As an urban planner I found this video refreching, but also frustrating. Not because I don't agree with what is said, but becaus it is so hard to actualy get to see the changes. The reason beeing that for the last 40 years our cities has been developed individualy one progject a time. If you are a land owner or project developer you dont want to have half of your plot as a green park. There is no monney in it. So you would not plan for that. And if the goverment said it should be a park here, or green spaces the developers would hust ignore that plot until the goverment changes their mind. Slovly we har though seeing a shift with more regulated green spaces, buss and metro projegts, bikepaths but it is painfully slowly. I am looking forward to the day when the cities are built for humans and not cars, but that is unfortunatly a long way to go.
Well said! I was a planner for nearly a decade and found this to be true as well. It always felt like developers ran the show. The designs that are submitted are negotiated down with the addition of health and safety regulations added by the jurisdictions. The parks, gardens, separated bike paths, etc. are the first things to go if they can get away with it. It's up to the community to place pressure on their local government and participate through general plan and code amendments to really see changes. Also, trying to get the anti-development people on board with policies can be equally part of the problem we are facing as well.
I live in the countryside in the French Alps 1) I have public transportation until my work - mostly because is a public obligation to have transportation for students to go to school and the high-school is 20min from our village, near Grenoble, so we do have public transportation! And it's like this in all of the Isere region 2) we have a producteurs shop in the village with a lot of stuff and a big organic shop less than 10min by bus 3) for the recycling, we have two recycling points and the recycling centre is actually closer to my home then to the big town 😂 All this was important when I decided to go live in the countryside. I truly love working from home 3 times a week, that I can grow a big garden, that I have lots of trees (and fruits)... And I have saved lots more cats 😊 It's really less stressful, I have a need to travel less and enjoy my home and the countryside!
I've travelled on the school bus a few times, sometimes to the stern objection of the driver who insists that the bus is only for students, not the general public, and as I am clearly not a student I am not permitted on the bus. I had to explain a few times that I am indeed not a student at the school - I'm staff.
Fully communal living isn’t for everyone. I’m neurodivergent and have ptsd, and I need a completely private space in order to feel comfortable and safe. I have lived in big share houses most of my adult life, and sometimes the thought of interacting with people keeps me from leaving my room to make food or do chores or it keeps me from coming home. (I hate the feeling of being perceived). I like the idea of an apartment building with a communal kitchen and hang out space, but I want those spaces to be something that you opt into when you’re feeling like it and not a hurdle between me and my bed or food when I’m having a bad day. Bring on the solarpunk cities of the future, but let me have a little home of my own.
I am so relieved folks on the internet began to speak of this dislike of “being perceived” as you said. I didn’t have the right words to describe it to my loved ones, this intense discomfort in being seen or heard at times. It might seem like a little thing, but knowing there are others who also have this discomfort, is oddly comforting! ❤
I mean this is something the Soviets figured out very early on. Sure put people in large, socialized housing blocks, but you better make sure everyone has a private kitchen and bathroom bc people will get in agitated if they don’t have those spaces. I think probably the best way to accommodate these needs aside from full on separate homes is to essentially stack homes so people get the feeling of being in a house with its own space and privacy, but you get some of the benefits of building tall.
Yeah, and a kitchenette can be very small, you can have a micro-apartment set up with a hot plate, air fryer and rice cooker, 6sqm is just fine for this purpose.
Depends how it's done, live in an apartment we have some communal spaces that are up for use, but I still almost never see my neighbours as everyone has their own kitchen and bathroom. It's optional but it's good that it's there (:
i know it's selfish to want to move somewhere less sustainable, but i grew up listening to drunk people yelling at night and loud music and a busy city. honestly i'm just tired of living in a city. i want to not hear sirens all the time, i want to be able to sleep without neighbors yelling on the phone, i want to be able to open the windows at night in the summer without listening to horror movie osts and screams. i want to be able to go for a walk without feeling suffocated by the sheer amount of people on the streets. i'm so tired. i know it might be selfish of me but i just want a house with a small garden close enough to a city to not be ultra isolated. i just want some rest. i find the city beautiful but i can't stand it here anymore. i grew to hate living in the city i love.
Your not selfish for wanting this. The problems are bigger than you and what just one person can do. Tge biggest thing you can do to help the planet is vote, unionize, and protest the government and big businesses. They have the power to make sweeping and long lasting changes in their policies.
