Crisis Migration: City to Country? Country to City?

Helena Smith of the Guardian UK is reporting that, following the collapse of the Greece economy, young people in Greece have started a mass exodus from the cities to the countryside, where they are taking over abandoned farms.

11.22am: Moving to the Greek countryside from the city, though (see last post) is no picnic.

Photograph: Cathal Mcnaughton/Reuters

This picture shows 56-year-old farmer George Andrianakis, and goat, at his farm in the village of Stafania in the Peloponesse area of Greece. As he told Reuters, profits at the farm (which includes orange and olive trees, sheep and goats) are down by over 50% this year while costs are almost 30% higher.

11.11am: News in from Athens, where our correspondent Helena Smithsays newspapers and television channels this morning all reporting that young Greeks hit hard by the financial crisis are fleeing from the cities to the countryside.

Some commentators are describing it as a mass exodus. Helena writes:

It's official: Greece is undergoing a mass internal migration as a result of the economic crisis that has engulfed the nation since December 2009.

After years of being spurned for the bright lights of big cities, rural areas are making a comeback as unprecedented numbers of unemployed young Greeks move en masse to the countryside encouraged by government stipends to cultivate tracts of land that have been left untended for years. A survey conducted at the behest of the Agricultural Development Ministry by the polling firm Kapa Research found that more than 1.5 million Greeks were considering relocating to rural areas with one in five already having made the move. Around 75 % were under the age of 44 – the group worst hit by joblessness in a nation where more are now out of work than employed.

A €60bn state-funded program offering plots of land at cheap rates to would-be farmers had been snapped up, said the agriculture minister Costas Skandalides, announcing the findings. The survey showed that the vast majority were willing to earn less for a better quality of life. "More than one million Greeks, most with university and even post graduate degrees, are rejecting prototypes to go back to their roots convinced that it will lead to a better quality of life even if there are less trappings," he averred. "We are witnessing a profound shift in Greek society and lifestyles the extent to which we have yet to grasp."

In the northern Greek city of Thessaloniki, more than 4,000 trained agronomists have rushed to sign up to an initiate that has seen the town's main university rent out plots of land for cultivation at affordable prices. "I will go and grow rice and cotton," Alexandra Terzidou, one of the graduates, told Skai news. "It's a great opportunity."

Prior to the research academics had poured over anecdotal evidence of the migration but had been unable to pin point just how big it was.

Another story in the NY Times (Jan. 9 2012) confirms this trend in Greece.

The Greek case seems to set up the supposition that "in the face of economic and political collapse, people will migrate from the city to the countryside to farm."

Yet we are also seeing a mass migration from the countryside to the city, right here in New Brunswick, and all over the United States. Data from the 2010 US census shows that growth in urban centres has exceeded growth in the suburbs for the first time in 20 years:

WASHINGTON — Stung by high gasoline costs, outlying suburbs that sprouted in the heady 2000s are now seeing their growth fizzle to historic lows, halting American city dwellers’ decades-long exodus to sprawling homes in distant towns.

New census estimates as of July 2011 highlight a shift in population trends following an extended housing bust and renewed spike in oil prices. Two years after the recession technically ended, and despite faint signs of a rebound, Americans again are shunning moves at record levels and staying put in big cities.

That is posing longer-term consequences for residential “exurbs” on the edge of metropolitan areas.

Construction of gleaming new schools and mega-malls built in anticipation of a continued population boom is cutting back. Spacious McMansions offering the promise of homeownership to middle-class families sit abandoned or half-built. Once an escape from urban problems, suburban regions hit by foreclosures are posting bigger jumps in poverty than cities.

The result: The annual rate of growth in American cities and surrounding urban areas has now surpassed that of exurbs for the first time in at least 20 years, spanning the modern era of sprawling suburban development.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/census-shows-u-s-cities-booming-suburbs-wilting-article-1.1056505#ixzz1rZUkArFp

So this begs the question: under the pressure of economic decline, job loss and rising fuel prices, which way will people tend to migrate? from cities to the countryside to grow food? or from the suburbs to the cities to find jobs? The answers are obviously complex and it will very much depend on local conditions.

The case of Greece seems to indicate that catastrophic economic collapse might see people migrating to the countryside in order to grow food. This does not mean that they will be successful at procuring even a subsistence living, as farm production is as much affected by the price of oil, and general market conditions, as the urban job sector.

The case of the US cities (and New Brunswick) seems to indicate that in the case moderate to severe economic stress, high oil prices, higher property taxes, and the loss of jobs and services in suburban areas, people will tend to migrate to the cities to reduce expenses and find jobs.

It should be noted that both trends are affected by local and federal government policies that change taxation and economic sector subsidies, creating incentives for people to move in one direction or the other.

One thing is for certain: under severe economic stress, high food and fuel prices, job loss and climate change, people are going to move.

