Speaker 1: Oh it could welcome here the podcast that happens ship.
Speaker 1: All right, Well St Andrew, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna pivot to you to pull us out of this
Speaker 1: tailspin I've locked. Hello. Hello, what's the seen everyone today?
Speaker 1: I wanted to go on a bit of a personal meandering,
Speaker 1: I guess on Um, some of the ideas and concepts
Speaker 1: are just kind of fluting on my head, um, surrounding
Speaker 1: sustainable city planning and city living. I want to see
Speaker 1: a lot of these ideas and stuff. Um, I'm just
Speaker 1: crimp them from like all over the place, and in
Speaker 1: some cases they are a bit less I would say
Speaker 1: viable and others. But I do find like the work
Speaker 1: of for example, lu tech magazine, dot com and um
Speaker 1: and so on to be very inspiring in terms of
Speaker 1: all capabilities, Um, what potential there is an obsolete technologies,
Speaker 1: what the tech solutions exist for issues, and what we
Speaker 1: can do as people to just kind of make living
Speaker 1: in urban sprawl or suburban hell a little bit less hellish. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That is definitely a topic close to my heart as
Speaker 1: well as someone who lives in a city. I would
Speaker 1: like cities to be less hellish. Yeah, that seems, and
Speaker 1: I would like suburbs and not exist. So internal more
Speaker 1: on the suburbs. We have to ally with rural America
Speaker 1: and protracted people against the suburbs. Yes, yes, yeah, my my,
Speaker 1: my crank proposal has always been reintroducing Macedons and just
Speaker 1: like just having macedons, just like walking through and destroying buildings,
Speaker 1: because that's that's what the suburbs deserves. Mastadons is in
Speaker 1: the actual animals. Yes, yes, I thought you meant like
Speaker 1: the social media platform. No, no, I think we need
Speaker 1: to clone leopards so that they breed as quickly as
Speaker 1: rabbits and just let them loose. Wasn't Dr Defferend Schmootz
Speaker 1: raised by lepids? Sure? Why not? I would Robertino, who
Speaker 1: doctor ches? No, Okay, let's just let's just let's just
Speaker 1: let's just let's just move on. Okay. I think I'm I'm,
Speaker 1: I think I think we are. We are roughly the
Speaker 1: same in the same age bracket. For television, we watched
Speaker 1: so I'M movies to catch up on. I'm very familiar
Speaker 1: with the Good Doctor. The platypus pilled, very very very platypilled,
Speaker 1: as they say, platipilled. Let's right. So, um, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of aspects of my evil plan to make
Speaker 1: the entire tri state area more sustainable, but I think
Speaker 1: I would want to start with something that tends to
Speaker 1: consume a lot of the energy in cities, and that
Speaker 1: is like heating and cooling. I mean, for me, living
Speaker 1: in a tropical country, heating has never been a consideration. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, the coolest it gets isn't like the I
Speaker 1: would say, like eighteen nineteen twenty degrees celsius area. Um,
Speaker 1: And to me, that is like chili. That's like layering
Speaker 1: up kind of thing, because I can't handle that kind
Speaker 1: of cool um, which is kind of wild to me
Speaker 1: that I have a concern moving to kind of I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a handle it. It does, it does get,
Speaker 1: it does get much colder. I mean we when I
Speaker 1: was in Canada, we would have not not uncommonly have
Speaker 1: minus forty celsius weeks. So yeah, yeah, I experienced minus
Speaker 1: degrees before. I don't know, No, it is, Oh, it's fine,
Speaker 1: it's it's not a big deal. You just put on
Speaker 1: an extra pair of socks. You're good to go. Okay,
Speaker 1: So when when it when it hits negative forty degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: You've experienced negative forty degrees It's not like it's not
Speaker 1: like temperatures like negative negative forty. Negative forty fahrenheit is
Speaker 1: the temperature of the surface of bars are a sunny day.
Speaker 1: Negative fairness is the same as negative forty celsius. Oh
Speaker 1: is it they actually converted at that point? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like you just yeah, yeah, it's just your hain like
Speaker 1: it's not even cold anymore. Like you just like your
Speaker 1: your face just hurts. It's It's great. Many time, I'm
Speaker 1: going to call out my my, my favorite meme again
Speaker 1: and have negative forty fahrenheit, negative forty selfius celsius clapping
Speaker 1: hands in the middle. Yeah, classics anyway, yes, yea, Honestly,
Speaker 1: I can't even conceive of that kind of temperature. Um
Speaker 1: I am an island boy, so that's how I operate,
Speaker 1: and as an island boy, um I had to say that.
Speaker 1: Like heat is very very uncomfortable. Humidic humid heat is
Speaker 1: even more uncomfortable. Dry heat is also extremely uncomfortable. When
Speaker 1: you have a hot day combined with like sahara and
Speaker 1: dust in the air and no clouds in the sky.
Speaker 1: It is truly, truly miserable. I can't imagine, um, what
Speaker 1: life in a city would be like if um, you know,
Speaker 1: these sort of temperatures continue to climb as they are climbing, um,
Speaker 1: as we're seeing you know, global average temperatures rising by
Speaker 1: you know, a half degree or a degree or two
Speaker 1: degrees celsie. That's just ridiculous, let alone three or four
Speaker 1: degrees celsius increase, especially compounded with the fact that in
Speaker 1: a city, there's this thing called the urban heat island effect,
Speaker 1: So cities are ten degrees c it's hotter than the
Speaker 1: surrounding countryside. And the reasons for the other numerous. You know,
Speaker 1: you have like vehicles emitting heat constantly, you have air
Speaker 1: conditioners camping heat into the air. You have concrete covering
Speaker 1: every surface just like absorbing and radiating the sun's rays.
