Self Sustaining Cities

[Simon_Jester]

Alright, dropping the solar panels in favor of local nuclear reactor plants. These are just as eco friendly since the refuse is used for the military industrial complex.

This raises the matter of economy of scale in nuclear reactors; building 100 5 MW nuclear power plants is not necessarily as efficient as building one 500 MW plant. Which undermines the hyper-modular concept of the city, or forces you to accept significant cost penalties to impose hyper-modularity on the city.

Those costs are going to be a serious issue as you try to shrink the minimum size of the modules. At a certain point, this kind of thing is going to become like Maoist China's backyard steel mills.

What about having a normal apartment complex built around a large park. And than having a large (in both size and height) green house garden complex built next to it linked to a mall?

One big problem with this is that the greenhouse will require artificial lighting if you're going to stack the food production layers five or ten high... which does a lot to increase energy consumption per capita. There are good reasons for dirt farming, you know.

The idea of using cities as self-contained fortresses really doesn't work so well in modern warfare, though, because there's nothing stopping the enemy from just flattening the city with artillery barrages.

Treaties and theater shields.

...Excuse me, but maybe I'm not understanding this.

Are you deciding in advance that you shall have hypermodular self-sustaining cities, and then inventing justifications accordingly? Or are you trying to come up with hypermodular self-sustaining cities that are plausible?

If you're making up justifications as you go along, then your "treaties and theater shields" explanation fits right into that, because it's a blatant handwave. One that works, sort of, as long as no one looks at the man behind the curtain. Since really, the point is about the fact that modern warfare involves highly destructive weapons that make it impractical to outlast the enemy with a prolonged ground-based siege. Shields or no shields, the scale of the weapons is going to make civilian life extremely dangerous under those conditions: the moment the shield goes down, the habitat blocks would get flattened because no sane person is going to want to send riflemen to die in a warren of mini-arcologies.

If you're trying for plausibility, then you shouldn't invoke "siege resistance" as a major reason for your hypermodular self-sustaining cities. In real life, the layout of cities is generally determined more by their need to function in peacetime than to be defensible in wartime. If a hypermodular layout works in peacetime, whether it can hold out for months when cut off from support in war is irrelevant; if it doesn't work in peacetime, whether it can hold out for months when cut off from support in war is irrelevant.

Well, to explain my point further. I think I have finally found a good analogy for what I am trying to make.

I was not going for an Arcology but for something more down to earth. In particular I was looking to revive the feel of 1940's Britain (Was watching history channel yesterday and found that this will work as a description) when every family that could had one parent working and the other tending to a small garden in the back yard with some chickens and bunnies and a vegetable patch. Just replace vegetable patch with hydroponic garden.

Milk and stuff that can't be grown on a family level would be grown in the district level and than stuff like furniture and electronics would come from higher up.

1940s Britain was a society operating under wartime austerity measures; is that what you want? If so, then you're going to see other things like rationing coupons, black markets, and of course the problem that having a large fraction of the population working on truck farms to feed everyone else, you're using labor less efficiently than you could be. Which is problematic during wartime.

Also, if this has been going on long enough that the entire society is configured around wartime austerity and economic autarky, then it's going to warp people's outlook in other ways: "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia." Well, that quote evokes the wrong ideas in some respects, but it's worth remembering that a world where people have been fighting for enough years that everything in the place is a legacy of wartime security and rationing needs, the social environment will be damned grim.

Arcologies suck.

Could you expand on this, with more specific criticisms?

Cargo transport - rail or ship only, trucks an atavism. There'll be a problem with airplanes, but hydrogen engines wouldn't be too far away, I hope.

Trucks would still wind up having to be used in recognizable form as delivery vehicles, but long distance trucking is painfully inefficient, yes, a legacy of cheap gasoline more than anything else.

Is not the problem over population rather than power generation technology ? If the current electricity production grid had to support 1/10th the number of people we would not have problems in the first place.

If the current electricity production grid supported 1/10th the number of people, the population wouldn't be up to maintaining it, nor would it be cost-effective to try.

Well, first thing first. Since I am working with a society that has passed from feudalism into communism directly with no intermediate stage and has not encountered capitalism until about a year ago even thou it has several millennia worth of history the cultural things won't be an issue. People don't wish for more than they have since they have nothing else to compare them self with. (eveyone else are worse off to say the least) But that is the perk with SF settings where I get to control entire planets.

Their entire culture is built around the concept of not having much but using what they have responsibly. And even if they did not, they have no choice in the mater. If someone is not satisfied, nice for him but he does not get to have a say in it.

See, this is what you should spell out in advance, because the social context has a lot to do with how the physical layout plays out.

Issues you will want (need) to address:

-The state's decision to discourage specialization of labor reduces productivity. I can probably fix my own plumbing rather than hiring a plumber, but I'll spend more hours on it and probably do an inferior job. Darning your own socks is labor-intensive, and means fewer hours worked in a state factory. And so on.

-How did this society go through its equivalent of the industrial revolution? What created the steady state they now occupy? Knowing this will tell you what kind of institutions got frozen into place after the steady state condition was reached.

-Again, there's the problem of 'backyard steel mill' attempts to create autarkic communities. Some things really are done more efficiently on a large scale in a separate location, like factory farms for egg production*. Sure, you need to transport the products farther, but it may honestly be less work and less consumption of state resources to do so.

*Inhumane, perhaps, but this society isn't especially kind to people, so I don't see why it would be especially kind to chickens.

-You can say "the system has been stable for thousands of years," but that is somewhat unrealistic: rebellions, treachery, and leaders who take it into their heads to institute odd policy changes in the name of "reform" are a constant of human nature. Therefore, you must explore what happens to your society at the marginal cases: when it is forced to compete with various modified versions of its own structure, when someone makes a policy blunder that sabotages some key part of the system, when the general public feels irritable and unhappy about their government and so doesn't cooperate with it as much as they would otherwise.