Neither places are sustainable at least self-sustainable. The country is dependent on cars, but cities struggle when trash isn't removed from the location, including waste water, snow, salt drainage, chemical cleaners. Issues with flooding increase as paving goes up because the ground able to absorb water quickly is below the tar and for water to penetrate the underlayers it has to be moved through concentration in drains. Plus, she brings up recycling is more efficient but usually 70% of plastic doesn't get recycled simply because it's either almost impossible to repurpose or highly toxic. Then there is the medical needs during things like disease outbreaks which effect more people than they can in a country side because of crowding.
@FranciscaPires Then you want to live in Hamar City in Norway!. Beautiful and mostly quiet neighborhoods above a small sparsely populated, city center, bike paths everywhere, every neighborhood has wide streets etc. Ofc at times you have trimmed teen scooters rolling by at day/nighttime, some loud teens walking outside at night, and once a year the Russ playin music from their party busses as they pass by. But i have no complaints, good night's sleep!.
That’s not selfish. Humans aren’t meant to live in constant noise and surrounded by thousands of humans at once. I do think there is a middle ground in all of this if there was consideration for both human mental health and sustainability. American style suburbs are just not sustainable, but living in constantly noisy tiny apartment high rises is also not mentally sustainable for A LOT of people even though many are forced to stay out of necessity.
As an architect I totaly agree with everything you said. When we bought our house 10 years ago (build in 1935) and introduced ourselves to our neighbours they were surprised that we said we wanted to live sustainable in the city. They also the idea you should live on the countryside for that. But as we live close to a trainstation we don't need to own a car. And we still have a small garden to grow some food!
I live in NYC and hate it here, constantly being surrounded by people has made me realize how much I actually don't like people. The constant yelling, screaming, fighting, not to mention the high rate of poverty and all the joys that come along with that namely you know, crime. The constant blasting of music, all the drug addicts and drunkards strewn about, the vacuousness in constantly being pressured to consume and buy, and the very limited nature, all the while you live in a small box that consumes 50% of your income. Maybe this is "good for the environment" but it's no way to live. There's a reason people sought refuge in the suburbs. The dream for many is to get away from the city, just about every person I know is miserable and hates it here, and this is reflected in people's hostility, and the crime rate. Even if you got rid of cars like many city planners want to do, there's still the issue of crime, homelessness, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, lack of space, and poverty; illiteracy, being prone to violent outbursts, and capitalist hell. If being a better environmentalists means I have to want this than I'll gladly be forfeit my environmentalists card.
Thank you for this video! I was really surprised by what you shared. Ive always thought of really living sustainably as something I can't do until I have a higher income, but because of my low income, I have lived in rented apartments, I bike and take public transport everywhere, and I rely on secondhand goods. I'm learning to make my own clothes with secondhand fabric because I can't afford new clothes and I usually only have meat with dinners. This video was kind of a revelation for me. I've always felt bad for not doing more and told myself I'll do better once I finish school and get a nice job. I think instead I'll focus on what Im doing now and what else I can do to both save money and live sustainably.
Seems you can't easily do MORE. Reduce is a common first step for a reason and that mostly means reducing consumption of new goods - aka you don't buy that new super stylish mug or light fixture because the ones you have are perfectly functional still. Not having disposable income makes these decisions easier (I say, sitting on my second-hand IKEA sofa that was out of production by the time I got it and badly needs replacing, staring at the huge old armoire I hate (dislike the style, also, has not aged well in the thrifting-and-flipping sense, water damage, chipped veneer etc) but can't justify changing out because it works and I got better things to do with my income, so, I know what you mean.) Enough nutritious food is more important than package-free extra ecological food and (to myself) throwing trash out matters more than meticulously separating every single thing if that option leads to 'undecided' trash piling up.
Love this ! I won’t ever move back to the city again as my mental and physical health has been so much better . I think a huge thing is how terrible apartments are in the us . Overpriced , moldy , rude neighbors, no recycling ect. Since moving to a home out in the middle of nowhere I have been able to afford to survive, gotten more than 3 hours of sleep a night ect. The apartments also had terrible access to public transport and constantly towing our car. Also most us cities don’t let you buy apartments you are stuck renting with rent increases every year 😢 I’ve been able to compost, garden, (all secondhand and organic using home compost) plant a pollinator garden and so much more . Alternately I know so many people who love city life and I’m glad it works for them . I hope there is a future for room for both!:) ❤
Unfortunately, at least in my city, you need to make $200k+ to live a nice life in the city. Any less, and you will live in a miserable part of town with crime and zero walk ability/public transit. It really sucks.