Speaker 1: And you have these urban canyons between tall buildings to
Speaker 1: prevent heat from escaping from and to keep it at
Speaker 1: the sort of street level. It's miserable, right, And the
Speaker 1: typical solutions, the individual solutions, the short term solutions, they
Speaker 1: just make the situation worse because, I mean, when you're
Speaker 1: feeling hot, I mean I was just feeling hot just now,
Speaker 1: and I feel on the e C. Right when you're
Speaker 1: feeling hot, you know you're doing on the e C.
Speaker 1: Or you put on a fan, but not to wash
Speaker 1: a fan. But the e C continues and fuels this
Speaker 1: vicious cycle of heating the outdoors to cool the indoors,
Speaker 1: making experience spaces even more uncomfortable. So you end up
Speaker 1: with air conditioning use accounting for like one five of
Speaker 1: global energy electricity usage of building related global electricity usage.
Speaker 1: And do you end up with the thing that's supposed
Speaker 1: to be cooling us heating things even more because you know,
Speaker 1: as developing countries, you know they have access to one
Speaker 1: and more air conditioning, especially and you know toveloping countries
Speaker 1: and to be in the hotter side of the world. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the use of the air condition just continues
Speaker 1: to skyrocket. And um the International Energy Agency actually estimated
Speaker 1: that it would take the amounts of energy needed to
Speaker 1: cool buildings will triple by twenty fift which is equivalent
Speaker 1: to the current elecacy demand in the US and Germany combined.
Speaker 1: So on top of all that, you will have an
Speaker 1: issue of like heat and heat deaths, right, the deaths
Speaker 1: and injuries caused by heat. I mean, heat stroke is
Speaker 1: becoming more and more of an issue in cities, especially
Speaker 1: when you know temperatures reach above twenty five degrees celsius.
Speaker 1: People you know, manual labels, people who work outside, people
Speaker 1: who just have to move around a lot, you know,
Speaker 1: experience the symptom the symptoms of heat stroke whenever there
Speaker 1: is like the spike in temperature, right and then even
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't experience like a heat stroke,
Speaker 1: heat is exhausting. It is energy draining, is utterly sapping,
Speaker 1: and it requires a lot out of your body to
Speaker 1: keep you cool and prevent you from like eating. And surprisingly,
Speaker 1: this overheating is you is not just like you know,
Speaker 1: a tropical issue or like a hot country is issue,
Speaker 1: like places like Moscow had like an asthmating eleven thod
Speaker 1: people die due to heat wave in twenty ten. And
Speaker 1: so with all these heat waves and stuff, we need
Speaker 1: to like figure out what to do with all these
Speaker 1: giant concrete buildings. I mean, and for some people, like
Speaker 1: eco brutalism is you know, wow, so cool to me personally,
Speaker 1: and this is just my subjective opinion. I find it
Speaker 1: ugly and disgusting and I hated, but you know each
Speaker 1: soon right. Brutalism discourse, I mean, what what do you
Speaker 1: all think of rutalism. I think Yugoslavia and brutalism was cool.
Speaker 1: Every other kind of brutalism is just like my opinions
Speaker 1: on brutalism boiled down to thinking the game control is fun.
Speaker 1: I have stayed in a Yugoslavian brutalist architecture hotel, which
Speaker 1: was one of the weirdest nights of my life because
Speaker 1: it was clearly made. It was like one of these
Speaker 1: gigantic like people's hotels that was meant to provide everyone
Speaker 1: with vacations, and so there's like twenty thousand rooms and
Speaker 1: we were like the only three people there. So there
Speaker 1: was one person at the desk, and it's just favern
Speaker 1: of empty rooms such this. Everything felt like a liminal space.
Speaker 1: It was. It was very odd. It can be, it
Speaker 1: can be very very uncanny. It wasn't like bad, it
Speaker 1: was like reasonably well constructed. It was just deeply strange.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's whet to spend the night. I think
Speaker 1: that's what makes the game control so cool, is that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it plays with those uncanny feelings on brutalism while still
Speaker 1: being like very cool, like it's still is the game
Speaker 1: that Jacob Keller made a video. Vote right, yes he
Speaker 1: made a he he didn't make a video like I
Speaker 1: watched that recently. This is like the sort of oldest
Speaker 1: house kind of thing, right right, right right? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wanted to go that game because I mean that's
Speaker 1: what that's kind of like my issue a brutalism. It
Speaker 1: feels like a boss level in a video game, like
Speaker 1: you have to go through each level clear what's all
Speaker 1: dominians and it gets it Tot and Peter the boss.
Speaker 1: It's kind of unsettling, yes, and then like eism is
Speaker 1: just like oh what if trees tres Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: like okay cool. But I mean like one of my
Speaker 1: many occupations and I still maintain it seasonally. Um. I
Speaker 1: was a power washer and I hate moss, and so
Speaker 1: to see moss all over buildings just really bothers me,
Speaker 1: Like I just want to get, you know, my spring
Speaker 1: gun and just clear it all off. Um, and especially
Speaker 1: in like this climate, moss is like a very significant issue.
Speaker 1: So that that makes sense, you know. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: my pet peeves among many. So I mean there's many
Speaker 1: different ways we could combat the when heat island effects
Speaker 1: um that don't involve equo brutalism. And they can also
Speaker 1: help to facility, you know, creating more attractive spaces to
Speaker 1: live and to play. You know. UM. Obviously the solution
Speaker 1: isn't just like those every building that ever been built
Speaker 1: and make it more sustainable, you know, with vernacular materials
Speaker 1: and stuff. So of course new buildings should be built
Speaker 1: with those principles in mind. UM. But you know it's
Speaker 1: not practical to us even sustainable to destroy all the
Speaker 1: buildings we've already built and rebuild them. You know, the
Speaker 1: best thing we can do is try to mitigate and
Speaker 1: adapt with what we already have. UM. Greenery and I
Speaker 1: know it's just roasting eco brutalism just trap slack trees
Speaker 1: and everything is an important part in that, right because
Speaker 1: you know it called it causes evapple transporation, which is
Speaker 1: like where what's evaporates and plants leaves and cools the temperature. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it also improve people's like psychological well being, um.
