seeking a sustainable human society

I was surprised this morning by an article in New Scientist on the trend of increasing urban population growth. The article refers to a UN report, The State of World Population in 2007, which apparently argues that poverty and slums in cities are the result of poor urban planning and not at all an inevitable byproduct of urban growth. In fact, the report implies that it's better to be poor in cities than in the countryside because of the greater availability in cities of "education, health services, jobs, shelter and family planning."

The report is primarily addressing the growth of cities in Asia and Africa, which I know very little about. But I still think I can speak to some of the underlying assumptions that surprise me in this mindset. The idea that the availability of resources being available for the poor--human resources such as education and family planning--are offset by the massive quantities of people competing for those resources in an overcrowded city is one that I find startling, to begin with. But in a bigger sense, it's a twist on the whole concept of resources that I am at a loss to understand.

Of course, there is a greater absolute quantity of human resources in a city. But because there are also a great many more people in need of those resources, it is much easier for individuals to fall through the cracks. But more important is the lesser availability of real resources.

Humans, like every living thing on the planet, need certain resources in order to survive: food, water, shelter. And it is these resources that are in fact much less available in cities. It is easy to grow so removed from the realities of life and its cycles that you forget where food, water, and shelter come from. But food comes from plants, which need land to grow, and the more that people are crowded into small areas of land, the less there is land available where food can grow. In cities, food must always travel from somewhere to get to the people who live there. Shelter, too, comes from raw materials that need space to exist--wood, rocks, gravel. These things, too, must travel if there are to be enough inside a city to house the millions of inhabitants. And water is a problem in many cities--the depletion of aquifers and salinization of water sources in many arid climates is a direct result of too many people creating too much drain on a single water source.

But on the other hand, a single person--or even a single family--living in an otherwise uninhabited (by humans) forest will have a hard time surviving, or at least surviving comfortably. It has been done, of course, but it isn't the way that most people would choose to live, and not only because we're social animals and need companionship. The specialization made possible by towns and cities--you provide me with food and I'll provide you with shelter--has had some bad press lately, but it has still been an incalculable benefit for millions of people. The really green way to live, I think, in the minds of many, is to be utterly self-sufficient: grow your own food, build your own house. And because these actions fulfill our deepest instincts and needs, there is a strong attraction in such a way of life. The people I know who've done it, and are doing it, and more satisfied with their lives than anyone else I know. And it's my dream to live like that: to build my own house, to grow my own food, to educate my own children, to ask nothing of anyone and "owe not any man."

And yet--. I often wonder if I will really leave the city. There are innumerable benefits to living in a city, or at least in a town. Natural resources are all very well, but I want human resources as well: operas and concerts and plays, libraries and bookstores and internet, coffeeshops and neighbors and all-night philosophical conversations sparked by quotes from Dostoevsky. And at the same time, there are so many things about the city that I hate, and not just the poverty that I see daily: the pollution, the traffic (even though I rarely drive), the stress that seems to hang over everyone like a cloud, the violence, the crime. There is a beauty and a danger in cities that is intriguing, even inspiring, but it's dangerous nonetheless. Has there ever been a true city, in all the history of human life, without its share of poverty and crime? From the little I know of anthropology, I doubt it.

And so, I'm left with a dilemma. What is the best way for humans to live? What balance between human and natural resources, between space and society, is ideal for the sustainability of a human community? How big can a city grow before poverty and violence become an inevitable piece of the competition for natural resources; how small can a town be before every member finds himself caught in a never-ending cycle of working for smaller and smaller returns? As so often happens to me, I find myself returning in thought to one of the most idyllic places I've lived, and I remember the little town of Lupeni where I lived in Romania. Half the population there was unemployed, and everyone wanted to go somewhere else. But for me, there was a great deal that was perfect about that little town, or could have been. Even the poorest were seldom without a garden, and there were always resources available to them: firewood to gather and sell in winter; blackberries to sell in summer. For me, the size was perfect: it was small enough that after I'd lived there for six months, it was hard to walk down the street without seeing someone I knew. I could walk out of my apartment and turn left and be in the center of town within fifteen minutes; I could walk out of my apartment and turn right and be high on a mountain trail in twenty. It was small enough to be safe--I could walk home alone at three in the morning, without a thought for any danger--and big enough to have plenty of friends, and even a coffeeshop.

But there was no opera house in Lupeni, and I'm sure there never will be.