>"According to the UN, cities are responsible for 70% of GHG emissions..." - yes but how much higher is the impact if were talking rural living? i've heard the argument and convincingly that a quick transition to more urban living and less rural is a must to lower our footprint , no sources off the top of my head but I think that as the article you linked pointed out with proper planning that density can work to our favor and allow nature to retake previous farmland (etc)
Yeah, that is the general idea. It works out well because according to most data I can find, this movement to cities is happening on its own, such that in the near future about 66% of all humans will live in or very near to cities.
I think cities are interesting because they can evolve a lot faster than other modes of habitation. And also, another aspect of what I'm touching on there is the idea that perhaps democracy is best applied in the domain of the city? It seems to me that they are much more responsive than nation state governments, likely because of scale and proximity to who they are representing. There is a book and also TED talk about this concept.
Interestingly, there is a real wealth of literature on cities and helping transform them for both human and ecological goods. A lot more is possible at that scale of analysis than at nation state levels.
>"but can in fact model things such as ecology, water, disease, food systems, climate patterns, and more" and it absolutely should! , a more in depth perspective on greenhouse emissions is great but what if we accidentally stumbled on the fact that podunk idaho is the perfect place for some weird flower they could harvest and sell nationally (and maybe use some of that money to improve local sustainability)? I think we have to incorporate both human behavioral psychology and the system of capitalism already in place - if the information gleaned from the nodes has no commercial value (in addition to pure scientific value) then the idea will fall flat on its face , volunteerism won't be enough , inadvertently finding ways to synergize environmentalism and capitalism could buy us much needed time however
Yeah, this touches on some key things.
First, the difficulty of forming such groups in reality has to be addressed somehow. Lots of groups form for things that are not rewarded economically.. for example 'makerspaces' or community spaces often are just people getting together to learn and experiment with things. Or for example, people somehow have gone and creating things as interesting as Wikipedia, while expecting no economic reward.
But perhaps a flaw in what I've laid out here is that it is not so concrete as those things. The vision is very big, and I can foresee it being hard to organize people around such a thing. Makerspaces and Wikipedia both have something very concrete to organize around, while this can be more broad and nebulous. I can see the intrinsic motivation being there, but its hard for me to visualize how to bring such things about.
As for engaging in economic stuff, I think that can be a key area to focus on and work with. Part of the vision I have is the potential to decentralize manufacturing for certain things, as is theorized about I the P2P Foundation Manufacturing link in the essay. And then, also, an idea is to be able to kind of map out alternative economies. So for example, a local food app can show you how to eat locally. A local goods app can show you how to buy things from local creators. Obviously not everything will be localized, but in a lot of domains it might be helpful.
>great resources, one thing that jumped out at me, I have a local maker / co-op in my city and we'd had some talk of getting a brick press into a warehouse - lets consider the main economic "costs" for most people (or a few anyway) , education and housing, education already has a good start with opensource sources such as khan academy , housing? most of the up front cost is the construction itself - 3d printed buildings aside for the moment it seems like a big problem for cheaper housing (or at least not shoddily built urban sprawl sub divisions) is just entrenched legal hurdles from the post ww2 construction boom (a lot of people amde their fortunes on strip malls and such) - perhaps that could be a pragmatic mode of collective focus? , start getting zoning laws changed , even if the 3d printed houses dont take off people could have more say in material use / location and layout "perhaps a different model than the heavy and expensive and often inefficient institutional university model that we use today is in order."
That's definitely one of the biggest challenges we face in the western world. So much red tape blocking people from doing anything outside the norm when it comes to building. A movement like this really would be extremely beneficial in the long term. How else are we gonna be able to adapt our living to very different demands and necessities if we cannot modify or change up the building processes of our homes?