Speaker 1: And they just the nice look at um then I
Speaker 1: look at the keep things cool. In fact, they could
Speaker 1: help cause temperatures to drop by like two to three
Speaker 1: degrees celsius in the like the surrounding area. I think
Speaker 1: people certainly was interpreted, but like this, this is one
Speaker 1: of the big things you can see with with racism
Speaker 1: in the U s. Where like you can literally like
Speaker 1: you can literally track racial device in a lot of
Speaker 1: American cities by the by the temperature because like people
Speaker 1: places where not why people live just don't have trees.
Speaker 1: And you know this this has like a just this
Speaker 1: sort of like cascading series of environmental and social effects
Speaker 1: which are a disaster and environmental racism, yeah, yes, released stock. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if you look at the heat maps with some of
Speaker 1: these cities and you could literally see, you know, where
Speaker 1: poor black folks live. You know, you can see the
Speaker 1: places with less trees, the places next to factories with
Speaker 1: like talks like you're on a off and waste and
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. It's just right there and it sucks,
Speaker 1: which is why, of course, part of any sort of
Speaker 1: efforts to improve cities and make things more sustainable would involve,
Speaker 1: you know, social justice and would involve responding to an
Speaker 1: addressing the compounding effects of like environmental racism over the
Speaker 1: past several decades. So you know, and part of the
Speaker 1: issue again trying things back to environmental racism, is that
Speaker 1: a lot of the climate change policies that you know,
Speaker 1: ostensibly amend to fever, like high density urban and smart
Speaker 1: growth you know, like sustainable blocks and that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: they are not conceived or implemented in a way that
Speaker 1: involves the people being acted by them. You know. In fact,
Speaker 1: a lot of these like sort of green um projects
Speaker 1: raise the cost of food, energy, water, transport, housing for
Speaker 1: people in the area. You know, they create these sorts
Speaker 1: of like gentrified neighborhoods essentially whether the original inhabitants can
Speaker 1: no longer afford to live there. So if we wants
Speaker 1: to develop like a sustainable city or resiliencity, sustainable obvious
Speaker 1: again neighborhood, it requires social justice, It requires you know, equity,
Speaker 1: and you know, like the involvement of all affected through
Speaker 1: you know, consensus or democracy. UM just really shape the
Speaker 1: future that you know, they will be experiencing because they
Speaker 1: the ones being affected by it. There a lot of
Speaker 1: other ways as well to heap proof as it were
Speaker 1: a city, UM reflective roofs and roads UM can also
Speaker 1: helped reduce the absorptive powers of UM solar radiation by
Speaker 1: concrete and asphalt. So in fact, in some cities like
Speaker 1: l A and in New York, there's this wide reflective
Speaker 1: coating that UM has been implemented in some five thousand
Speaker 1: meters square of roof space that saves an estimated two
Speaker 1: thousand two tons of CEO two per year from cooling emissions.
Speaker 1: I mean, all it takes really is just like that
Speaker 1: sort of white reflective code, and it saves dividends in
Speaker 1: the long run. UM NASA had done some research on
Speaker 1: this and it demonstra e to the results demonstrated that
Speaker 1: a white roof could be twenty three degrees celsius or
Speaker 1: forty two degrees fahrenheit cooler than a typical black roof
Speaker 1: UM on a hot New York somebody UM and in
Speaker 1: places where like yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, it's kind
Speaker 1: of like glossed the river. That is crazy, that is
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely And then cities where like we're like of
Speaker 1: the land area is like asphalt. You can imagine how
Speaker 1: that sort of UM, that sort of reflective ceilon can
Speaker 1: impact UM the cooling or the heating of the area water.
Speaker 1: Of course, there's another like important aspect of cooling cities
Speaker 1: um in and louse, which was like okay, the Muslim
Speaker 1: kingdom in Gabrian Peninsula in the fourteenth century. UM, they
Speaker 1: used to have these sort of like courtyards with pools
Speaker 1: and fountains. They would stimulate water evaporation and cool the air,
Speaker 1: and so like cities today, you know, take some hints
Speaker 1: from that. You know, you have ponds and pools and
Speaker 1: fountains and missing systems and stuff that can sort of
Speaker 1: chill things out. I mean we see that being UM
Speaker 1: implemented in China, where you have like, for example, UM
Speaker 1: water misteres at like bus stops, which can chill the
Speaker 1: air and you know, cool passengers as they wait. UM.
Speaker 1: And they found actually that adding water features and like
Speaker 1: cool coatings reduces the cooling requirements of an area by
Speaker 1: twenty nine tot and also lowers the overall averaging at
Speaker 1: temperature by one point five degrees celsius. So it's like,
Speaker 1: honestly wild, like these little things can have such a
Speaker 1: major impact on temperature. Speaking of like old methods of cooling, UM,
Speaker 1: ancient methods of cooling, there's this Middle Eastern shading device
Speaker 1: quality Mastra bil um or I think it's Mastra ba
Speaker 1: and It's basically an architectural element that is usually built
Speaker 1: by um wooden lattice work and sometimes stay in the glass.
Speaker 1: It's used to like catch and cool the wind through
Speaker 1: like having these basins of water in them. Is I mean,
Speaker 1: so I could try to describe it. It's like a
Speaker 1: window jutting out of a building UM with sort of
Speaker 1: decorated by lattice work, with jars and basins of water
Speaker 1: placed within them to let the wind pasture. As the
Speaker 1: wind is passing through, it's caused an evaporative cooling, then
Speaker 1: it chills out the interior. And so these mastra beas UM.
