[miljenko]

I've always wondered whether the great cities of the world such as NYC, Chicago, LA, Tokyo, Shanghai, Singapore etc. have any chance of surviving after the oil crash. I see many articles and studies about "Urban Farming", "Vertical Agriculture", and the like. These forays into the future paint an optimistic picture of cities after oil, with crops planted on the rooftops of high rises, glass-and-steel office buildings turned into tall greenhouses, park areas converted into cornfields, etc. But seriously: who would want to continue living in these cities after the technology needed to sustain them becomes impractical? If we take the worst-case (and judging by the obvious unpreparedness of present day governments, the most likely) scenario that will see the oil crash so severe and abrupt that it won’t allow peaceful transition into alternative sources of energy/technology/consumption patterns/lifestyles etc., these cities would no longer have the amenities of modern urban dwelling: no electricity, no functioning water-pumps or sewage, no waste disposal, no public transportation, etc. Take drinking water for instance. How will cities pump water from watersheds, purify it, and then distribute it? Will these cities depend solely on capturing rainfall? How dependable a system would that be?


Also, there would be no industry, no jobs. The "urban agriculture" movement mentioned above appears to me as a feeble attempt to salvage cities, to provide reason for their existence after the industrial societies that once gave birth to them collapse: cities, with their pavement and concrete are about as worst a setting for agriculture as anyone can imagine. In accordance, any oasis of quality soil that can be found in these urban areas is probably susceptible to desertification, as there are few places where rainwater can percolate into soil; most often water hits pavement and then runs off into rivers/lakes/sea through drains etc.

Having said that, there are perhaps reasons why some cities might survive. One of them is docks. I suppose water transport with sail vessels will gain momentum, so the legacy infrastructure of docks, waterfronts and harbors might prove useful. To this, one may add railway junctions common to many modern cities, but only if trains themselves continue to exist; these would have to be hauled by old-fashioned tank engines that would probably burn peat rather than coal.

Another reason would be the population density: A case where a certain number of people occupy a small area is certainly more efficient than the case where that same number of people live in houses that are strewn across a wide area. However, these efficiencies are likely to be offset by the troubles with food/water/sanitation mentioned above. Still, these two advantages can prove to be tempting enough.

Finally, will there be a functioning city government, providing essential public services that are so needed to keep any city up and running, even in the stripped-down, subsistence-level sense of the post-oil world? Existence of any form of government, especially that high above, such as federal or national is very unlikely. That also goes for the complex bureaucratic networks of specialized departments and contractors that characterize governments of modern cities.

To all these obvious questions, one must also add the importance and meaning that great modern cities carry. For good or bad, they indeed are a testament to the industrial and post-industrial era. All the achievements of the modern times are a product of these cities: its factories and plants, research centers, universities, clinics, libraries, museums & galleries and so on. If they continue to exist, and if at least some of their institutions are preserved, then perhaps all the aforementioned achievements will not have been forlorn.

Please share your thoughts on the matter!

[Pops]

Thanks Miljenko, good first post.

First, my thought is that oil will not "crash" per se. Any steep decline in availability will cause a steep rise in price. At a very high price, uses with less utility will be abandoned. So for example many people will not drive to Grandmothers house for Thanksgiving at $20/gallon of unleaded and this will stabilize prices at $10/gal which is plenty cheap enough to truck in Ronald MacDonald brand food substitute.

According to the BP Stat Review, at roughly this price and level of consumption, we have 46.16 years of oil reserves ( the new Review is due anytime). If the price were 3 times todays price we'd have more years of supply, not only because we could frack harder but because some of the waste would be trimmed.

So, basic services will continue for a while. Which is not to imply that unleaded at $10/gal would be Happy Motoring or that BAU would continue apace – it certainly wouldn't. Especially in the big young cities in the American SW that rely on pumping groundwater in and sewage out and lots and lots of cars and truck to move people to and from jobs and stores and whatever.

Probably as worrying as anything in my mind is that not only are we throwing everything including the sink into liquid fuels, power generators are transitioning asap to nat. gas – while the nat. gas frackers are going broke right and left. Perhaps they are a victim of their own success or maybe they are not as successful as the prospecti so often fluffed up and posted here.

At any rate, in the US at least, cities will remain the centers of population for a long time yet for the simple reason there is nowhere else for city dwellers to go.

[SeaGypsy]

Cities also vary greatly as to their specific resource shortfalls. Places reliant on oil burning for electricity, some with their own, some importing all or most. Others with hundreds of years worth of gas or coal close by, might not have so much of a problem. There are also many cities which have been built on economics, with no factoring food security at all, beyond being able to 'buy'; with no agrible land. Some of these are using oil powered desalination plants for every drop of water.

