Many urban types like to portray Jane Jacobs as opposing just about any kind of new development or change in the structure and historic character of neighborhoods. But that’s not accurate according to Roberta Brandes Gratz’s new book, The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. Reviewing the book in Metropolis, George Beane notes:

And yet, as Gratz sees it, Jacobs’s message is today widely misinterpreted as favoring an anti-growth and anti-change agenda; if they could, her critics say, preservationists would embalm the city.  But Gratz argues that Jacobs’s ideas were never meant as narrow prescriptions of architectural type, or to impede new development unconditionally.  She suggests that Jacobs’s teachings are less specific design formulas than general guidelines.  They encourage the development of preexisting communities and industries, mixed uses, complexity, mutually reliant businesses, and, above all, a respect for social and historical context.

This jibes with what I took away from my several conversations with Jacobs in the early 2000s. I asked her specifically about her views toward gentrification. She drew a distinction between what she called ”good gentrification” and “bad gentrification.” Bad gentrification was the kind of gentrification occurring, say, in SoHo where a once diverse robust local economy — with manufacturers, artists, craftspeople, shop-owners, and whatnot – was replaced by a homogeneous, mall-like, commercial corridor. Good gentrification was the sort going on in her own neighborhood, Toronto’s Annex, where some new shops, even a few chains, were moving in, but where local hardware stores, book shops, restaurants, pubs, and cafes continued to flourish; and where younger residents were investing in and fixing up old houses next door to hers.

And when I asked her what should one do about “bad gentrification” – I blurted out something like, “Well, how do we stop it” - she corrected my underlying assumption. She pointed to the difference between the heavy hand of government-sponsored urban renewal programs and the complex workings of urban real estate markets. She went on to describe how cities have an amazing capacity to reorganize and reenergize themselves. The dulling down of one neighborhood, as the diversity of social and economic life was sucked out of it, would lead invariably to the rise of new, energized neighborhoods elsewhere in the city. And then in what remains my single favorite comment of hers – and the best single comment I have ever heard on the issue – she simply said: “Well, Richard, you must understand: when a place gets boring, even the rich people leave.”

The powerful forces of urbanization and the global spread of knowledge (forces that some see as symptoms of unsustainability) may in fact be the very tools we need to build highly prosperous, ecologically low-impact lives. If we can develop a model of bright green urban living that makes very low-impact prosperity a reality now in the rich countries, we will create the building-block innovations that will help people in poorer countries replicate our rise to wealth without replicating our disastrous ecological footprints.

http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010941.html

In your talk, you made it clear that you hate the question, “How are you going to feed the world?” But you sure answered it convincingly. So — at the risk of alienating you — can local, organic farming feed the world?

Here’s what I know: Conventional agriculture has never succeeded in feeding the world, and it’s never produced anything good to eat. For the future, we need to look toward alternatives. Does that mean a world full of local and organic farms? Yes, those ideas will certainly become more important as we move forward—they’ve been proven to work (just look at the recent International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, the most comprehensive study to date on the future of agriculture), and they’re critical to conserving the planet’s natural resources. But I also think we need to radically reconsider what agriculture looks like—perhaps it involves models like Veta La Palma, or agroforestry, or perennial wheat polycultures, like the ones being developed at The Land Institute. These are systems that demonstrate natural resilience and ecological stability, which are essential for facing the challenges ahead.

Your TEDtalk presents itself as a really gentle tale, but it’s actually a pretty radical proposition for rethinking food production. Talk to me about where you think agriculture has gone wrong.

When you say that agriculture has gone wrong, it sounds like you’re advocating for a system that’s 200 years old. I couldn’t be further from that; I love technology. But I do think we’re heading for a vastly different food experience, in our lifetimes. I think the conventional food system — which is based on lots of cheap energy, lots of cheap labor, lots of available water, lots of soil erosion — is going to be a dead man walking 20 years from now. And that’s because the things it relies upon are not going to be available.