Speaker 1: They've been used since the Middle Ages by you know,
Speaker 1: the Coptic churches of Egypt and the Art Deco movement
Speaker 1: in Iraq, and and by you know the architecture um
Speaker 1: in bad Dad as well. And so these sort of
Speaker 1: construction methods, while they tend to be developed for you know,
Speaker 1: individual homes or individual buildings, UM, they can in fact
Speaker 1: be implemented um with even the aesthetics of Islamic geometry
Speaker 1: to help to cool a building and reduce its overall
Speaker 1: seor twe mission MH. So I've been talking about heats
Speaker 1: in and cooling and stuff for a while now, and
Speaker 1: speaking of much, probably too amazing. It's seen off my
Speaker 1: ec rather though, I think I heard either either it
Speaker 1: was you, Andrew or maybe it was Robert talking about
Speaker 1: the ceramic kind of cooling idea. Yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: the thing. And like the part of the American Southwest,
Speaker 1: like New Mexico, there's a lot of like swamp coolers
Speaker 1: that are basically working, right, Yeah, so I'm cool, So
Speaker 1: I'm cool those It only works in certain climates, right,
Speaker 1: Like you wouldn't really, I don't know, because it's if
Speaker 1: it's too it's too humid, it's not gonna work. You're
Speaker 1: just gonna Yeah. I think there's kind of a broader
Speaker 1: thing there architecturally, which is that like we have a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of like like we we've we've lost
Speaker 1: still a lot of in the way we do architecture.
Speaker 1: We've lost a lot of the sort of like building
Speaker 1: we've we've lost a lot of sort of building techniques
Speaker 1: adapted to specific locations. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And like that's
Speaker 1: something that has to be reversed like immediately, because like
Speaker 1: our our current model of building houses, that of oil
Speaker 1: is going to get us all killed really what's what's
Speaker 1: the problem there? What's wrong? What's that? I mean and
Speaker 1: tough with that, right, not just vernacular architecture, but vernacular clothing.
Speaker 1: I mean it's I mean as again, so when lire
Speaker 1: in a tropical country, I see it for myself, Like
Speaker 1: working people going to work. We're in like full long
Speaker 1: sleeve dress shoots and long long dress pans and you know,
Speaker 1: like formal shoes and it's honestly up you know sometimes
Speaker 1: like they have the whole tie like you pull up
Speaker 1: and everything. It's not it's entirely based on like European
Speaker 1: standards of professionalism, and um, it needs to be abolished.
Speaker 1: Abolish dress codes all right, abolished like this whole idea
Speaker 1: that you know, we have to dress this particular way, um,
Speaker 1: despite you know, the temperature, because it's more professional or
Speaker 1: whatever for professionalism. Honestly, yeah, we we have we have
Speaker 1: podcasting or in the vanguard of this, but we need
Speaker 1: help to destroy professionalism once and for all. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: show up to work, can you be then suit? Um?
Speaker 1: But yeah, like vernacular buildings as well. You know obviously
Speaker 1: you had in in Africa, in different parts of Africa,
Speaker 1: you would have different structures that will particularly ticult. You know,
Speaker 1: if you're in a in a trap coal reinforest environment,
Speaker 1: you would have a billing a steeler to you know,
Speaker 1: keeping mosquitoes out and maintaining a certain temperature within and
Speaker 1: maintaining comfort as well within or you know, in cooler
Speaker 1: regions you would have um, certain construction that would keep
Speaker 1: heats within the building and prevent um excessive discomfort you know. Um.
Speaker 1: And they were also of course, like when it comes
Speaker 1: to like cooler areas, you will also expected to sort
Speaker 1: of keep yourself warm as well as you know, keep
Speaker 1: your building. Woman. In fact, it was more still keeping
Speaker 1: yourself personally warm, so keeping yourself lay it up even
Speaker 1: when you're indoors. And of course that's kind of lost
Speaker 1: today people are expected to just you know, turn on
Speaker 1: the heater and vibe for the months of winter. But
Speaker 1: it isn't sustainable. A lot of things we enjoy today unsustainable.
Speaker 1: Keeps coming back to that, it yeah, speaking of things
Speaker 1: that we enjoy that are not at all sustainable, how
Speaker 1: about cause get rid of cause? Please get rid of cause.
Speaker 1: I mean, cause are very convenient in terms of like
Speaker 1: if you want to get somewhere very specific, um, you know,
Speaker 1: if there's a place you want to go, I'm the
Speaker 1: one you need to know. I'm a car. I'm a car.
Speaker 1: I'm a car. You know kind of thing. But my
Speaker 1: little musical interview there, thank you for appreciating it. But ultimately,
Speaker 1: like they honestly aren't sustainable. They honestly on something that
Speaker 1: we can maintain in the nail even well potentially in
Speaker 1: the neighbors where the far future. I mean, people are
Speaker 1: already know the problems with gascars, really know my gascars
Speaker 1: are bad. But you know, things just just things are
Speaker 1: just sort of pivoted towards electric cars. And who electric cars,
Speaker 1: Let's get a bunch of electric cars. Who But electric
Speaker 1: cars aren't better. I mean, the materials they require, the
Speaker 1: energy they require, it's quite frankly not sustainable in the
Speaker 1: long run, and it just lengthens the amount of time
Speaker 1: that we spend dependence on cause for shorts and long
Speaker 1: distance travel. And especially how in the States we've built
Speaker 1: our cities around the idea of a car, which has
Speaker 1: expanded the urban terrain unnecessarily. And if you look at
Speaker 1: like all the space taken up like highways and overpasses,
Speaker 1: and how much of just like urban space has taken
Speaker 1: up but just been built around the idea of the car.
Speaker 1: It really kind of makes the whole idea of a
Speaker 1: city so much less useful. It's it's really it's really frustrating,
Speaker 1: and I think it's also working at the cars are
Speaker 1: so unbelievably dangerous. Yea, yeah, yeah, we're very much used
Speaker 1: to like having these like death machines driving around at
Speaker 1: all times, and that that makes for like a very
Speaker 1: um cool like series of metal band song names or whatever.