This last is particularly important; if the entire society is configured around the need to build modular urban communes, then during times of unrest you're very likely to see the cities breaking down along commune lines. Each 'urban village' of self-contained people will try to minimize its contact with the outside world, for their own safety's sake. If this goes far enough, the national government's control over the urban population may wind up becoming more theoretical than practical even if the urbanites aren't actively fighting the government in the streets.

[Purple]

Alright, dropping the solar panels in favor of local nuclear reactor plants. These are just as eco friendly since the refuse is used for the military industrial complex.

This raises the matter of economy of scale in nuclear reactors; building 100 5 MW nuclear power plants is not necessarily as efficient as building one 500 MW plant. Which undermines the hyper-modular concept of the city, or forces you to accept significant cost penalties to impose hyper-modularity on the city.

Got it, go with one large nuke plant per larger section.

Treaties and theater shields.

...Excuse me, but maybe I'm not understanding this.

Are you deciding in advance that you shall have hypermodular self-sustaining cities, and then inventing justifications accordingly? Or are you trying to come up with hypermodular self-sustaining cities that are plausible?[/quote]
It's for a RPG and as it happens we do have treaties preventing the use of WMD's on cities. And we do have theater shields that prevent anything short of WMD's from penetrating it. Ground troops still go in thou, and than you get Stalingrad 2.0.

But yes, scratch "siege resistance" from the list. It sounds to far fetched that the other guys won't break the treaty if they have already demolished my fleet to get to the planet.

1940s Britain was a society operating under wartime austerity measures; is that what you want?

Yes I do. The whole state is in a constant state of war or preparation for war. Think a mild version of 1984.

If so, then you're going to see other things like rationing coupons

The government controls your wage and what is produced. There are no banks and no loans so if your wage can't afford it you are not getting it.

black markets

There is no such thing as a black market. There has newer been such a thing as a black market. Now move along, nothing to see here.

and of course the problem that having a large fraction of the population working on truck farms to feed everyone else

I don't quite understand.

Also, if this has been going on long enough that the entire society is configured around wartime austerity and economic autarky, then it's going to warp people's outlook in other ways: "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia." Well, that quote evokes the wrong ideas in some respects, but it's worth remembering that a world where people have been fighting for enough years that everything in the place is a legacy of wartime security and rationing needs, the social environment will be damned grim.

That is what I am going for.

See, this is what you should spell out in advance, because the social context has a lot to do with how the physical layout plays out.

Yes, I concede that I should have done this.

-The state's decision to discourage specialization of labor reduces productivity. I can probably fix my own plumbing rather than hiring a plumber, but I'll spend more hours on it and probably do an inferior job. Darning your own socks is labor-intensive, and means fewer hours worked in a state factory. And so on.

-How did this society go through its equivalent of the industrial revolution? What created the steady state they now occupy? Knowing this will tell you what kind of institutions got frozen into place after the steady state condition was reached.

First they had several decades of pre industrial warfare mixed in with airships and stuff. The planet they evolved in newer had much oil to begin with so it was newer adopted as a major resource. In fact, internal combustion engines based on petrol newer took off at all. Diesel works but is expensive etc.

After the planet was united, the leaders pushed for the stars trying to focus the population on a common goal to give them something to work for and that is when the whole culture of sacrificing one self for the people started.

The entire thing can be found here: http://forum.travian.com/showthread.php ... 8&page=522, scroll down to The Extended History of the Centaury Empire

-Again, there's the problem of 'backyard steel mill' attempts to create autarkic communities. Some things really are done more efficiently on a large scale in a separate location, like factory farms for egg production*. Sure, you need to transport the products farther, but it may honestly be less work and less consumption of state resources to do so.

If people can farm eggs in their home that means one thing less the state has to worry about. Ideally the state will not produce any eggs or vegetables at all since the people take care of that them self.

-You can say "the system has been stable for thousands of years," but that is somewhat unrealistic: rebellions, treachery, and leaders who take it into their heads to institute odd policy changes in the name of "reform" are a constant of human nature.

See the history I linked to, that should explain this part as well. But beware, it is long.

This last is particularly important; if the entire society is configured around the need to build modular urban communes, then during times of unrest you're very likely to see the cities breaking down along commune lines. Each 'urban village' of self-contained people will try to minimize its contact with the outside world, for their own safety's sake. If this goes far enough, the national government's control over the urban population may wind up becoming more theoretical than practical even if the urbanites aren't actively fighting the government in the streets.

I keep the water supply centralized and if any community disobeys I shut it down. And upon reflection I will do the same with electricity. Let's see them live without that.

[Guardsman Bass]

No automobiles at all. The only type of transport allowed for civilians is public transit and inter city trains. Everything is electric too.

Does your city have a lot of small-level freight transport trains inside of it? If someone in your city bought, say, a piano and wanted to move it into their home, how would go about getting it there?

That's one of the trickier parts of eliminating all automobiles (and not necessarily just oil-driven ones - you could have a fleet of company and government-owned trucks that run on electricity and/or hydrogen). I'm a big fan of freight rail and rail in general, but I still think it would be useful to have short-range delivery trucks that could move goods around over short distances from the freight rail stops.

[Broomstick]

Their entire culture is built around the concept of not having much but using what they have responsibly. And even if they did not, they have no choice in the mater. If someone is not satisfied, nice for him but he does not get to have a say in it. You can't well have consumerism when the economy is controlled.

There's the “iron fist from above” form of control and then there are other forms of social control.

For a look at a real-life society where that meme is at least somewhat in effect look at the Amish: they make it a virture to live simply. The society imposes pressure against conspicuous consumption and compliance with the social order is rewarded by one's status in the eyes of one's peers. In actual fact, the Amish can acquire significant wealth, but the idea is to bank it against future disaster. This is why the Amish are able to pay cash for something like a kidney or liver transplant.