[glaucus]

That's a million dollar question, miljenko. The very large and dense cities you list at the beginning of your post will probably not remain as dense and populated for very long once resource depletion really kicks in. That's for the simple fact that maintaining very large populations and dense is extremely energy intensive, regardless of the efficiencies associated with the higher densities. These cities will still remain large, though. And in many cases they might continue to be centers of wealth creation for a long time to come. But my suspicion is that wealth inequalities within big cities (which are already quite severe in many instances) will only deepen too, thus causing added social friction.

As for urban farming - yeah, that's not going to be happening to any significant degree. To be sure, some people WILL be farming much closer to the cities than is currently the case. But the average urbanite will not be gardening his own plot. Aside from the fact that urban spaces are lined with pavement in most cases, the main reason is obvious: the whole point of cities over history has been to escape the tiresome and time-consuming routine of farming to perform other specialized tasks while somebody else works on the whole food thing.

So, another way to consider the future population of a given city is to ask yourself what kind of food surplus can be maintained on a steady regional basis to feed those not engaged in its direct production?

That leads me to my next point. SeaGypsy is quite correct in saying that all cities won't face the same challenges on the same timeline. Some cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas are toast over the course of the 21st century regardless of the severity of energy descent or climate change. You just won't be able to feed anybody at the scale necessary to maintain a population base. So, they will likely serve as giant "mines" from which scrap metal can be retrieved for use in smaller, less grand purposes (as John Michael Greer has mentioned).

Smaller midwestern cities proximate to good farmland will likely see regeneration, though nothing on the scale that has become the expectation over the 20th century. Think small and modest.

Many if not all big cities can be expected to downsize (shrink) significantly, and with it much of the massive infrastructure that goes with it. Going first will be the suburbs, working inward to the most liveable neighborhoods of the core city. Again, here it's highly variable, depending on the specifics. Europe is way better off than most of the US in this respect - many of their main cities were constructed in pre-automobile conditions. On the other hand, cities built during the cheap and easy oil era like Dallas - not so much.

Third world megacities are being set up for a world of hurt. These places are totally and utterly unsustainable under energy descent conditions due to strained social inequalities, susceptibility to food price shocks, deplorable health conditions, etc. I expect these to suffer mightily and sooner rather than later.

Good question about what kinds of institutions can be carried forward in a low energy future. I'm not really sure. I would guess that the quality of professional sports, the arts, and entertainment in general will probably scale down quite a bit, too. But I'm hoping for the best, and I really do think many cities have a pretty bright, if not difficult future under the right conditions.

But how this all plays out over time is anyone's guess, though, and like somebody wiser than I said, "The future is already here - it's just unevenly distributed." Quite true with regard to our cities going forward.

BTW, for those interested, I cover resource depletion issues from an urban perspective on my blog (see my sig below).

[meemoe_uk]

Cuba is often cited as a successful post oil society. It ususally has and is currently ranked higher in life expectancy and healthcare than the United States.

As for international major cities, the question is hypothetical. There won't be a long term energy crisis.

[kublikhan]

Cuba is often cited as a successful post oil society.

Cuba is far from a "post oil" society. Cuba's primary energy overwhelmingly comes from oil, far more than most countries.

Cuba depends heavily on oil, which represents about 72 percent of its total primary energy consumption. The rest comes from biomass (22 percent), Natural Gas (3.6 percent), Hydro (0.3 percent), and Coal (0.1 percent)

Cuba’s petroleum consumption is closely related to its economic activities. Despite various conservation and efficiency measures adopted after 1991 to reduce petroleum consumption, most of the decrease in oil consumption is related to the decline in economic activity after 1991. The ability of domestic production to cover the gap between consumption and imports indicates that the impact of conservation measures and increased efficiency programs that the Cuban government adopted after 1991 was minimal at best.

Renewable energy
Cuba’s desperate need for energy resources, especially after the collapse of the USSR, forced it to try various renewable energy technologies and to continue its heavy reliance on biomass, especially in the sugar industry. Renewable energy generated 6.1 percent of total electricity generation in Cuba in 2001, while oil supplied the rest. Cuba’s experimentation with renewable energy has had some success, but not enough to solve the energy shortfall on the island.

Increased openness and movement toward a market economy will accelerate energy consumption to the extent that Cuba may face a future energy crisis as supplies cannot keep up with demand.

The Future of Cuba’s Energy Sector

[meemoe_uk]

I was hoping we all understood 'post oil' was shorthand for 'post peak oil'. As many peakers here like to point out, society will never completely run out of oil.
Funny how quick you are to forget your own rhetortic when you sniff a chance of a cheap poke at a corny.

[kublikhan]

You example is still stupid. Cuba's oil production has increased four fold since its "oil peak". And after Russia cut off it's oil subsidies and Cuba went through the special period in the 90s, Cuba found a new subsidized oil tit to suck on. Venezuela stepped in and offered generous oil subsidies to Cuba, and now supplies over 2/3rds of Cuba's oil at far below market prices.