Speaker 1: But the death statistics on funny when it comes to cause. No,
Speaker 1: and like the average transport transportation time having cars has
Speaker 1: not actually decreased, Like the amount of time it takes
Speaker 1: to get from place to place based on like where
Speaker 1: you live in your city has not actually decreased because
Speaker 1: now everything has just spread further apart. So a hundred
Speaker 1: years ago would take you know, like a fifteen minute
Speaker 1: trek to get to like you know, the market or something,
Speaker 1: it can take often times longer, especially if you're driving
Speaker 1: in like rush hour traffic to get just just just
Speaker 1: like a couple of miles, where even in some cases
Speaker 1: a decent job gets you there faster. Um, just because
Speaker 1: of how we've just designed the cities all around these
Speaker 1: rolling metal death cages. Um. Yeah, it's not it's it's
Speaker 1: not great. It's one of the reasons I don't current
Speaker 1: they have a car. Yeah, and that's kind of that's
Speaker 1: something that's shocking to a lot of people when I
Speaker 1: tell them that, really, I have no intention, if for
Speaker 1: buying a car, of ever owning a car. It's not
Speaker 1: something that I want. And I mean I live relatively
Speaker 1: close to like some of the major transport um arteries
Speaker 1: of the country, and you know, try Not has like
Speaker 1: this unique ish transportation system public transportation systems. So we
Speaker 1: have these privately owned maxi taxis that um they're like
Speaker 1: vans with seats in the back um and you know,
Speaker 1: you could you just kind of jump in um depending
Speaker 1: on where they're going with route are taken. Um. And
Speaker 1: they're they're convenient enough for me and for my purposes,
Speaker 1: so I just you know, I go where I need
Speaker 1: to go um with them. But they're also gas guzzling
Speaker 1: in efficient machines. I mean, they're better than you know,
Speaker 1: all those people driving cars. I mean as an island,
Speaker 1: you know, like I don't know why we're so obsessed
Speaker 1: with having more and more cars in the road, UM,
Speaker 1: but at the end of the day, they still aren't
Speaker 1: the best in terms of sustainability and in terms of viable, reliable,
Speaker 1: sustainable transport. UM. We also have like personal taxis as well,
Speaker 1: but they have the same problems as regular taxis. And
Speaker 1: what's frustrating is that we used to have a train
Speaker 1: line UM that went along the entire east west corridor
Speaker 1: of the country, and that's where most of the people
Speaker 1: internet along the East West corridor UM, but that was
Speaker 1: destroyed in the nineties sixties, I think to make way
Speaker 1: for highways and a priority bus route. So instead of
Speaker 1: having a nice, convenient, cute little tree and that we
Speaker 1: could seek to go from place to place, you have
Speaker 1: to rely on buses and maxis and taxis. And cause, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is quite that's not cool, that is quite not good.
Speaker 1: Quite quite grim because we need to reconfigure. Seriously, I
Speaker 1: would love for them to bring back trains, so he
Speaker 1: was to take a train you don't have to rely
Speaker 1: on I mean, government bureaucracy makes all things unreliable, but
Speaker 1: I think a train would have been slightly more reliable
Speaker 1: than a bus, very much on the pro train on
Speaker 1: the on the pro train train, a fewer, a few fewer,
Speaker 1: fewer moments more happy than writing the Portland's Max line
Speaker 1: and streetcar in a no place costume. It's very it's
Speaker 1: it's very fun. I think also, like another thing about
Speaker 1: about cars, right, this is just it's just just on
Speaker 1: a very pure political level, like cars is the thing
Speaker 1: that allowed suburbs to exist, and the existence of suburbs
Speaker 1: has produced just generation upon generation of like frothing reactionaries
Speaker 1: who are the source of like enormous percentages of the
Speaker 1: world's problems. And so if you get rid of those places,
Speaker 1: you produce less of them. Yeah, which is just a
Speaker 1: political benefit for anyone who wants to not die exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, we don't think about it because theres already
Speaker 1: so many things to think about. But if you actually
Speaker 1: sat down and pondered the death tool of like cause,
Speaker 1: um we really and really brought to the forefront and
Speaker 1: really need it less of a necessity, I think one
Speaker 1: more people would be open to the idea of rejecting cause,
Speaker 1: to keeping them as at most benign a novelty UM
Speaker 1: that maybe one or two exists in the entire community,
Speaker 1: UM for use if needs be. UM, But otherwise, I
Speaker 1: I don't see how each and every person in the
Speaker 1: world owning their own car, is that all the best
Speaker 1: way to go. Also, cause are kind of ugly to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we really didn't design them to look cool, which just
Speaker 1: it's I mean, there's some cars that look kind of cool,
Speaker 1: like some of the more classic ones. But and that's
Speaker 1: partly a right. They're getting uglier to me. And they're
Speaker 1: also getting larger, you know, like stuff people like. They're
Speaker 1: raising their grills more and more so, like you're basically
Speaker 1: a pedestrian killing machine. We've effectively undone most of the
Speaker 1: benefits of making cars for for passengers by making them
Speaker 1: much more dangerous for pedestrians, which is entirely a marketing choice.
Speaker 1: Like if you like, the fucking trucks they were making
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago are just as useful, um and
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases more useful for like practical
Speaker 1: farm work, for hauling and whatnot than the trucks they're
Speaker 1: making today. They haven't meaningfully gotten better, They've just gotten
Speaker 1: a lot larger for no real reason other than it
Speaker 1: makes people feel like big men. Well, and then you
Speaker 1: get these fun you get these fun you can you
Speaker 1: can look at the marketing people like explicitly talking about
Speaker 1: how like yeah, like they like basically explicitly playing into
Speaker 1: the fantasy of running over protesters and it's it's great,
Speaker 1: it's yeah, So get rid of cars and you won't
Speaker 1: have to deal with that. But Chris, how is that sustainable?
