Meaning is in People
Alain Bertaud is an inquisitor. He pokes at data with experience and reflection to help us understand the way the world works, how it will change and whether it will be the way we want or not. The image (below) is one of those pokes skips across the blogosphere searching for people willing to deal with the issues, “or not.”
I came across Mr. Alain Bertaud because I was trying to make sense of the Global Commission on the Economic and Climate report entitled the New Climate Economic. My question was how and where to invest the estimate of $90 trillion around the globe. They see it happening in three structures: 1) the city, 2) food/water, and 3) energy.
What in the infrastructure is missing in this approach?
I would put “wilderness” defined as a structure untouched as humanly possible and because it is a simple image. I watch urban densities change in the blink of the planner’s eye. The difference drew down by Bertaud is in a red line that defines a between Atlanta and Barcelona. One puts a train station inside a 2,000-yard walk for about 60% of the population (Barcelona), but just 4% have that choice in Atlanta. Something they will wish was available as energy shortages begin to increase for various reasons. Atlanta’s planners made highways for single families. Barcelona made neighborhoods for large, super-extended socio-economic families.
In the United States, housing is put on the self like any other canned goods in a supermarket, it requires little thinking, just a price point and a label. See discussion via Wall Street (here).