@@hogblubbers I grew up in a city like that and with my disabilities that type of pay won’t happen 😂 and it also feels like big cities like that ESPECIALLY in the us aren’t designed with having everyone living comfortably in mind. I hope you live somewhere comfortable and safe!
From Montreal here, in a neighborhood that has been working for many years to create what we call "micro neighborhoods" where everything you need is very close, like a "15-minute city". It's awesome 👍
This is such a dream. But what I'm scared of is that just discussing the benefits of this has seemed to offend many influential figures. Conservative people are literally making up problems and secret agendas we must apparently have, to prevent even the start of this discussion catching on, and it's exhausting. Walkable cities are LITERALLY just spaces for humans to live, designed for humans to take priority over cars and companies. The point is simply finding practical ways to actually make existence pleasant for more than the 1% who can afford to bypass the troubles of urban planning.
I live in an apartment, it's a small building, only 10 units, we have our own private garden, there are several bigger blocks across the road from us, they have a large green park that was created when the "community" was built in the 80's. It has a few park benches and paths. You see people walking their dogs and kids and just sitting in the shade of the trees, it's lovely. I'm also really fortunate to have 4 different bus lines less than 200m from my home and 2 metro lines less than 15 minutes away. 3 supermarkets in less than 500m, a 24 hour pharmacy and lots of other stores. The biggest urban park in the country is just over 2km away, the beach is just over 3 km and I have 2 hospitals, one state, one private less than 1,5km away. I thought that I had downgraded when we moved countries and went from a big house to an apartment, but I really don't think that at all now 😊. I'm glad that I live in a very convenient location 😊
@@lilpetz500 good for you. I hope you won’t have to ask a government bureaucrat permission just to go visit somewhere else. I refuse to be forced to live in one, but if people choose to live in these 15 minute cities then good for them.
I flinched a little bit when you suggested we should all live in smaller apartments and use communal spaces more - but then I reminded myself you're speaking to a global audience, and probably that comment applies more to Americans. I'm in the UK and for a golden period between approx. 1940 and 1970 we had strong state building design guidance about minimum domestic space/size needs - buildings from this period tend to be sized so well (rooms are generous enough to be flexible, but small enough to heat efficiently, and layouts are really functional). I've lived in a 1930s flat that was designed for a middle class bachelor with a live-in servant - so it was actually cramped for 2 people to share, as the servant's spaces (kitchen and bedroom) were little more than large cupboards. And homes from the 1980s onwards often have really awkward layouts and inflexible spaces (because developers were maximising profit by reducing costs per square foot) meaning they "age" poorly in terms of how our domestic needs have changed over the past 40 years. Our new government should bring in space standards again, but something that "turns off" people from living in apartments is a concern space will be cramped with no quick access to the outside. We live in an apartment block built in 1959, and it is one the best homes I've lived in (and I've lived in incredibly modern, "top of the market" apartments in London, as well as growing up in the countryside in a very small town in a fairly sizeable - for the UK - 120 year old terraced house).
I love the idea of efficient living spaces and shared community resources, but it is fundamentally going to need to roll back the capitalist forces to actually work and not be a yet another channel of exploitation. Fundamentally, capitalism has to go. It is anti-human. It is literally the incentive for why profits and the establishments that make them are prioritised over life and wellbeing. And why those not benefiting from it are too exhausted and can't afford to build these communities. How those who are massively benefiting from it, will need to altruistically give up their throne and join the commoners to make these things happen (and never actually seem willing to)
Thank you for this video! I’ve always been a city girl. Although, I grew up in a car centric city in the DR, I’m now living in a “walkable” city in the South of France. I always hear people around me talking about their dreams of moving to the countryside, but it has always given me anxiety. Being so isolated and car dependent is a big no no for me. I hope we can develop more sustainable cities in the future. 🌿
Depending on what we mean by sustainability, I would argue that no room for trees/green areas isn’t sustainable. Climate change adaptation is unfortunately a thing that needs to be considered, and trees make a significant difference to the heat in the area.
My wife and I have a backyard urban vegetable garden and have done so for 15 years, still using the very same EarthBox containers we started with. We only use a small amount of organic (manure) based fertilizer at the beginning of each season. The only pesticide we use is neem oil, on an as needed basis. We use a drip irrigation system to optimize our water usage. We grow primarily herbs like basil, rosemary, and mint, as well as tomatoes. I feel pretty good about the environmental impact of our gardening practices, and it is extremely satisfying to supplement our shopping with delicious fresh herbs and vegetables from the garden.