Speaker 1: Well viable? M good question? Mhmm. Introducing super blocks, Oh yes,
Speaker 1: super superblocks are basically UM neighborhood of nine blocks. So
Speaker 1: I don't think they have to be I think the
Speaker 1: philosophy and ideas behind super blocks could be implemented suit
Speaker 1: different UM cities of different histories and different layouts, especially
Speaker 1: localized especially such like localized street cars within each city block,
Speaker 1: within within each superblock like system exactly So, just to
Speaker 1: clarify the idea, super blocks are basically UM, you know,
Speaker 1: neighborhoods of nine blocks where traffic is restricted to the
Speaker 1: roads on the outside of the block, which means that
Speaker 1: the interior of the super blocks are entirely walkable. That,
Speaker 1: combined with the idea of a superblock being um mixed use,
Speaker 1: means that people are mostly able to access their basic
Speaker 1: necessities within their city block. Are you able to like,
Speaker 1: spend more time, have more open space, to spend more
Speaker 1: time to meet with people, to talk to do do
Speaker 1: activities to you do have some relief from noise pollution
Speaker 1: and air pollution from vehicles, and to really like connects
Speaker 1: people with the space they're living in and make the
Speaker 1: space they're living and more livable. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: live smack tub in the middle of like urban urban town,
Speaker 1: but I could imagine if people living in like New
Speaker 1: York or whatever, and you can't exactly step out of
Speaker 1: the apartment and play in the road on a typical day,
Speaker 1: if you have kids or whatever, you know, they can't
Speaker 1: exactly just go run outside. Um, you will die exactly,
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And I mean people complaining about like, oh kids,
Speaker 1: let's do some go outside as much? But I mean
Speaker 1: look at outside, you know, is look at what look
Speaker 1: at what has been created? Um, and reflect on that.
Speaker 1: I mean part of the assuer is um the way
Speaker 1: social media algorithms are designed to suck people into like
Speaker 1: cycles of addiction. But that's a whole another topic, right, Um,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people, more people will be
Speaker 1: willing to be able to pull themselves out to that
Speaker 1: sort of harmful algorithmic. Hell, if there was an outside
Speaker 1: pull themselves out too, you know. But honestly, cities, especially
Speaker 1: a notorious for like not having places you can be
Speaker 1: where you don't have to spend money, and that sucks.
Speaker 1: So I think, um, super blocks being places where you know,
Speaker 1: libraries and um place so people can eat spacess it
Speaker 1: does seem to be missing or ignoring the what we're
Speaker 1: gonna lose with super blocks, which is how how am
Speaker 1: I gonna roll down the streets smoking indow sipping on
Speaker 1: gin and juice if I'm not allowed to drive within
Speaker 1: my block? Wow? I think we can wear I think
Speaker 1: I think you could just get a bike? Who's cruising
Speaker 1: all the bicycle? Have you tried smoking indow sipping on
Speaker 1: gin and juice while riding a bicycle. It's it's impossible
Speaker 1: get a coup anything as possible as a snoop dogg eraser. No.
Speaker 1: But the the idea of having like community gardens, community
Speaker 1: like kitchens, like a maker spaces, libraries, all these within
Speaker 1: like this super block framework, you know, like green spaces,
Speaker 1: it does make actual urban city living to seem attractive
Speaker 1: and not like you're just living in nested concrete boxes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean people like because that's where everything's happening, right,
Speaker 1: But yeah, you you want people to take part in
Speaker 1: the things that are happening, but the places aren't livable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have the table that will continue to complain about
Speaker 1: until the end of time, which the table in Chicago
Speaker 1: Chinatown that threatens to arrest you for sitting at it.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, like the hostility of this goes back
Speaker 1: to like racism because of course everyone does. Everything does.
Speaker 1: But you know a lot of these loitering laws and
Speaker 1: stuff which she designed to target black people and to
Speaker 1: target you know, poor people, um like vagrancy laws and
Speaker 1: that sort of thing, just hostile people's existence, and that
Speaker 1: gets into like hostile architecture and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: But I think with these puple blocks, you know, we
Speaker 1: open up our spaces to make them welcoming to human existence,
Speaker 1: spaces that are not built around cars, built around commutes,
Speaker 1: built around week And this obviously is a transformation that
Speaker 1: requires more than just you know, vote for so and
Speaker 1: so and make this a degree and kind of thing.
Speaker 1: You need, you need something more substantial than that. You know,
Speaker 1: within these super blocks as well, you're you're able to
Speaker 1: take stock of how your block or whatever you have
Speaker 1: a better mental sense of um community and able to
Speaker 1: take about a sense of even things like how your
Speaker 1: block can communally sustain themselves and you know, reduce waste
Speaker 1: and all these different things. This in conjunction with struggle
Speaker 1: against capitalism in the state. But you know that is implied.
Speaker 1: This is you know, m this is the show. This
Speaker 1: is it could happen here. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: expect and like electoralism, but that's not really what we
Speaker 1: do around here. I mean the benefits to the sort
Speaker 1: of like super blocks, you know, these fifteen minutes zones
Speaker 1: so people can walk within fifteen minutes to get the essentials.
Speaker 1: The benefits are innumerable. You know, that's the equality, less noise,
Speaker 1: healthy lifestyle, mental health boost. But the issue is without
Speaker 1: a combination of you know, these projects and these activities
Speaker 1: with like anti capitalism and anti statism, it's it's tends
Speaker 1: to lend itself towards gentrification. And we've seen that in Spain,
Speaker 1: which is where UM, some of these super blocks have
Speaker 1: been implemented. UM they've created like these locations are obviously
Speaker 1: more desirable because who doesn't want to live in a
Speaker 1: superblock where you know, you actually have a sense of
Speaker 1: community because we're all desperate for that UM and at
Speaker 1: least an increase in property demand, higher prices, higher rent
Speaker 1: It basically creates these pockets of unaffordable neighborhoods, displacing local
Speaker 1: rest done. So you have to get into the fight
Speaker 1: against gentrification in order to make this you know, idea viable.
