talking about how like yeah, like they like basically explicitly playing into the fantasy of running over protesters and it's it's great, it's yeah, So get rid of cars and you won't have to deal with that. But Chris, how is that sustainable? Well viable? M good question? Mhmm. Introducing super blocks, Oh yes,

super superblocks are basically UM neighborhood of nine blocks. So I don't think they have to be I think the philosophy and ideas behind super blocks could be implemented suit different UM cities of different histories and different layouts, especially localized especially such like localized street cars within each city block, within within each superblock like system exactly So, just to clarify the idea, super blocks are basically UM, you know,

neighborhoods of nine blocks where traffic is restricted to the roads on the outside of the block, which means that the interior of the super blocks are entirely walkable. That, combined with the idea of a superblock being um mixed use, means that people are mostly able to access their basic

necessities within their city block. Are you able to like, spend more time, have more open space, to spend more time to meet with people, to talk to do do activities to you do have some relief from noise pollution and air pollution from vehicles, and to really like connects people with the space they're living in and make the

space they're living and more livable. I mean, I don't live smack tub in the middle of like urban urban town, but I could imagine if people living in like New York or whatever, and you can't exactly step out of the apartment and play in the road on a typical day, if you have kids or whatever, you know, they can't exactly just go run outside. Um, you will die exactly, exactly exactly. And I mean people complaining about like, oh kids,

let's do some go outside as much? But I mean look at outside, you know, is look at what look at what has been created? Um, and reflect on that. I mean part of the assuer is um the way social media algorithms are designed to suck people into like cycles of addiction. But that's a whole another topic, right, Um, I think a lot of people, more people will be willing to be able to pull themselves out to that sort of harmful algorithmic. Hell, if there was an outside

pull themselves out too, you know. But honestly, cities, especially a notorious for like not having places you can be where you don't have to spend money, and that sucks. So I think, um, super blocks being places where you know, libraries and um place so people can eat spacess it does seem to be missing or ignoring the what we're gonna lose with super blocks, which is how how am I gonna roll down the streets smoking indow sipping on gin and juice if I'm not allowed to drive within

my block? Wow? I think we can wear I think I think you could just get a bike? Who's cruising all the bicycle? Have you tried smoking indow sipping on gin and juice while riding a bicycle. It's it's impossible

get a coup anything as possible as a snoop dogg eraser. No. But the the idea of having like community gardens, community like kitchens, like a maker spaces, libraries, all these within like this super block framework, you know, like green spaces, it does make actual urban city living to seem attractive and not like you're just living in nested concrete boxes. Yeah, I mean people like because that's where everything's happening, right, But yeah, you you want people to take part in

the things that are happening, but the places aren't livable. Yeah, you have the table that will continue to complain about until the end of time, which the table in Chicago Chinatown that threatens to arrest you for sitting at it. Like it's yeah, like the hostility of this goes back to like racism because of course everyone does. Everything does.

But you know a lot of these loitering laws and stuff which she designed to target black people and to target you know, poor people, um like vagrancy laws and that sort of thing, just hostile people's existence, and that gets into like hostile architecture and that sort of thing.

But I think with these puple blocks, you know, we open up our spaces to make them welcoming to human existence, spaces that are not built around cars, built around commutes, built around week And this obviously is a transformation that requires more than just you know, vote for so and so and make this a degree and kind of thing.

You need, you need something more substantial than that. You know, within these super blocks as well, you're you're able to take stock of how your block or whatever you have a better mental sense of um community and able to take about a sense of even things like how your block can communally sustain themselves and you know, reduce waste and all these different things. This in conjunction with struggle against capitalism in the state. But you know that is implied.

This is you know, m this is the show. This is it could happen here. I don't know if you expect and like electoralism, but that's not really what we do around here. I mean the benefits to the sort of like super blocks, you know, these fifteen minutes zones so people can walk within fifteen minutes to get the essentials. The benefits are innumerable. You know, that's the equality, less noise,

healthy lifestyle, mental health boost. But the issue is without a combination of you know, these projects and these activities with like anti capitalism and anti statism, it's it's tends to lend itself towards gentrification. And we've seen that in Spain, which is where UM, some of these super blocks have

been implemented. UM they've created like these locations are obviously more desirable because who doesn't want to live in a superblock where you know, you actually have a sense of community because we're all desperate for that UM and at least an increase in property demand, higher prices, higher rent It basically creates these pockets of unaffordable neighborhoods, displacing local rest done. So you have to get into the fight against gentrification in order to make this you know, idea viable.

The last thing that I want to get into really is as convention UM community gardens. I want to talk about urban farming because that is crucial. I mean, part of what UM makes cities cities in all cases is the fact that they imports all their food. Right they have the urban rural divide that you know delineates the

two areas UM. But considering the transportation costs, the energy costs, all those things that compound UM two sustain a city, a city's food needs, we have to look to ways that we can sustain cities and sustain neighborhoods within cities UM within themselves. Before I continue, I just want to point out that the future of urban farming is not

in vertical farms. UM. They look very cool, you know, like those tall kind of like pillars of like letters or whatever, growing out sort of things, but the land that they save is usually canceled out by the land they need to produce the energy to power them, like they're very energy intensive UM spaces. So until that issue is resolved, and I don't know if it will be considering you know how the energy requirements are just sort of built into the vertical the concentration of energy requirements

built in sort of into the vertical farming design. Um, we have to look to more practical methods. Landownership tends to be a major hurdle UM when it comes to organizing community gardens and maintaining community gardens UM. I mean, like folks like Black Futures Farm, Oakland Avenue Urban Farm, and the Victory Garden Initiative. They even working to like provide fresh produce to those in need, especially in urban

food deserts. But in a lot of these projects, they go in good for some years and then the city suddenly spins around It's like we need this land for development, so they just snatch it up, and you know, those years of efforts just basically put on the dream. UM. Community land trusts have been put forward as a potential um solution to that issue. But like a lot of these things I mean it's a good band aid, I would say, but it's not necessarily marking the end of capitalism.

Another issue that there is with the whole urban farming thing is that the culture that develops around them while they provide education and community and connection for people within them,

and that is extremely valuable. I think some organizers fall into this habit of treating, of creating this sort of like shared delusion around community gardens, you know, claiming to be sort of feeding the people couldn't could And what al really brought this to my attention was Inhabits Territories newsletter had an article on it last year, I think, on you know, urban community gardens, and it was written by Gibriel I've seen, the co founder of at plan,

to which I find to be a very very creative name, basically asked the question are we really feeding ourselves? I mean, these local food initiatives, they do produce food that people eat, But it can be a bit harmful to be overly optimistic about our food autonomy at this stage, especially considering how reliant we still are on big agriculture. You know, like yes we are producing you know, organic nutritionally, this dense crops and stuff, and that's great, that's helping people.

But you know, oftentimes it usually just means that, you know, the people might be getting participants. I'm be getting like a salad or you know, a couple to me too, it's not necessarily they are cutting down their grocery build

in a sustainable long term way. Because I mean, if you've tried, God and you know that, like when you work here with a limited space, you know, you grow your food set it to me too, is it means it was a cool but they don't last forever, you know, and you have to wait until the next harvest to get more. To me too, or whatever the case may be.

Same for like letters or whatever. It's kinda rough, you know, it doesn't It helps for like a meal or maybe two, depending on like the living situation, but it doesn't meaningfully cut into our reliance on groceries and you know, food imports. Yeah, it definitely takes a bit to get to that point. And you have to do it with a combination of like food preservation and like canning, um and like you know, like jarring and a whole bunch of other stuff to

actually make that a worthwhile endeavor. As opposed to just making like great, I spent three months making these tomatoes. Now they're ready for one meal and then they're all gone.

It would be like one cell. Yeah. Yeah, you do have to really kind of figure out how to grow enough to keep enough ready to be harvested for jarring and canning for future use um, and make sure like you're you know, harvesting them when they are ready so that you can you know, you don't lose stuff, and that you have like you know, an ongoing, ongoing process of like preserving the fit that you do grow for

later um as well. So you can definitely take a lot a lot more like mental effort and planning than just you know, planting it and then you know, using it and cooking it when it's when it's all ready. Yeah, I mean a lot of energy and self is put into growing things like greens and roots and fruit and vegetables and the healthy you know, they have the vits,