Future tiny house homesteader here, we didn't really pick this, we literally can not afford to live in any city in the US! We scored super cheap undeveloped land with the onetime payment in 2020. We will be self building, literally, not paying contractors but with our own hands, and/or converting sheds. The local area has no building codes or rules about what you can build on your land. We can't afford rent anywhere, we are basically homeless until we build things. I would love to live in a city, but my disability won't even cover rent on a one bed apt much well utilities! Sometimes survival trumps sustainability, and that sucks! Yes a fireplace is more noxious (maybe, still have coal plants around here) but wood can be acquired for free.
you could also do biogas digestion and convert your waste to methane and use that for heating and design your house for solar heating, in the way if you live in a sunny area but is cold you will rarely use a fire place. passive house as much as possible and build underground
As a city person I am not surprised and am happy for the validation. To me, the countryside sustainability myth is more aspirational and about privilege than helping the environment. Of course sharing space and resources is more sustainable. Also the infrastructure is more sustainable. Schools, hospitals etc can serve more people and those people drive shorter distances. The roads, sewer systems, water systems also serve more people. When I would invite my friends from outside the city to an event such as a concert in the park, they would complain "But the traffic!". My response was, I don't have traffic. I'm already within walking distance. It's the people who aren't already within the hub who have to deal with the traffic and all that entails. Unfortunately, I had to move to a suburb. I am trying to adjust.
Commercial agriculture may produce less carbon to grow, but transportation to large cities increases the footprint quite significantly. Most sustainable is to have large towns that can have land nearby that produces a large amount of it's needs. I personally can't live in built up areas, I am an extremely light sleeper and suffer over sensory issues with noise. We live tiny , in the country sharing other people's land.
40% of veg in America during WW2 was grown on balconies backyards and porches. Commercial agriculture is a soil strip mining operation which requires more and more mineral mining to sustain and all of this requires massive transport.
Thank you for this! I live in a car-centric city that suffers from urban sprawl. I was aware of a lot of this from calculating my carbon footprint years ago and finding it was about 1/3 home utilities, 1/3 car travel (in a small car) and 1/3 everything else put together, including food and banking. Lately I've been getting taken in by the idea that growing one's own food is of the utmost importance. Thank you for the reality check that by moving to a central apartment I have in fact maneuvered my life into a pretty sustainable place already, and undoing that to grow my own veggies doesn't actually make sense. The home and the car use are HUGE impacts.
Thank you for this video! I don't live in the country side but I think this does not apply to a lot of places in Switzerland : you have public transports everywhere, you have to bring to the recycling center your own stuff (no one is coming to your door in most of the regions), we don't have big big companies that produce enormous amount of veggies ( you talked about this mentioning CO2 of a home garden) and we have restrictives laws on pesticides and so on
I live in a rural area of South Brazil. We have a small house, 50m2. We grow part of our food, and buy 60% of our food from local communities and an organic cooperative, and other products from the local market place. We have grocery delivery, organic products, artisanal breads and pizza delivered to our door. We live 4km from the local village and 20km from the city. We have a small local waste management center in the community. We compost the organic portion and treat our own sewage. Wood is one of our energy sources, which is spectacular and could be fairly sustainable. We are reforesting 80% of our 40-acre farm. And of course, our diet is plant-based.
Noise is an issue. Thr constant rumble of a city is wearing. Covid showed how much racket we habitually make. That is my main reason for preferring less densly packed
I mean, there's a reason people gathered in cities. If everybody was owning even a small single family home (we're not even talking about USA suburb houses), the amount of public service things (hospitals, ambulances, police, schools, etc) would need to be much greater, with a lot more administration, and with much more fuel consumption.
villages wouldn't be so bad, I think the economically it would nt work anyway someone would need to be selling land and developing it, and let us build illegal structures that aren't codified in any building codes yet, and would require a Herculean effort in order to talk to government authorities if you want to do it by the book
Seattle, WA USA has a City-run urban gardening program that hosts over 90 gardens (P-Patches) where resident gardeners care for their own small plot but collectively share seeds and gardening equipment (and care for some of the shared spaces). No commercial fertilizers are permitted. I think its a great model and I know other cities do this too. I like the points you make about gardening but also that there are simple solutions to lower emissions! Thanks for the lovely video.