If you look at the carrying capacity of agricultural areas throughout the world, their ecological habitats are changing. So I think we’re looking at — in our lifetime — great collapses of food services. We need the humbleness and clarity to see that our food, while benefitting from technological advances, has benefitted even more from free ecological resources: Cheap energy, lots of water everywhere, and a stable climate. But studies have shown these are eroding. And if you take these away — if you don’t have those in abundance — you’re not only going to NOT feed the world, you’re not going to be able to eat the way we do now. We’re going to be forced into a new system. The question is: Is that going to be a traumatic transition, or are we going to start preparing for it now?

The typical and very loud argument against organic farming is that it can’t scale, that the yields aren’t high enough. How do you respond to that?

Yield is a tricky topic, especially if you have an agenda. I know this from our own farming: You can look at yield a lot of different ways. When a study says that conventional farms produce more per acre than organic farms, they’re talking about yield, not total output.

Yield is generally defined by economists as yield for a particular crop. When you farm in a monoculture, that’s easy to measure. But when you farm organically, you grow several different crops. So your yield per individual crop is lower, but your total output of caloric foods is higher.

And then there’s the transaction cost of getting from the farm to the marketplace: THAT’S the expensive part; that’s the problem for organic farmers. It’s much more expensive to distribute products from diverse farms. Monocultured farms are much easier — one variety, one pick up, one drop off to Walmart, etc.

So you argue that acre-for-acre, over time, the yield on an organic farm surpasses that of conventional farms.

Yes. The TOTAL CALORIC yield on an organic farm far surpasses a conventional farm. That’s on every credible study out there. That’s not even an issue.

Let’s talk about grain. Because if you’re talking about feeding the world, it’s really about grain. Now, if you’re an organic corn farmer, by definition, you can’t grow corn every year. You have to get nitrogen back in the soil. So you’ll grow corn, and then you’ll grow a legume, and so you’ll fix the nitrogen and improve the soil structure. Now, if you’re a conventional farmer, you’re growing just corn and nothing else but corn. So you might look at this system and say the conventional farmer got more corn. But what that doesn’t show is that the organic farmer also got soybeans, switchgrass, vetch, alfalfa …

So an organic farm will absolutely yield less corn, but that doesn’t mean you’re yielding less food. It just means you’re producing less corn.

TED Blog: Q&A with Chef Dan Barber: Can organic farming feed the world?.

One of the most persistent arguments coming from those who oppose renewable energy subsidies is that they could never stand on their own without government intervention and that we should let the market decide which electricity source is best. One thing that is too often overlooked is the fact that fossil fuels receive a tremendous amount of federal support, an amount that has traditionally dwarfed the supports given to renewables like solar, wind and geothermal.

The above graphic circulated around the internet last fall stands as an important reminder of where we were and how far we need to go for true parity in the marketplace. And while the feds have ramped-up investment in renewables and President Obama has proposed eliminating federal subsidies for fossil fuels in his 2011 budget, the billions of dollars spent on securing and protecting our oil interests in the Middle East means that the federal energy subsidy scales will likely still tip in favor of the fossil fuel industry for the foreseeable future.

So next time you hear the argument that renewables cannot stand on their own without massive tax subsidies, remember this graphic.

Think Renewables Need Huge Subsidies? Federal Energy Subsidies Visualized federal_energy_subsidies – ecopolitology.

PCRM >> Good Medicine Magazine >> Health vs. Pork: Congress Debates the Farm Bill >> Autumn 2007.

The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute film that takes viewers on a provocative and eye-opening tour of the real costs of our consumer driven culture—from resource extraction to iPod incineration.

It examines the real costs of extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal, and isolates the moment in history where the trend of consumption mania began. The Story of Stuff examines how economic policies of the post-World War II era ushered in notions of “planned obsolescence” and “perceived obsolescence” —and how these notions are still driving much of the U.S. and global economies today.

… + … the story of Cap & Trade, and the story of Bottled Water

Full presentation is here: