The Great Contraction

Talk about surreal.

It’s only been a few years since James Howard Kunstler really started beating the drum of urban contraction:

I think that what we’re about to see is an epochal reversal of the 200-year-old trend of populations moving from the small towns and the farms to the big cities. That is going to reverse, and we’re going to see big cities contract substantially, and people moving back to smaller cities, smaller towns, and indeed to an agricultural landscape that is going to require a lot more human attention to make productive.

Which, needless to say, was a view so far outside of the mainstream that Kunstler he might as well have been announcing an imminent Martian invasion.

How times have changed. From today’s New York Times:

The government is looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature. Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area . . .
Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.
Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.
Most are former industrial cities in the "rust belt" of America's Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

That’s not all; rural Michigan is turning paved roads back to gravel. From the Chicago Times:

About a quarter of the state’s county road agencies largely left out of the federal stimulus package, which focuses on highways and other major thoroughfares, say they can’t afford some costly repaving projects and have crushed up deteriorating roads . . .
More than 20 of the 83 counties in Michigan, home to the nation’s highest unemployment rate for much of the past four years, have turned rural roads back to gravel with no immediate plans to repave, according to the County Road Association of Michigan. About 50 miles have been reverted in the last three years . . .
Montcalm converted nearly 10 miles on three primary county roads into gravel in May. Crushing the pavement and laying gravel cost about $10,000 a mile. Repaving a mile with asphalt would cost more than $100,000. The county had patched the roads in bits and pieces for years. But with potholes the size of steering wheels and no money for an extensive repaving, crews figured it wasn’t worth another piecemeal job.

It seems as though we’re already beginning to “make other arrangements” as slide past not just peak oil but peak capital, and peak everything else.

Comments

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