Of course, people being people, they do want some luxuries. You have to give people some incentive to both work hard and contribute towards community projects. Perhaps one is able to accumulate sufficient money/credits/society points to earn a wonderful vacation? Public acclaim of some sort?

Anyhow – that sort of “live within one's means” attitude is only effective when imposed bottom-up, such as the Amish do within their own communities. For your society it probably won't be as austere, and there may be some top-down forces imposed as well – the Amish have the safety valve of the society in which they are embedded, people who are dissatisfied can leave. Not so much in your proposed society.

The society in question is much like old eastern block countries. You buy a TV set and it lasts for your grandchildren. And when it does break down and they do go to buy a new one they find the exact same model still stocked because the state does not think people need newer ones. The same goes for shoes, socks, and anything else you can't make on your own. The government also promotes a "do it your self" culture where people are encouraged to fix things them self and make their own shelves and stuff rather than buying.

Actually, knitting socks by hand isn't that big a deal provided you do a lot of knitting.

Here's an idea – the society has a long tradition of valuing hand-crafted work. So while you might be able to buy cheap piece of shit socks from some factory your knitting relatives might be able to produce much better socks. There may even be some artisans out there specializing in crafting socks.

So... maybe the “state” - whatever level be it the “community block” or the “larger city” or “region” or whatever – employs you at a fixed wage but not at the work week we see in our own societies. Say, your state employment is 20 hours per week. It's enough to live comfortably if you aren't stupid with your money. Then you're free to spend the rest of your time either sitting watching TV or playing video games or playing basketball in the courtyard, or you can use it to craft items for profit, or expand your gardening or whatever. That way the unambitious cover the costs of their existence, but can be steered to low-environmental-impact leisure time activities. Meanwhile, those who are ambitious can use the time to engage in activities that increase their standard of living/resources but in a useful way.

Finally, the idea would be that stuff like wheat and rice are made in farms like they are today. But each person grows his own eggs and vegetables for home consumption. And each small community has its own department store that includes a small dairy farm and fish tanks to feed the local population.

Speaking as someone who gardens for a serious slice of my yearly vegetable diet, you have to allow for the fact that not everyone is suited towards this.

Maybe there's a tradition of competitiveness, as the home gardeners compete on various levels for beauty/taste/whatever quality you care to name, giving some incentive to keep quality high. This will also likely result in these people producing some surplus. Then, folks who don't garden might be expected to make themselves useful in some other manner (knitting socks, perhaps). Most people will produce some or all the vegetables they need, some produce extra, which can be sold or bartered, and those to infirm or otherwise unable to garden will then purchase/barter for that surplus. Maybe the small livestock butcher (if you're growing chickens for food you could also easily grow things like rabbits and guinea pigs) doesn't raise livestock himself but rather keeps a small portion of every animal butchered. That sort of thing. Villages – and that's sort of what you're aiming at – are not composed of truly independent individuals, there's always some small level of specialization.

Also, because not everything grows equally well in all environments there will be some trade and probably some industrial-level production of certain items. Or perhaps a community block in an area that can grow citrus would require everyone to plant an orange, lemon, lime, or other such tree in their backyard then take a certain amount of the production (say, half) as a sort of “tax”, which is then shipped to an area that can't produce it in exchange for something else. This may seem to contradict the whole “independence” thing, but in high latitudes those citrus fruits might become the “small luxuries” that act as incentives for people to do more than just the minimum, and vice versa. Should warfare interrupt that trade people might not get oranges, but you can live without them if you must so long as you're producing sufficient food to survive on your own.

Alright, dropping the solar panels in favor of local nuclear reactor plants. These are just as eco friendly since the refuse is used for the military industrial complex.

This raises the matter of economy of scale in nuclear reactors; building 100 5 MW nuclear power plants is not necessarily as efficient as building one 500 MW plant. Which undermines the hyper-modular concept of the city, or forces you to accept significant cost penalties to impose hyper-modularity on the city.

This is a good point. Some things really are done better and more efficiently on a massive scale. You still might want more than one for redundancy's sake, but big power plants are, as a rule of thumb, more efficient than small ones. So... build the big nuke plant, then bring workers in by rail to run it, then they return to their “village buildings” to spend their wages, water their tomatoes, and indulge their hobbies and crafts.

What about having a normal apartment complex built around a large park. And than having a large (in both size and height) green house garden complex built next to it linked to a mall?

One big problem with this is that the greenhouse will require artificial lighting if you're going to stack the food production layers five or ten high... which does a lot to increase energy consumption per capita. There are good reasons for dirt farming, you know.

There's a concept called “edible landscaping”. Public areas and parks might be planted with things like fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, and plants that can double as ornamentals while still being edible (there are varieties of chard and kale in our world already that serve both purposes – I grow a lot of them in my own garden). Definitely you'd want to discourage all-grass lawns (a rather wasteful and harmful landscaping in many ways). Even arid areas have native plants suitable for this purpose such as nopales/prickly pear and dragonfruit. Communities would have to coordinate harvest and distribution of course, and surplus may then be sold to other areas with less happy harvests.

Yes, I keep mentioning this business of moving surplus around. As a practical matter harvests are not always wonderful. If your “village buildings” or whatever are living within their means and have a “rainy day” fund (where some surplus should be shunted) they'll be able to make up local shortfalls in this manner.

If you're trying for plausibility, then you shouldn't invoke "siege resistance" as a major reason for your hypermodular self-sustaining cities. In real life, the layout of cities is generally determined more by their need to function in peacetime than to be defensible in wartime. If a hypermodular layout works in peacetime, whether it can hold out for months when cut off from support in war is irrelevant; if it doesn't work in peacetime, whether it can hold out for months when cut off from support in war is irrelevant.

One justification for this in peace time might be plentiful natural disasters that cut long distance communications or otherwise impose hardship. Perhaps this world has crazy-ass weather, it's hit with substantial meteors more often, there's more earthquakes/volcanism, whatever – if areas are hit randomly but somewhat frequently then self-reliance and self-sufficiency, as well as decentralization, starts to make much more sense.

I was not going for an Arcology but for something more down to earth. In particular I was looking to revive the feel of 1940's Britain (Was watching history channel yesterday and found that this will work as a description) when every family that could had one parent working and the other tending to a small garden in the back yard with some chickens and bunnies and a vegetable patch. Just replace vegetable patch with hydroponic garden.

You do realize that hydroponics is not effort nor cost free? I speak from experience. It's not a bad idea, but it's not the cure-all some seem to think it.

IF every housing unit has a balcony of some sort then those folks who are situated such that their porch receives at least half a day of direct sunlight will be able to do container-gardening (those particularly enthused might apply for those units that receive the most sun – there's a use for any “surplus” money/credits/whatever they may earn). Living areas might be engineered so that full spectrum lights not only benefit a small-scale hydroponic set up (attractively constructed as part of the décor) but also benefit occupants living in those areas as well. This gets back to some of that “edible landscape” meme, combining attractiveness with practicality. But scattered-site gardening only gets you so far. Perhaps in every residential building one floor in five is dedicated to gardening and the entire floor is a hydroponic set up with areas assigned to those who want to make gardening an intensive hobby (some produce could be claimed from each such area as form of tax, which is then distributed to those who can't garden, or is preserved as emergency rations and food stores). Such “floor wide” gardens would also allow for aquaponics, where fish are integrated in to the system. You can not do aquaponics below a certain size in any practical way. And such places are where you can get the fish protein for your villages.

Milk and stuff that can't be grown on a family level would be grown in the district level and than stuff like furniture and electronics would come from higher up.

Milk and furniture actually can be done on a small scale, certainly on the “village scale” you imagine. Goats, especially, are suited to small scale production, but even dairy cows are suitable, particularly if you have some cheese/yogurt/butter/etc. production going on. You don't want everyone to have a cow, at least not a modern dairy cow (your folks might prefer smaller and less productive animals that are more hardy and require less feed, as you'll have to produce fodder as well – more of that edible landscaping, perhaps? Or maybe you'll have a reason to grow hay in public areas?)

Clearly, part of every “village” will be professional agricultural workers, either managing the hydroponic gardens, the edible landscapes, the larger livestock, production of items like dairy products and butchering animals, long term food preservation, and so forth.

Cargo transport - rail or ship only, trucks an atavism. There'll be a problem with airplanes, but hydrogen engines wouldn't be too far away, I hope.

Trucks would still wind up having to be used in recognizable form as delivery vehicles, but long distance trucking is painfully inefficient, yes, a legacy of cheap gasoline more than anything else.

First, the airplanes: airplanes are not really dependent on gasoline. Gasoline is a very compact form of energy storage, this is true, but right now we have airplanes that can run on alcohol (Brazil uses these a lot in agriculture). These folks might also have a use for biodiesel in some applications, and again, we've got airplanes that run on diesel right now. They might also use more airships. Airships don't use fuel for lift, they use lifting gas, so they use less fuel to push themselves forward. If you aren't in a screaming hurry but are interested in transporting items long distance they can be quite good, and they're another one of those things that seems to work better at larger scales.

Trucks – you're going to have to have trucks for small-distance and local transport. I don't care whether they run on fuel or batteries, at the distances they make the most sense it doesn't matter than much. However, universal driving skills are not necessary to this society. In addition to regular deliveries, there will probably be a small subset of trucks that can be rented, with driver, for private citizens/villages who need to haul stuff for some reason (they're moving their household, transporting garden produce, importing raw materials, exporting finished crafts to central transportation depots). So “driver” becomes a profession and not a universal skill.

The state's decision to discourage specialization of labor reduces productivity. I can probably fix my own plumbing rather than hiring a plumber, but I'll spend more hours on it and probably do an inferior job. Darning your own socks is labor-intensive, and means fewer hours worked in a state factory. And so on.

It reduces productivity but increases redundancy. Depending on the situation this may be a good thing. If one's primary work (the state-paid one) is only part time you'll need twice as much as everything than if it was full time, with the remaining time either reserved for one's “hobbies and craft” (which, remember, can turn a profit for the ambitious) or war-time footing needs like a second part time job in a factory producing material for the military or drilling for self-defense forces or whatever. That way, if one of your “villages” gets hit they are less likely to lose critical skills entirely.

[Purple]

Broomstick pretty much summed it all up for me. Now I will need some time to take all this in and create a manageable but interesting refinement of the idea.

I newer really thought of just making it a hobby that pays off. But it would fit perfectly with the culture of "every citizen lives and sacrifices for the people" that I have going.

[Korto]

Milk and furniture actually can be done on a small scale, certainly on the “village scale” you imagine. Goats, especially, are suited to small scale production, but even dairy cows are suitable, particularly if you have some cheese/yogurt/butter/etc. production going on.

Oh shit yeah, goats. How could I forget goats? Goats are great. They'll eat the crap that your chooks wont (far less fussy than cows), and (according to an old goat book I've got), they'll produce more milk kilo for kilo than cows. I wish I could have some goats, but not enough space and too built up They'd clean this backyard a treat. I wonder who I can borrow some goats off?
There's goat milk, goat cheese, goat butter (which apparently is white, but who's fussy?), and of course spare goats for meat.
Mind you, you may not have the supply of woody stems and crap they thrive on (stuff like bramble), and it would be far more work trucking in fodder than just milk. But there's got to be room for a few goats!

Jester Said:

-Again, there's the problem of 'backyard steel mill' attempts to create autarkic communities. Some things really are done more efficiently on a large scale in a separate location, like factory farms for egg production*. Sure, you need to transport the products farther, but it may honestly be less work and less consumption of state resources to do so.

Maybe, but if you've already got people associated with a vegetable garden, chooks are a freebie. They can eat the scraps, keep down pests, fertilise and till the soil. If you want a high rate of eggs you'll likely need to supplement with extra protein, but if you'll accept (a lot) fewer eggs, you can have a breed that's an expert forager and they wont cost you anything.

Oh, and with nuclear plants and grain farms, I withdraw all reservations spoken and unspoken about power and food supply.

[Simon_Jester]

Treaties and theater shields.

...Excuse me, but maybe I'm not understanding this.

Are you deciding in advance that you shall have hypermodular self-sustaining cities, and then inventing justifications accordingly? Or are you trying to come up with hypermodular self-sustaining cities that are plausible?

It's for a RPG and as it happens we do have treaties preventing the use of WMD's on cities. And we do have theater shields that prevent anything short of WMD's from penetrating it. Ground troops still go in thou, and than you get Stalingrad 2.0.

But yes, scratch "siege resistance" from the list. It sounds to far fetched that the other guys won't break the treaty if they have already demolished my fleet to get to the planet.[/quote]Absolutely. Also, there are a lot of ways to level buildings without going through the theater shield- such as moving self-propelled assault guns in underneath it.

And even if you're only (only! Hah!) looking at "Stalingrad 2.0..." you've seen pictures of Stalingrad, right? The place was a wreck by the end of the siege, purely because of people slinging around conventional artillery. It's possible for civilians to stay alive inside the ruins under those conditions, if they've got good enough shelters. But it's not possible for normal civilian life to continue. So the fact that the city is theoretically self-sustaining in peacetime doesn't necessarily translate into being self-sustaining in wartime.

If so, then you're going to see other things like rationing coupons

The government controls your wage and what is produced. There are no banks and no loans so if your wage can't afford it you are not getting it.

You will also have rationing coupons: there will be commodities that the population must be able to afford to maintain a content and functioning society, but which are only available in limited quantities. Of course, the rations themselves will be a potential point of discontent, and not just when society is suddenly exposed to the idea of 'not rationing'.

No society has ever been perfectly stable until acted on by an outside force. There are always natural disasters, capricious or misguided rulers, ambitious underlings, and random sociological churn to be factored in. These things will tend to probe at the fault lines of your society, and it's important to understand where the fault lines are and how the culture reacts when they start to slip.

black markets

There is no such thing as a black market. There has newer been such a thing as a black market. Now move along, nothing to see here.

Right... Heh.

and of course the problem that having a large fraction of the population working on truck farms to feed everyone else

I don't quite understand.

A "truck farm" is a small-scale agricultural field used to produce food on a similarly small scale- larger than a practical individual garden, but smaller than a 'real' farm such as might be found in the countryside.

Small urban farms are less labor-efficient than large rural farms. Small urban farms can't use heavy machinery for cultivation (you can't use a tractor on a rooftop garden), and they suffer from economies of scale (you're buying products retail, not wholesale). Therefore, a much larger fraction of the population will be involved in this kind of amateur agriculture than would be the case in a society that relies on mechanized agriculture in the countryside.

Those are man-hours spent producing food that cannot be spent on other tasks. That's a manageable cost, but it is a cost: you should know you're paying it.

-How did this society go through its equivalent of the industrial revolution? What created the steady state they now occupy? Knowing this will tell you what kind of institutions got frozen into place after the steady state condition was reached.

First they had several decades of pre industrial warfare mixed in with airships and stuff. The planet they evolved in newer had much oil to begin with so it was newer adopted as a major resource. In fact, internal combustion engines based on petrol newer took off at all. Diesel works but is expensive etc.

After the planet was united, the leaders pushed for the stars trying to focus the population on a common goal to give them something to work for and that is when the whole culture of sacrificing one self for the people started.

Um. Never, not newer. Thank you.

In any case, I sort of understand how this is supposed to work, but I think it's important to explore the details of the impact the nature of the leadership structure has on the system- again, understanding the failure modes and drawbacks of the system is if anything more important than understanding its virtues.

-Again, there's the problem of 'backyard steel mill' attempts to create autarkic communities. Some things really are done more efficiently on a large scale in a separate location, like factory farms for egg production*. Sure, you need to transport the products farther, but it may honestly be less work and less consumption of state resources to do so.

If people can farm eggs in their home that means one thing less the state has to worry about. Ideally the state will not produce any eggs or vegetables at all since the people take care of that them self.

Very well, but that is in itself an ideological argument, one premised on the idea that the state should do as little as possible while simultaneously having as much control as possible.

Again, this creates potential fracture lines within the state. It also creates deliberate economic inefficiencies: every person spending an hour tending their own chickens is less efficient than every person buying eggs that came from a factory farm.

This last is particularly important; if the entire society is configured around the need to build modular urban communes, then during times of unrest you're very likely to see the cities breaking down along commune lines. Each 'urban village' of self-contained people will try to minimize its contact with the outside world, for their own safety's sake. If this goes far enough, the national government's control over the urban population may wind up becoming more theoretical than practical even if the urbanites aren't actively fighting the government in the streets.

I keep the water supply centralized and if any community disobeys I shut it down. And upon reflection I will do the same with electricity. Let's see them live without that.

In theory, yes... but there are, again, practical problems. For example, do you do this when a community isn't shooting at your tax collectors, but just... stops participating in civic life as much? Productivity drops, people travel out of the urban-commune less, and so on? How do you deal with 'soft' decline in your control, as opposed to the 'hard' type of decline where people are waving guns and throwing bombs?