wins and micro nutrients. But you know, people still need meat, dairy, eggs, you know protein, yeah, heavy high calorie dense stuff you know like potitoos and other starches like a really holy bouloofu wheats and that kind of thing and that just and being grown right now. You know, wheat and rice and soy and nuts and corn and sugar, these staples and stuff don't tend to be produced by these community gardens and by these garden plots. Not many many, not

many legume patches at your local community garden. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Like I'm in the process of grin um some pigeon piers right now, and they are taking a very long while. And what I realize is that, um, I mean, I just plan to them, so I'm being a bit impatient. But what I realized is that when they do growth, and I've seen you know, some much your pigeon peach trees and stuff, I know how big

they tend to grow by time harvest rules around. You know, you get all those different pods, and you you know, you put in the work, you put you pick all the pods, and you pry open the pods, and you know, you put in some more alliteration into the sentence, and you know, you get those peas out. Once those peas out to the pod and you put them in a pot, they're not potent enough to who would you over for more than one meal? You know, like you pick like a trees worth of peas in a pod, and you

know that's like sometimes like half of a meal. And really, honestly respect to the people who are producing all our food right now, because I can't imagine having to be shelling peas all the time. It's kind of ridiculous. I mean it can be fun, but I can't imagine doing it all day. I mean, workers work, right, it's gonna yea work as hell. We know this. But yeah, so I mean community gardens they're good. You know, they have education,

they build community, provide outdoor activity and stuff. But you know, I think what comunity gardens, urban gardens and stuff need to do is find ways to um and this this isn't a disparate The work has been done, you know, like massive support. I'm doing that myself kind of thing. But we've got to, like, as the article argues, we can't get caught up in the fluffing up of the reality for marketing purposes. You know, we need to look

for ways that can actually um feed ourselves. That means getting into caloric foods, that means um like like dried beans, potatoes, fruit trees, that kind of thing, grains, nuts, all that jazz, and also connecting with farms outside of the city, you know, local farms outside of the immediate urban landscape, seeing what cooperatives be developed that can work aid each other mutually

to build more potent capacity for food. What's on me? So, I mean, get in touch with the soil, you know, get this sign your face, but also think about what more we can do to sort of take this to the next level. And yeah, that is um, that is what I believe could in fact happen here. This has happened here. Good. Yeah, it's nice to have a positive one of these. Yeah, we should do that more often.

If all, if only we had the power power. Well, come back tomorrow when we'll be talking about another bad thing and then to deal with your thoughts about it. O. Wow, we we try, we try, We do try. This is us trying well, this is us having st Andrew try.

You're welcome, Thank you, thank you very much. This is a topic I wanted to discuss for a long time in terms of beause we get a lot of people talking about it like yeah, how you know and whatever, like post collapse fantasy that you can imagine where we're able to kind of reconfigure society, how would you plan urban living? And you're like, well, yeah, there's there's a lot of actually really cool ideas for like keeping people close together can be a very ecological idea if you

do it certain ways. It's just a lot of the ways you've defaulted to over the past. Like really three years has made it not that with the invention of the car really really screwing us over. Um. So, yeah, thank you so much for talking about urban living and super super blocks and all this kind of stuff. Where can where can people find more of your work and

writing on the interwebs. You can find me on YouTube at seeing Andrewism, and you can find me on Twitter, which hopefully when you hear this, I am still not on at under school seeing True fantastic. Um yeah you uh st Andrew just put together a really great episode about anti work stuff and the way that debacle has has has happened and what we can learn from it

and that kind of thing. Um And while you should still actually care about anti work um and yeah, so we're definitely recommend the anti work video for recent recent recent stuff. Let's see, um, if you want to feed your brain into the addiction driven social media algorithm. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. That happened here, pot and cools on media and uh yeah, let's uh go think about go think about microspaces and community gardens. That seems like a good, a good way to dedicate

your thoughts. Time and roll down the street smoking indow, sipping that gin and juice while you still can on a bike on a personally, just doing my moral judgments upon you before before the fascist anarchists take away your f one fifties. Yeah, look, if if if we can democratize military grade weaponry the way the Ukrainians had, we can, we can. We can form neighborhoods that cannot be forced

to live in the traffic. The auto industrial complex really reduced frifless air travel, what other eyes will end up in a mad max field? And I meant that right well aspects of it? Yeah, alright, stee what everybody? It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could

happen here? Updated monthly at cool Zone media dot com, slash sources, Thanks for listening.