Speaker 1: The last thing that I want to get into really
Speaker 1: is as convention UM community gardens. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about urban farming because that is crucial. I mean, part
Speaker 1: of what UM makes cities cities in all cases is
Speaker 1: the fact that they imports all their food. Right they
Speaker 1: have the urban rural divide that you know delineates the
Speaker 1: two areas UM. But considering the transportation costs, the energy costs,
Speaker 1: all those things that compound UM two sustain a city,
Speaker 1: a city's food needs, we have to look to ways
Speaker 1: that we can sustain cities and sustain neighborhoods within cities
Speaker 1: UM within themselves. Before I continue, I just want to
Speaker 1: point out that the future of urban farming is not
Speaker 1: in vertical farms. UM. They look very cool, you know,
Speaker 1: like those tall kind of like pillars of like letters
Speaker 1: or whatever, growing out sort of things, but the land
Speaker 1: that they save is usually canceled out by the land
Speaker 1: they need to produce the energy to power them, like
Speaker 1: they're very energy intensive UM spaces. So until that issue
Speaker 1: is resolved, and I don't know if it will be
Speaker 1: considering you know how the energy requirements are just sort
Speaker 1: of built into the vertical the concentration of energy requirements
Speaker 1: built in sort of into the vertical farming design. Um,
Speaker 1: we have to look to more practical methods. Landownership tends
Speaker 1: to be a major hurdle UM when it comes to
Speaker 1: organizing community gardens and maintaining community gardens UM. I mean,
Speaker 1: like folks like Black Futures Farm, Oakland Avenue Urban Farm,
Speaker 1: and the Victory Garden Initiative. They even working to like
Speaker 1: provide fresh produce to those in need, especially in urban
Speaker 1: food deserts. But in a lot of these projects, they
Speaker 1: go in good for some years and then the city
Speaker 1: suddenly spins around It's like we need this land for development,
Speaker 1: so they just snatch it up, and you know, those
Speaker 1: years of efforts just basically put on the dream. UM.
Speaker 1: Community land trusts have been put forward as a potential
Speaker 1: um solution to that issue. But like a lot of
Speaker 1: these things I mean it's a good band aid, I
Speaker 1: would say, but it's not necessarily marking the end of capitalism.
Speaker 1: Another issue that there is with the whole urban farming
Speaker 1: thing is that the culture that develops around them while
Speaker 1: they provide education and community and connection for people within them,
Speaker 1: and that is extremely valuable. I think some organizers fall
Speaker 1: into this habit of treating, of creating this sort of
Speaker 1: like shared delusion around community gardens, you know, claiming to
Speaker 1: be sort of feeding the people couldn't could And what
Speaker 1: al really brought this to my attention was Inhabits Territories
Speaker 1: newsletter had an article on it last year, I think,
Speaker 1: on you know, urban community gardens, and it was written
Speaker 1: by Gibriel I've seen, the co founder of at plan,
Speaker 1: to which I find to be a very very creative name,
Speaker 1: basically asked the question are we really feeding ourselves? I mean,
Speaker 1: these local food initiatives, they do produce food that people eat,
Speaker 1: But it can be a bit harmful to be overly
Speaker 1: optimistic about our food autonomy at this stage, especially considering
Speaker 1: how reliant we still are on big agriculture. You know,
Speaker 1: like yes we are producing you know, organic nutritionally, this
Speaker 1: dense crops and stuff, and that's great, that's helping people.
Speaker 1: But you know, oftentimes it usually just means that, you know,
Speaker 1: the people might be getting participants. I'm be getting like
Speaker 1: a salad or you know, a couple to me too,
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily they are cutting down their grocery build
Speaker 1: in a sustainable long term way. Because I mean, if
Speaker 1: you've tried, God and you know that, like when you
Speaker 1: work here with a limited space, you know, you grow
Speaker 1: your food set it to me too, is it means
Speaker 1: it was a cool but they don't last forever, you know,
Speaker 1: and you have to wait until the next harvest to
Speaker 1: get more. To me too, or whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1: Same for like letters or whatever. It's kinda rough, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't It helps for like a meal or maybe two,
Speaker 1: depending on like the living situation, but it doesn't meaningfully
Speaker 1: cut into our reliance on groceries and you know, food imports. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it definitely takes a bit to get to that point.
Speaker 1: And you have to do it with a combination of
Speaker 1: like food preservation and like canning, um and like you know,
Speaker 1: like jarring and a whole bunch of other stuff to
Speaker 1: actually make that a worthwhile endeavor. As opposed to just
Speaker 1: making like great, I spent three months making these tomatoes.
Speaker 1: Now they're ready for one meal and then they're all gone.