Impact series suggestion!!!!:::::::::: I would love to see your evaluation of people living on wheels. It's very popular now to have a van, schoolie, camper, and live in campground situation or stealth camp in cities, or find a land owner who has space and needs help. There are also tiny homes on wheels or container houses. In my situation, I live in a pop up camper that I can transport with my truck. I work at festivals around America for two months at a time about 30 mins out from the city limits of larger cities. There are so many factors that go into each situation so I know it would be hard to calculate. Although I travel thousands of miles several times a year for work in a non efficient truck, I find that I actually drive less this way. In America, most cities aren't built to support public transportation or biking, walking situations. So when I find myself needing to live in the city, I drive more commuting to work and to friends, and to nature. Here in this community, I live in the same property as work, and as all my friends, and many times the nature I seek is steps away. My home has very little material compared to a normal apartment. Most of the year, I live with no actual running water or power, so I am very conservative of the energy I get when I charge a small battery, and fill and haul my water by hand. I do find that there are not many options for recycling on the road unless you travel to cities with more inclination for drop off recycling centers. And for many, food is definitely not grown when living on the road. I hope to one day build by own tiny home with repurposed materials and live in a tiny home village with my closest friends making a homestead, where we barely ever need to leave our land for necessities. I think this might be the in between we need as humans. A group who can combine resources and efforts, while working with nature, in nature. Get community, food, water, shelter, and connection with nature, all in one place? The idyllic scene you painted here was not so much a community living off the land, but an individual or nuclear family, who is so far from others that they have to still drive to work, friends, and many grocery items too. I'm curious how much the impact would change if you shifted that tiny off grid house in the country, to community of small homes, permaculture gardening together, a big closer to a town but still living off the land
I was so confused when you mentioned peat, I have had my home garden for more than 5 years and I have never touched peat. :') I then went to Google where peat is used largely used and oh wow my eyes open. No urban gardens do not need peat.
Eh the whole deal with peat can be a bit complicated. For those who cannot grow in ground or in large raised bed gardens, peat is one of the few viable options. For potted plants you are pretty much stuck with either peat, coconut coir, or bark based growing mediums. Each of them have their own disadvantages. Coconut coir is, well, made from coconut husks, the problem being that coconuts are only grown in tropical regions of the world, meaning if you live in a place like Europe or North America the coconut coir has to be shipped from thousands of miles away (most of it is produced in India and Southeast Asia). Bark based mediums have the problem of quick decomposition, meaning they have to be replaced every 6-12 months, increasing the carbon footprint. Peat moss is good in that it can last for 5-10 years before needing to be replaced and the physical/chemical/biological properties are about as good as it gets for plant growth. The answer as to whether peat moss should be avoided or not is... as with most things in life... it depends. If you're in a tropical country then coconut coir is the more sustainable option. If you're in Europe where the vast majority of peat bogs have been destroyed already, then bark based mediums are probably best. In North America, where there are vast expanses of peat bogs in Canada, peat might not be a bad option. Canada also has very strict regulations on peat moss harvesting, requiring that the rate of harvest does not exceed the rate at which new peat moss is formed. To put it into perspective, less than 0.03% of peat moss in Canada has been harvested for agricultural use. The major threat to peat bogs is land development, representing about 15% of peat bog destruction.
Thank you for the truth of the plus and minus of an idea. No rose colored glasses but truth. Keep making us all think about our existence in the world not just another marketing ploy. ❤❤❤
Great video! We're so here for the nuance. Re-thinking our built environment is essential to our climate goals, and doing it right will also result in better homes for everyone, whether in the city or the countryside. In the EU, heating and cooling in residential buildings account for 44% of households' greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020, the heating and cooling sector was responsible for about 9% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions. That's why we're advocating for decarbonisation by 2040!
I am lucky to live in one of the best compromise solutions I can imagine. On the outskirts of Berlin, 10min walk to our local forest, 30min hard cardio cycling to work. It's an apartment building but with a balcony that allows for at least the inevitable balcony tomatoes, chilies and herbs and buzzie food plants. It also keeps the flat cooler by several degrees, provides a relaxation space we appreciate the hell out of and always has some buzzies hanging around. I do compost with bokashi buckets or by just mulching with green leftovers as the peat-free compost soil you can get here seems to have come with compost worm eggs in it. It's little in terms of self-sufficiency, but it does feel really good, and it feels like a compromise solution one can work from.