Math, Systems Theory and Cities: West in NY Times

It's worth going over again, this time in text, the mathematical theories of physicist Geoffrey West regarding cities and social metabolism. The NY Times article does a remarkably good job of laying out the theories and findings in a few pages. One thing that the article discusses that was not mentioned in the videos is how much West's theory supports the findings of social urbanist Jane Jacobs:

"It’s when West switches the conversation from infrastructure to people that he brings up the work of Jane Jacobs, the urban activist and author of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” Jacobs was a fierce advocate for the preservation of small-scale neighborhoods, like Greenwich Village and the North End in Boston. The value of such urban areas, she said, is that they facilitate the free flow of information between city dwellers. To illustrate her point, Jacobs described her local stretch of Hudson Street in the Village. She compared the crowded sidewalk to a spontaneous “ballet,” filled with people from different walks of life. School kids on the stoops, gossiping homemakers, “business lunchers” on their way back to the office. While urban planners had long derided such neighborhoods for their inefficiencies — that’s why Robert Moses, the “master builder” of New York, wanted to build an eight-lane elevated highway through SoHo and the Village — Jacobs insisted that these casual exchanges were essential. She saw the city not as a mass of buildings but rather as a vessel of empty spaces, in which people interacted with other people. The city wasn’t a skyline — it was a dance."

I've begun a study of Manuel Castells book "The City and the Grassroots." Along with Jane Jacobs, David Harvey, Richard Florida, and now Geoffrey West, I consider Manuel Castells, the Barcelonian sociologist, to be one of the greatest urban sociologists. Indeed, he is considered THE foremost urban sociologist in the field today.

The Next Hundred Million by Joel Kotkin

Since Julian Simon's death over a decade ago, few people have thoughtfully articulated optimistic scenarios for the middle range future. Instead, bookstores are littered with books predicting doom and gloom resulting from climate change and environmental degradation, the economic decline of the west relative to China, peak oil and many other factors. Part of this is, no doubt, empirically based. But some of it is probably cultural. For whatever reason, the apocalyptic narrative seems to have returned full force.

Thus, it is refreshing to find someone like Joel Kotkin who makes a well articulated, if ultimately unconvincing, case for a rosy American future. At the heart of Kotkin's vision is the projection that the US, in contrast to other western countries, will increase significantly in population over the next 40 years. And, like Simon before him, he predicts the combination of this brain power and America's adaptability will create by 2050 the most affluent, culturally rich, and successful nation in human history.

Unfortunately for individuals interested in realistic scenarios of the future, Kotkin's book is notable more for what it leaves out than for what it incorporates. It is, largely, a book that focuses on the US economy in isolation -- there is little consideration of the world system as a whole or of environmental matters. Indeed, in many ways the title misrepresents the real thrust of the argument. This is not a forecast of the future based on consideration of a wide number of complexly interacting factors. It is, rather, a very thoughtful analysis of demographic growth and its consequences (e.g., the geographic distribution of the expanded population and its cultural impact in terms of increased diversity, etc.). Kotkin's earlier work dealt with cities and the geographic impact of digital technology. The current work is best seen in that light, as an argument with Richard Florida over the kind of cities that are most likely to foster economic development in the future. Individuals looking for a surrogate Julian Simon, someone who articulates an optimistic vision of the future based on scenarios that incorporate multiple factors and presume a fundamental continuation of the status quo, had best look elsewhere.

Joel Kotkin Summarizes "The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050" from Voices for Innovation on Vimeo.

Taking urban gardening to new heights

Artists rendering of the proposed renovation of the Federal Building in Portland, Oregon. The building will have “vegetated fins” that grow more than 200 feet high on the western side of the building, a vertical garden that changes with the seasons -- leafing out and providing shade in the spring and summer while loosing the leaves and allowing light in the winter. The end result? An expected savings of $280,000 per year in energy costs.

The project, however, is mired in controversy, partly because of design issues -- a process for irrigating the fins hasn't yet been incorporated into the design -- but mainly because of the cost. The government views it as a demonstration project; aimed at testing the actual benefits of a conceptual idea. That's a legitimate approach, but there then needs to be some way of assessing the efficiency of the design and, if the design turns out to be effective, to diffuse the concept within the design community. This is not unlike the problems with the LEED standards for green buildings in general, where LEED certification is based on the design of the building rather than its operation and, once built, the buildings turn out not to be as green as expected.

Transition Towns and Resilience

The current issue of Resurgence magazine is timed to come out with the Copenhagen talks on climate change.

Inside is an article by Transition Towns founder Rob Hopkins titled "Resilience Thinking. Why ‘resilience thinking’ is a crucial missing piece of the climate-change jigsaw and why resilience is a more useful concept than sustainability."

Cdn Bill Rees on Urban Ecology and "Smart Decline"

Bill Rees, creator of the "ecological footprint," gave a lecture at the 2009 Gaining Ground Summit in Vancouver on the evolution of cities and "smart decline," or "planning down", i.e. planning for a descent in consumption, not just in fuel, but all consumer goods and natural resources. He opens with one of the most original and revelatory statements I've heard on the evolution of cities.

Smart Decline in CD Quality

You should definitely put "Radio Ecoshock" from Vancouver on your short list of "must listen to" podcasts. It's the only site I've found that regularly features interviews and presentations of actual climate scientists from around the world on climate change issues. If you want the latest on climate science, check out Alex Smith's podcast.