Speaker 1: It would be like one cell. Yeah. Yeah, you do
Speaker 1: have to really kind of figure out how to grow
Speaker 1: enough to keep enough ready to be harvested for jarring
Speaker 1: and canning for future use um, and make sure like
Speaker 1: you're you know, harvesting them when they are ready so
Speaker 1: that you can you know, you don't lose stuff, and
Speaker 1: that you have like you know, an ongoing, ongoing process
Speaker 1: of like preserving the fit that you do grow for
Speaker 1: later um as well. So you can definitely take a
Speaker 1: lot a lot more like mental effort and planning than
Speaker 1: just you know, planting it and then you know, using
Speaker 1: it and cooking it when it's when it's all ready. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of energy and self is put
Speaker 1: into growing things like greens and roots and fruit and
Speaker 1: vegetables and the healthy you know, they have the vits,
Speaker 1: wins and micro nutrients. But you know, people still need meat, dairy, eggs,
Speaker 1: you know protein, yeah, heavy high calorie dense stuff you
Speaker 1: know like potitoos and other starches like a really holy
Speaker 1: bouloofu wheats and that kind of thing and that just
Speaker 1: and being grown right now. You know, wheat and rice
Speaker 1: and soy and nuts and corn and sugar, these staples
Speaker 1: and stuff don't tend to be produced by these community
Speaker 1: gardens and by these garden plots. Not many many, not
Speaker 1: many legume patches at your local community garden. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Like I'm in the process of grin um
Speaker 1: some pigeon piers right now, and they are taking a
Speaker 1: very long while. And what I realize is that, um,
Speaker 1: I mean, I just plan to them, so I'm being
Speaker 1: a bit impatient. But what I realized is that when
Speaker 1: they do growth, and I've seen you know, some much
Speaker 1: your pigeon peach trees and stuff, I know how big
Speaker 1: they tend to grow by time harvest rules around. You know,
Speaker 1: you get all those different pods, and you you know,
Speaker 1: you put in the work, you put you pick all
Speaker 1: the pods, and you pry open the pods, and you know,
Speaker 1: you put in some more alliteration into the sentence, and
Speaker 1: you know, you get those peas out. Once those peas
Speaker 1: out to the pod and you put them in a pot,
Speaker 1: they're not potent enough to who would you over for
Speaker 1: more than one meal? You know, like you pick like
Speaker 1: a trees worth of peas in a pod, and you
Speaker 1: know that's like sometimes like half of a meal. And really,
Speaker 1: honestly respect to the people who are producing all our
Speaker 1: food right now, because I can't imagine having to be
Speaker 1: shelling peas all the time. It's kind of ridiculous. I
Speaker 1: mean it can be fun, but I can't imagine doing
Speaker 1: it all day. I mean, workers work, right, it's gonna
Speaker 1: yea work as hell. We know this. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: I mean community gardens they're good. You know, they have education,
Speaker 1: they build community, provide outdoor activity and stuff. But you know,
Speaker 1: I think what comunity gardens, urban gardens and stuff need
Speaker 1: to do is find ways to um and this this
Speaker 1: isn't a disparate The work has been done, you know,
Speaker 1: like massive support. I'm doing that myself kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But we've got to, like, as the article argues, we
Speaker 1: can't get caught up in the fluffing up of the
Speaker 1: reality for marketing purposes. You know, we need to look
Speaker 1: for ways that can actually um feed ourselves. That means
Speaker 1: getting into caloric foods, that means um like like dried beans, potatoes,
Speaker 1: fruit trees, that kind of thing, grains, nuts, all that jazz,
Speaker 1: and also connecting with farms outside of the city, you know,
Speaker 1: local farms outside of the immediate urban landscape, seeing what
Speaker 1: cooperatives be developed that can work aid each other mutually
Speaker 1: to build more potent capacity for food. What's on me? So,
Speaker 1: I mean, get in touch with the soil, you know,
Speaker 1: get this sign your face, but also think about what
Speaker 1: more we can do to sort of take this to
Speaker 1: the next level. And yeah, that is um, that is
Speaker 1: what I believe could in fact happen here. This has
Speaker 1: happened here. Good. Yeah, it's nice to have a positive
Speaker 1: one of these. Yeah, we should do that more often.
Speaker 1: If all, if only we had the power power. Well,
Speaker 1: come back tomorrow when we'll be talking about another bad
Speaker 1: thing and then to deal with your thoughts about it. O. Wow,
Speaker 1: we we try, we try, We do try. This is
Speaker 1: us trying well, this is us having st Andrew try.
Speaker 1: You're welcome, Thank you, thank you very much. This is
Speaker 1: a topic I wanted to discuss for a long time
Speaker 1: in terms of beause we get a lot of people
Speaker 1: talking about it like yeah, how you know and whatever,
Speaker 1: like post collapse fantasy that you can imagine where we're
Speaker 1: able to kind of reconfigure society, how would you plan
Speaker 1: urban living? And you're like, well, yeah, there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of actually really cool ideas for like keeping people
Speaker 1: close together can be a very ecological idea if you
Speaker 1: do it certain ways. It's just a lot of the
Speaker 1: ways you've defaulted to over the past. Like really three
Speaker 1: years has made it not that with the invention of
Speaker 1: the car really really screwing us over. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for talking about urban living and
Speaker 1: super super blocks and all this kind of stuff. Where
Speaker 1: can where can people find more of your work and
Speaker 1: writing on the interwebs. You can find me on YouTube
Speaker 1: at seeing Andrewism, and you can find me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: which hopefully when you hear this, I am still not
Speaker 1: on at under school seeing True fantastic. Um yeah you
Speaker 1: uh st Andrew just put together a really great episode
Speaker 1: about anti work stuff and the way that debacle has
Speaker 1: has has happened and what we can learn from it
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. Um And while you should
Speaker 1: still actually care about anti work um and yeah, so
Speaker 1: we're definitely recommend the anti work video for recent recent
Speaker 1: recent stuff. Let's see, um, if you want to feed
Speaker 1: your brain into the addiction driven social media algorithm. You
Speaker 1: can follow us on Twitter and Instagram. That happened here,
Speaker 1: pot and cools on media and uh yeah, let's uh
Speaker 1: go think about go think about microspaces and community gardens.
Speaker 1: That seems like a good, a good way to dedicate
Speaker 1: your thoughts. Time and roll down the street smoking indow,
Speaker 1: sipping that gin and juice while you still can on
Speaker 1: a bike on a personally, just doing my moral judgments
Speaker 1: upon you before before the fascist anarchists take away your
Speaker 1: f one fifties. Yeah, look, if if if we can
Speaker 1: democratize military grade weaponry the way the Ukrainians had, we can,
Speaker 1: we can. We can form neighborhoods that cannot be forced
Speaker 1: to live in the traffic. The auto industrial complex really
Speaker 1: reduced frifless air travel, what other eyes will end up
Speaker 1: in a mad max field? And I meant that right
Speaker 1: well aspects of it? Yeah, alright, stee what everybody? It
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Speaker 1: slash sources, Thanks for listening.