Pesticides? Professional growers of fruit spray up to 20 times per year. No person uses this in their garden ever, because you'd essentially have to not have job to do it - which would sort of make you a professional grower. Few people i know use much peat anymore - it is, again, used by large scale producers. Heating with a fireplace on a homestead is done with 'waste' wood, that is crooked pieces not good enough for construction wood, parts of fruit trees removed for maintenance etc that the industrial producers of the same products will most often just dump into a pile and burn in one go. You need much less transport when you already have most of what you need just growing in front of the house. Also, it is questionable if housing and transport are the biggest issues - it is important to factor in erosion that is caused by modern farming practices, some farms are many feet lower then they used to be (as it is left bare after plowing etc), the carbon content is just released into the air, leaving the soil with very low carbon percentage.
Excellent video, you really shed light on the complexities of these situations. I want to add that I cannot ever live in an apartment, whenever I"ve lived in an apartment, my spirit feels caged. I would love to buy land in the city, but that is much more expensive than I can afford, so likely, if I buy land, I would have to either relocate entirely to a much more affordable city or just buy it somewhere very remotely.
I'm in Strasbourg, with community permaculture garden, biking and walking everywhere, buying my food from local bio producers, enjoying the many parks. Yet, all this year has been a non-stop tour of eco-communities, making me part of that lifestyle. I've seen the increased resource consumption of the countryside, but also the nature restoration, and sometimes, a much less impactful lifestyle. La Ferme Légère was a great example. They had 1 electric car and a few e-bikes for 8 people, produced their food and electricity, heated and cooled the house passively. What appealed most to me is the possibility to escape the need for a job in this Capitalist megamachine to pay my rent and food. It's inspiring, but it's true that better city design can go far. The channel Edenicity talk about better designs, especially once cars are banned within cities.
I think good news about that statistic on home gardens is that the lower emissions methods are also lower cost - compost is one of the most expensive things in home gardening, and pesticides cost a pretty penny too! I'm lucky that I have enough space behind my townhome/rowhouse-style apartment that I may be able to start a little compost pile, and we live backed up right to the woods, so my main pest control is the local birds and pest predators! Since we started putting out birdseed I've hardly had anything eating my leaves. I think it is important for people to remember that on a small scale, and without learning to reuse recycle, vegetable gardening on your own is not a money saver but a hobby that will cost you money, because mass monoculture planting is so vast and cost-optimized (and often subsidized)
Remember, the planet has found the resources and systems to make human thriving happen, that's literally how we got here. We just need to actually mirror them; maybe instead of poisoning all the bugs that eat all the produce humans need to eat, we can prompt the bugs to be part of the system as they fit and be sustenance for birds. Maybe instead of hoarding the ability to meet the needs of millions of people, as some humans are in the form of money and goods, we need to let those resources actually flow into the system and enrich lives. There is more than enough for everyone.
I mean home grown vegetables are always a hobby. You should only do it, if it brings you joy, you've got the time - and you like the taste and freshness more. You will be almost equal to commercial gardening if you are really frugal with money like she mentioned - produce your own compost and use it to improve earth (don't buy new earth or earth improvers), use second hand/older gear from someone else and don't buy much stone/wood to decorate. Don't dig, but try to do permaculture - or at least don't use pesticides. If you also add an insect hotel and some spaces that stay as they are, you've got an oasis. Sadly most of the current home owners and gardeners don't do that - as it is more time consuming, and may look not as picture perfect. There we have to educate and leave stereotypes behind.
Savannah, Georgia, here! We live in an apartment, but very far from the type described. We live on the second floor of a carriage house that was turned into apartments, it is old, poorly insulated, and requires multiple air conditioning units to run at a time in order to not be a legitimate health risk in the extreme heat. However, we will be moving to Virginia soon and purchased a house! I definitely already knew that this was not necessarily the most sustainable thing to do, but as two parents who work from home and have a toddler, Not having that space is simply not an option for us if we want to to keep our jobs. I’m looking forward to finding ways to continue to minimize our impact in this new phase of life!
@@erinfagan405 I feel like there is a majority of people who can live in and WANT to live the city life but I think there’s way more nuance to be discussed around houses and sustainability ESPECIALLY in the usa! Also hi state neighbor I’m in nc lol
I've moved to a small town in Germany in a somewhat rural area (1,5 hour drive to the city). I have noticed most people don't know much about crops or wild gardening and only cover their gardens in lawn and some laurel hedges to make it look neat. No meadows, plants for wildlife, etc. People are often surprised at the amount of crops I've grown with very little money and a lot of DIY. Especially the elderly seem to want to make their yards as neat as possible and then wonder why the one crop they're growing is getting eaten by wildlife. The apartment buildings all have an outside area which is a lawn no one ever uses. In contrast, my university friends in the city make their tiny balconies as green as possible and utilize every space to plant stuff. It's fun to look at. Also, the people in the city tend to care more about the enviroment than the people in the countryside. Things like zero waste or being accepting of veganism. People like to joke about me "Germans grow flowers and lawn while Asians grow crops". I'm half Asian and in Asia I've seen people using every small space to grow stuff like spring onions.
Something that helped me a lot about recognizing what city life can be like in the future is that cities themselves aren't loud, cars are! So much of the background noise where I live would go away with more sustainable transport ❤
Hi, I live in NYC and it's very loud even without cars, the trains, buses, people blasting music every where you go, the constant yelling and screaming, fighting, people standing on the sidewalks selling drugs and blasting the most obscene music. What a joy this is. -_-
I live in a rural area, having lived most of my life in urban areas, and I do recognize some of this in terms of driving, and having to have couriers drive to deliver things to your home. However many of the issues you raise suggest the need for systemic change (ie. greater availability of zero emissions vehicles, local recycling schemes) rather than being simply urban is more sustainable than rural, and also your reference to the totally flawed home growing study was disappointing. There are some really important aspects that you miss, such as high rise apartment buildings use a lot of emissions intensive materials to build, and urban heat problems lead to high usage of air conditioning. A cob and straw structure that can literally biodegrade if left empty, it not less 'sustainable' than a tower block. And also it ignores the fact that ecosystem regeneration and rewilding is more successful with human care (try reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass!). I think the perfect set up will be different for each person, but we know that communities, small cities and towns and most importantly, great zero emissions transport options. I'm glad you raised the 15 minute city topic though...but you never mentioned the fact that this has been hooked on to by the far right conspiracy people. I was attacked recently in the comments thread of a post by the permaculture magazine by people telling me I was naive to see it as an urban planning tool, and that really it's a plan to imprison urban residents!
Thank you, Gittemary, that's a great overview. I suspect, like most on your channel, I already knew this - preaching to the converted. There is a gulf between optimised eco living and human needs. I live in a communal development of 40 houses & flats. It's the most hostile environment I've lived in because one anti-social family has destroyed the community. For this to work, there needs to be a recognition that anti social people need to be removed and placed in lovely sustainable prisons.
The reason for rural living to be “not sustainable “ is if the farmer has to work off the farm. As a child from a farm we didn’t travel daily and we grew most of our food where as having your food trucked from far away places can by no means be truly sustainable. So many of these so called “green or sold as sustainable “ are far from it. Consuming less and buying truly “natural “ goods is my way of being good with our environment. Buying all these gadgetry requiring batteries that contain mined rare minerals, that I must add don’t last long. Not to mention all the really unsustainable unhealthy synthetic clothing, made with plastics, harming us and our environment. Plants need carbon to live to give us oxygen. Someone explain as the govts are pushing for so called “green energy “ at the same time as blocking out the sun to slow this heat problem? Who’s really winning at this game of marketing? I feel we’ve all be bamboozled into this marketing scheme. Fear sells that’s why this whole “world ending” propaganda is being pushed. These folks that’s intentionally pushing these it, (not those who are just naive, we all have that at times), flying private jets, buying huge houses, and having no problem with polluting our planet while increasing their profits all the while telling you and I that we need to live less squished into cities to be sustainable. We need rural, small communities, and even small cities. We need to do the best we can to source locally grown food and handcrafted products. We need reusable items instead of all the disposable products, beyond simply cups and straws. Natural dyes to avoid poisoning our waterways. I’m an original environmentalist, not a carbon footprint believer. We need carbon for life on our planet. All I see with this theoretical “footprint” is only to tax us to death, because carbon is part of life. Go back to science. Carbon to plants, plants then oxygen, oxygen to people and animals. FYI wood burning for heat creates ashes. Those ashes put back into the soil adds minerals for the soil thus minerals for plants that grow your food thus giving people and animals the vital minerals we need. High vitamin and mineral containing food we won’t need to spend money on supplements. All the best.