Do you bomb anyone who starts building cisterns on their roof to collect rainwater, in case the plumbing goes wrong, because that gives them more survivability if they rebel? How much state propaganda is required to cover your willingness to do so? What happens if something goes wrong in that process?

Don't think in terms of open rebellion by isolated urban-communes surrounded by loyalists, though that might happen once in a while. Think in terms of "circling the wagons because we're afraid that someone else might riot." Think in terms of how the urban-communes react to some kind of nationwide political disorder, such as a coup attempt or a series of purges in the upper ranks of the government. Of how growing up in an urban-commune affects the way you think, and how it affects the way your leadership cadre thinks.

The thing to remember is that people have individual lives independent of the grand principles proclaimed by the state: life goes on. And the life of the common citizen under such a system will be alien enough compared to your own experiences that it will affect how the society as a whole behaves under stress.

One justification for this in peace time might be plentiful natural disasters that cut long distance communications or otherwise impose hardship. Perhaps this world has crazy-ass weather, it's hit with substantial meteors more often, there's more earthquakes/volcanism, whatever – if areas are hit randomly but somewhat frequently then self-reliance and self-sufficiency, as well as decentralization, starts to make much more sense.

Up to a point, I suppose... but such continuous environmental upheaval tends to undermine the kind of long-term hyperstable dictatorial State he seems to be going for. Sooner or later, an unusually intense round of natural disasters will affect the government's ability to remain in power and continue to exercise social control over the system, and ambitious upstarts will try to change things as a way of rallying a power base to challenge the government.

[Broomstick]

Mind you, you may not have the supply of woody stems and crap they thrive on (stuff like bramble), and it would be far more work trucking in fodder than just milk. But there's got to be room for a few goats!

"Edible landscape" - between the harvest leaving bits people won't eat, and needing to trim back things like fruit and nut trees and berry bushes for maximum health and production some of that should be usable for animal fodder. Some additional fodder may need to be grown but clearly we're talking about a society that has elevated recycling and utilization to an art form.

[Broomstick]

One justification for this in peace time might be plentiful natural disasters that cut long distance communications or otherwise impose hardship. Perhaps this world has crazy-ass weather, it's hit with substantial meteors more often, there's more earthquakes/volcanism, whatever – if areas are hit randomly but somewhat frequently then self-reliance and self-sufficiency, as well as decentralization, starts to make much more sense.

Up to a point, I suppose... but such continuous environmental upheaval tends to undermine the kind of long-term hyperstable dictatorial State he seems to be going for. Sooner or later, an unusually intense round of natural disasters will affect the government's ability to remain in power and continue to exercise social control over the system, and ambitious upstarts will try to change things as a way of rallying a power base to challenge the government.

Use religion as another social control. Religion can be (though is not always) more stable than political governments. Religion certainly has been used to get people to act against their own self-interest. Heavy religion-based brainwashing/education from infancy onward could do a lot to stabilize this sort of regime.

[Broomstick]

This self-sufficient city idea was percolating around the back of my head today and I came up with a couple other food options that could increase self-sufficiency, produce nutrition efficiently, and don't require tons of energy.

Insects - insect consumption is quite common in some parts of the world, from various "grubs" or larvae to things like ants or termites or adult forms like locusts. In general, insects convert feed into human compatible proteins, fats, and carbohydrates more efficiently than mammals.

Arthropods - we already eat some of these and called them things like crab, lobster, and crawfish. I'm referring to various centipedes and such which are land based. This would also include spiders. It does not, however, include "woodlice" or "rolly pollies, a type of isopod commonly found in decaying plant materials which reputedly tastes like old urine, only worse.

Fungi - we usually call these "mushrooms", and some of them grow on things we normally view as discards, like woodchips, straw, or manure. Even better, their leavings can then be recycled further into compost. It would also include things like cultivated yeast or "mycoprotein" (our world's brand name for this is "Quorn"). As a bonus, these do not require light.

Spirulina - this has been used as a food by some civilizations, most notably Aztecs and around Lake Chad in Africa, but almost always mixed with something else because it tastes horrible to most people. This is probably a protective measure on the part of the spirulina. However, if you assume genetic engineering (we probably have sufficient for this) you might be able to eliminate the awful taste while keeping the good aspects. See this thread for a prior discussion. Spirulina does require light as it photosynthesizes.

[Simon_Jester]

Use religion as another social control. Religion can be (though is not always) more stable than political governments. Religion certainly has been used to get people to act against their own self-interest. Heavy religion-based brainwashing/education from infancy onward could do a lot to stabilize this sort of regime.

In theory, but... what I'm trying to get at is that there's a lot of potential room for failure points, and that it's necessary to recognize and understand the failure points rather than just say "Oh well nothing's changed in the last five thousand years."

That kind of stasis usually makes for very one-dimensional societies in fiction.

[Broomstick]

True.

For a real-life long term culture sustained with both political and religious structures see Ancient Egypt. Although there were considerable changes along the way it was, nonetheless, a culture that endured for a couple thousand years. Study of such a society should give food for thought.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes- but then, examining the society in this case does tell us a lot about its failure modes, the sort of crises that overwhelmed it on occasion.

That's what I'm getting at. Not "This society will fall, fall I tell you! FAAALL!" But "understand the fracture points, and you understand the culture and how it goes through 'interesting times.'

[Rossum]

As for reducing energy consumption, what if everyone had a PC and was just playing video games or surfing the internet instead of driving around?

Lets say your self-contained buildings have apartment buildings with lots of bedrooms, a dining area, some recreational areas, and bathroom/showers.

Your average citizen eats all their meals in the dining area, uses the community bathrooms and showers, and then goes to their private bedroom that basically has one bed in it and a place to keep their clothes and meager possessions. Their proivate room likely doesn't have much space so they can't really hoard much. They can however use public computers to play video games, surf the net, watch movies, and store all sorts of files on the network or personal thumb drives.