[Keith_McClary]

wealth inequalities

That is the key issue.

We would have "Plenty of Oil" for decades to provide basic nutrition, shelter and Cuban level medicare. But the 1% would fight that tooth & nail. God's Free Market System requires they have their mansions, private jets and yachts. Just ask some of our "conservative" members.

[SeaGypsy]

and the 10% will back them to the hilt, tooth and nail, as we can see NATO is already busy with.

[EnergyUnlimited]

At any rate, in the US at least, cities will remain the centers of population for a long time yet for the simple reason there is nowhere else for city dwellers to go.

What about mass graves (or just some skips), thermal depolymeryzation plants, rivers, fertilizer plants, soylent green plants etc.

Once you cannot provide quality drinking water and basic sanitation, these are about the only options left.
Basically you will either leave or die and those who survive somehow will lead a lifestyle of vermin.

[SeaGypsy]

That sounds way too crowded.

http://www.gphipps.com/bushwalking/simpsonDesert.shtml

Australia is full of empty places like this guy found. Separated by much desert. I would prefer to go by dingo or starvation than by disappointed MSM zombie.

[meemoe_uk]

>You example is still stupid.
It not my fault if post peak oil societies are stupid examples.
The way you put it, its seems that just because a post peak society secures some other, lesser source of oil after peak, that this effectly negates peak oil, therefore negating the example of a post peak society.
Anyway, societies wil be fine post peak oil. You're probably unsettled by Cuba's nice post peak society ( no doom here! ), so are looking for ways to dismiss it.

Also , Cuba is a lot less stupid than your example .... none.

[cephalotus]

... no electricity, no functioning water-pumps or sewage, no waste disposal, no public transportation, etc. Take drinking water for instance. How will cities pump water from watersheds, purify it, and then distribute it? Will these cities depend solely on capturing rainfall?

If you believe that post peak oil = apocalypse you might be right. But in that apocalypse most people will die anyway, not matter if the live in the city or not.

If you think that post peak oil = high energy prices people in the city have an advantage, because they consume much less energy than people living in rural areas, the bigger the city the less energy per capita.

Transporting water or food into a city is no problem and can be done even with exceptional expensive energy prices. High energy prices will mater if you need to heat your home (ok, you can stop this) or if you need to travel many miles/day on your gasoline powered car and you don't have a job that pais for those expenses.

Make an experiment and imagine, oil would be at 1.000US$/barrel.

What would happen? No electricity and no water and no food in the city? Of course not. Food in the city could be 10% more expensive and water maybe 5% more expensive...

[EnergyUnlimited]

Make an experiment and imagine, oil would be at 1.000US$/barrel.

What would happen? No electricity and no water and no food in the city? Of course not. Food in the city could be 10% more expensive and water maybe 5% more expensive...

These are jokes, right?

[Pops]

Make an experiment and imagine, oil would be at 1.000US$/barrel.

What would happen? No electricity and no water and no food in the city? Of course not. Food in the city could be 10% more expensive and water maybe 5% more expensive...

Come on, I didn't make it past Pie-Are-Square in grade school and even I know allocating fuel only 10% of total food costs, a 10x increase in fuel price would double the cost of food.

Processing and transportation are 80-90% of food costs and fossil fuels are involved every step of the way. Doubling food prices would eliminate many luxury expenditures such as restaurants and January tomatoes and pre-digested industrial gorp which today is the largest percentage of food costs and so make transportation (fuel) an even greater portion of the total.

Just for reference, if oil were at $1,000/bbl, and the demand for various finished products were equal, diesel would be around $25/gallon + tax (42+ gal/bbl + 10% markup) – what does that work out to? 7 euros/ltr? Plus tax? That isn't an insurmountable amount but it certainly isn't insignificant.

[glaucus]

Cephalotus wrote:

If you think that post peak oil = high energy prices people in the city have an advantage, because they consume much less energy than people living in rural areas, the bigger the city the less energy per capita.

That's a prevalent belief, but it's not even close to the full truth. I explain why in this post on my resource depletion related urban planning blog: https://planningdown.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/a-stampede-of-accelerating-elephants/

[Pops]

Regardless of your content, spamming us with links to your blog is poor form and against the rules, I delete numerous posters every day for the same. If you join in and add to the the conversation people will be attracted and your traffic will rise.

[Serial_Worrier]

As food supplies stop, imagine the horror of millions of people dying agonizingly in the mega-cities.

[glaucus]

Pops wrote:

Regardless of your content, spamming us with links to your blog is poor form and against the rules, I delete numerous posters every day for the same. If you join in and add to the the conversation people will be attracted and your traffic will rise.

I'm not interested in burning bridges. I wanted to avoid writing it all out and, in doing so, hijack the convo to settle a side issue. My apologies.