They might have five or so sets of clothes provided by the benevolent government they work under, one or two sets for work and a few others for their off-time. If they want another set of clothes then they contact the clothing distribution center to pick out a new set. Not sure if the system would really regulate how much clothes they can have, but would regulate how much storage space they can put stuff.

The amount of storage area they have for physical possesions is fairly limited. The storage they have for work crafted items (like paintings or building robots for personal use) would be regulated by the government for that sort of stuff (if the section has a room with painting supplies then the room has so much space to store peoples paintings). However, data storage space is virtually unlimited so people can have as many movies, video games, or music they want. If they want to record stuff then thats just fine as well. Heck, media could all be publicly owned and more or less freely distributed (like the whole society has a big Youtube site where everyone posts their own videos and musics for others to watch). If someone creates something interesting and their video/music gets alot of good reviews then the benevolent system might give them some Monetary Credits to buy more flavored gruel from the dining area or whatnot.


So the whole society would be one where everyone sleeps in small bedrooms with a limited amount of space to store personal crap while they use public utilities for pretty much everything else in their life. For entertainment they can surf the net using public computers and use public software and cameras to make videos and stuff. They can buy things but its usually small trades between individuals (trade my painting I painted for your leather jacket you crafted) or maybe buy things from a centralized distribution store. Though the central store likely gives everyone a set amount of food, clothing, and medicine depending on what it deems their needs to be.

[Sarevok]

If we grant that, the root "problem" is still a culture of consumption, not the number of people on the planet.

I put problem in quotes because energy consumption isn't morally wrong.

Morality has nothing to do with. To address the OP self sustaining cities are not possible at current population density.

At most you can have a self sustaining village. Anything that qualifies as a city has far too many people living in every square kilometer. It is not possible to sustain them all with available resources within the city itself.

[Simon_Jester]

And yet the reason for this has nothing to do with energy production. We can produce enough electricity for a city on a small fraction of a city's land area; what we can't do is grow crops for a city on a city's land area. That would require interleaving the farms and apartment blocks. Which, in case you haven't noticed, is exactly what Purple's been proposing all along.

[Broomstick]

Lets say your self-contained buildings have apartment buildings with lots of bedrooms, a dining area, some recreational areas, and bathroom/showers.

Your average citizen eats all their meals in the dining area, uses the community bathrooms and showers, and then goes to their private bedroom that basically has one bed in it and a place to keep their clothes and meager possessions. Their proivate room likely doesn't have much space so they can't really hoard much. They can however use public computers to play video games, surf the net, watch movies, and store all sorts of files on the network or personal thumb drives.

You're talking about dorm living. It's viable, and a very old style of living. See "long house", which has appeared on several continent independently.

They might have five or so sets of clothes provided by the benevolent government they work under, one or two sets for work and a few others for their off-time. If they want another set of clothes then they contact the clothing distribution center to pick out a new set. Not sure if the system would really regulate how much clothes they can have, but would regulate how much storage space they can put stuff.

If it was me, I'd set up the society so that the government issues work uniforms (whatever attire is appropriate to the job) and casual clothes are purchased by the individual.

But I don't think I'd keep them on "flavored gruel". For one thing, with all those gardens around there should be LOTS of vegetables, fruits, nuts, etc. for people to eat. And, it seems to me, that keeping morale high should be important, and one easy way to do that is food - in variety. As a bonus, it keeps your workers healthy and productive.

I'd expect folks would have some access to public kitchen areas for doing their own cooking when the mood strikes them, although most eating would be communal.

And yet the reason for this has nothing to do with energy production. We can produce enough electricity for a city on a small fraction of a city's land area; what we can't do is grow crops for a city on a city's land area. That would require interleaving the farms and apartment blocks. Which, in case you haven't noticed, is exactly what Purple's been proposing all along.

Assuming effectively unlimited energy there's no reason you can't have "vertical farming". Which, again, is being proposed here.

[Sarevok]

And yet the reason for this has nothing to do with energy production. We can produce enough electricity for a city on a small fraction of a city's land area; what we can't do is grow crops for a city on a city's land area. That would require interleaving the farms and apartment blocks. Which, in case you haven't noticed, is exactly what Purple's been proposing all along.

Sorry for being unclear. Energy is not the only problem holding back self sustainable cities. There are other ones as well but energy production IS a major hurdle to overcome.

Consider a large metropolis like New York for instance. The city can consume over11000 megawatts when demand peaks.

Now of course you can generate this amount with coal or gas fired powerplants. But you have to import all the fuel from outside. Does this really fall under self sustainability ?

It seems to me if a city is to be considered self sustaining energy should be one of the things it should produce by itself. Currently the only energy source capable enough to sustain a large city like New York without prohibitive land use is nuclear. But then you run into the problem of placing a fission based nuclear plant within a city of millions. Technical safety issues aside it would be difficult to convince the city's residents amidst current public attitude towards nuclear power.

[Dave]

But then you run into the problem of placing a fission based nuclear plant within a city of millions.

Given modern safety systems and reactor designs, I have zero problems with this suggestion. Can I join the IMBY society for citizens who wish they had a nuke plant next door?

As for convincing the public, isn't that somewhat handwavable given we're talking about fairly controlling governments? A little propaganda, a little education, and some mandatory living accommodations for a few years would work wonders for fixing a societal attitude problem.

[Sarevok]

As for convincing the public, isn't that somewhat handwavable given we're talking about fairly controlling governments? A little propaganda, a little education, and some mandatory living accommodations for a few years would work wonders for fixing a societal attitude problem.

I wonder why the nuclear energy lobby does not do that already. They have the money to run extensive PR campaigns. A few hundred million spent on changing the image of nuclear power would return far far more on the moneys net worth.

[jollyreaper]

It seems to me if a city is to be considered self sustaining energy should be one of the things it should produce by itself. Currently the only energy source capable enough to sustain a large city like New York without prohibitive land use is nuclear. But then you run into the problem of placing a fission based nuclear plant within a city of millions. Technical safety issues aside it would be difficult to convince the city's residents amidst current public attitude towards nuclear power.

Don't forget this is a wartime setting on another world. There might not even be a nuclear prejudice or it would be considered laughable in the face of war. But even here in the States, if you told people it was nuclear or going back to huddling in the cold dark of night you'd see objections fall. I'd say the biggest impediment to nuclear so far has been that fossil fuels have been cheaper, period. And that you can attribute to a mix of geopolitics, domestic politics, technical difficulties, and regulation. Public sentiment might end up being the thing that makes politicians look at all the rest of it and say "fuck it, we'll let 'em die of lung cancer from coal. Nobody's complaining about that."

[Purple]

Alright, here is my attempt two at the idea. This time, same society, same conditions but a completely different goal if you would. The people still get normal apartments and not any dorm style living. There is also no rationing of anything although supply is controlled.

I am no longer looking to make the city self sustaining in terms of food and instead all I want is that each building can grow enough fresh produce to fulfill the day to day needs of the inhabitants and supplement their diet with fresh home grown goods. So the people still have to buy most of their meat and all of their wheat and stuff but they get fresh vegetables and eggs and fruit to go with it.


My idea is that each building will be made with a wide flat roof. The roof will contain a great green hours garden that grows said produce. The garden is tended to by the people of that building as part of their duty to the state to maintain the building. However, how they organize to do this is an internal mater not of the states concern as long as quality is maintained. If they don't they all get fined.

Considering my laws on marriage explained earlier a large number of free bored hands should not be hard to come by. And those who exhibit special love or care for the garden can get all sorts of benefits like tax cuts. And to make sure that works out the state also provides free education on the subject.

Plus, each year the state gives out rewards for the best garden. The rewards include cash and various farming equipment for free plus an appearance on national television and news papers as the best gardeners around. That and a medal.


This all is aimed not only at making a contribution to their diet but also at reinforcing the feeling of belonging to a greater community of people. The ultimate goal would be to make the building be viewed by its inhabitants as some sort of small town of their own that they belong to and the people inside it to see them self as the sort of extended family that you tend to expect from a small town setting. The fact that moving home is illegal except by state edict (when you get a new job you get moved) will help foster this as well.

Another element to this strategy are the parks. Each building is a sort of holowed out box shape with a park in the center.
[][][][][][][][]
[][][][][][][][]
[][][][][][][][]
[][][][][][][][]
[][][][][][][][]
[][][][][][][][]
[][][][][][][][]

Building
Park

The park is tended to in the same way as the garden is and is landscaped entirely out of edible plants. All the trees are apples and oranges, the bushes are blueberries etc. This would preferably be breeds that are highly resistant to environmental factors and easy to maintain.

The park can only be accessed by passing through the building thus providing both a nutritional function but also a safe place for children to play and people to relax in their off hours. This again is meant to help build the spirit of the community. The end idea would be to eliminate the nutritional and social troubles that come from living in a large city and create an ever present feeling of safety and well being for the citizens.


So, tell me what you think of it.

[jollyreaper]

What's the military situation? You'd mentioned it being like a bigger version of the Stalingrad battle but your description sounds more like North Korea where everyone has spent decades prepared for the war that may or may not come. The level of fighting and the weapons in use would indicate whether or not your system is practical. For example, there are certain liberties people would take if they think that putting up the defense is a pretense and there's not really ever going to be a war, if these guys are just the equivalent of garrison troops. But it's a different situation if you're talking about a contentious border where people are getting killed every year and of course a proper all-out shooting war is different from that.

What's the overall tech level?

[Simon_Jester]

What's the military situation? You'd mentioned it being like a bigger version of the Stalingrad battle but your description sounds more like North Korea where everyone has spent decades prepared for the war that may or may not come. The level of fighting and the weapons in use would indicate whether or not your system is practical. For example, there are certain liberties people would take if they think that putting up the defense is a pretense and there's not really ever going to be a war, if these guys are just the equivalent of garrison troops. But it's a different situation if you're talking about a contentious border where people are getting killed every year and of course a proper all-out shooting war is different from that.

Corollary to that: the reason that people (and this isn't just the grunts we're talking about; it's the generals too) take "certain liberties" is very natural. People cannot stand the social strains implicit in industrialized warfare indefinitely. It's just too much, on many levels. The rapid casualties, battles being fought on an incomprehensible scale, the brutal reality that even as a civilian your entire world* can be wiped out almost as an afterthought... it's nothing we evolved to cope with. And it's unlikely any other intelligent species would be all that much difference either.

*Your personal world, the place you know and love, not necessarily the entire planet you happen to live on.

Historically, after four years of prosecuting (for example) World War One, most of the combatants' social structures were starting to come apart at the seams. You had army mutinies in France in 1917, soldiers and workers revolting and forming soviets in Russia in 1917, mass famine and naval mutinies in Germany in 1918, breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire along ethnic lines in 1918...

It wasn't just the military defeats on the front that caused nations to collapse in that war. It was the sheer strategic exhaustion, the volume of blood and treasure sacrificed. Many nations simply no longer had the social capital to hold themselves together in the face of domestic challenges to their authority, and were forced to admit defeat or drastically reorganize just to keep their heads above water.

If you try to maintain society in a state of permanent wartime mobilization (as opposed to 'could have a war at any moment, but haven't had one in decades'), that's a problem. If you satisfy yourself with a lower standard of preparedness, people start cutting corners to ease the burdens of constantly being expected to contribute to the common defense.

[Purple]

The defense angle was scraped a page ago. Consider this proposal a complete reversal of the last idea. I just want to keep the population happy while giving them the feeling of a community and combating urban isolation.