Farms are not the huge employers they used to be. For most crops, machines long ago replaced the army of labourers. There just aren't that many people employed in agriculture any more. 1.3% of the US population 2022, according to the BLS - and that includes forestry and fishing. There aren't really many 'farmers' in the conventional sense left after decades of consolidation. Small farms have been brought up by larger farms, and those farms are often owned by major companies who just hire wage-labor to run the property. The classic idea of the family-owned farm working their own land isn't entirely dead, but it is a rarity.
I live in developing country, and i feel like its such a different reality. First of all, your "underconsumption" is our "normal"😅 in the countryside we have kinda good infrastructure, mb because we are still at agricultural stage😂 but also we are not as spoiled: i dont have any shops in my tiny village, and if i need to go buy some bread to another village and it will take me around 1.5 hours - im ok with it😅 though when im in the big city i feel like im wasting so much resurses and also time that i can spend on gardening as its sooooo rewarding! But i support green cities and roof gardens and all that anyways 💚
If you are self sustainable and dont need to travel to meet friends or go to work, then living countryside is sustainable. But practically no one lives that way. But also people in city use a lot of energy demanding services just because they are easily available: movie theaters, swimming halls, shopping etc. Also lot of apartment buildings use a lot of energy for warning "dead space" ie. stairways, cellar space etc.
Not surprised. I love the 15 minute living plan. I live in Austin Texas USA so cars dominate our planning. However, I can bike/walk to my store and park. Austin is working hard for net zero emissions by 2040. City,food,, energy,, and transportation planning are set but need full execution. Very good subject and thanks for adressit.
I agree that probably the best option is a city planned with more communal spaces and like that Colombian city where they brought in way more green to help cool things down, but living in Taiwan, the heat island effect is INTENSE particularly in the Taipei downtown because it’s literally in a basin surrounded by mountains. Modern apartments should be built with more awnings, bigger balconies that might support a mini garden, and have rooftop gardens and most vital of all, adequate soundproofing and no shared air ducts so your bathroom fan isn’t bringing in second hand smoke. Capitalism isn’t good about doing any of that yet and housing is already so expensive people are unlikely to push hard for something that will just drive housing prices from unattainable to …lolsob.
I shut that dream of a cob house dead a few years ago ... definitely 'low-key expected', but brilliant video and an excellent presentation. Thank you for sharing.
I'm the chorus, so I loved this. I live in under 280 sq ft, in an urban area, without a car, and I've been a veggie for over 50 years.The wonderful "sustainable" houses far from town drive me nuts.Not only do they cost a fortune and require lots of materials, but just getting the materials and workers to the site burns up a huge amount of gas. Here's an unfortunate additional problem, since you brought up the environmental costs of the building industry. Ready? Almost everything built in the past 70 years should be torn out and replaced. This includes most of the urban automobile infrastructure. San Francisco has already torn down and replaced 2 sections of the old freeway system but we would be better off removing even more of it. Urban areas can't heal from those wounds until the roadways are removed and replaced by something more in tune with urban life. This was a great video and you are really on the right track. Now I want to see if you got any irate comments.... EDIT: Many of the complaints about city living could be addressed with better windows and better sound insulation.
This was great! Our home garden is ultra zero waste because I like to garden for free aka buy no soil, fertilizer, plant starts, etc. I amend the soil with household scraps or homemade compost, fertilize with human pee and blood (what do you think blood meal is, at least I know where mine comes from), and I save my own seeds and trade seeds with other gardeners to cultivate locally adapted plants! We mainly grown squash, onions, greens, and tea because this is what thrives in my area where we have dry conditions and clay soil. Grow what you can with what you’ve got to be sustainable!
It is extremely important to note our environmental sustainability issues are institutionalized, society-wide, and cannot be fixed by our individual actions alone. Change has to come through organized action and incentives to develop environmentally sustainability on a society-wide scale. I've heard a lot of people discussing urban "green spaces" and while I think that's a great start, it still promotes this understanding of "humans" and "the environment" being two separated things. We need to work with the reality that human living is inherently environmental. We should be designing urban ecosystems, places where human impact is intentionally directed to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the local ecosystem. How do we design our infrastructure, our transportation, or our housing with that concept in mind? I admit, that will definitely require some time and creativity, but it's where we need to be headed as a global community.
The US county I live in has a mid sized city, a few small cities a couple tiny cities and several unincorporated "villages" but by land use is mostly rural. There is a lot of bicycle infrastructure connecting the cities and villages to each other and more being built. I'm pretty sure the entire county is within 10 miles of a city or village. In areas even more isolated, bicycles night not help but in a lot of places bicycle/wheelchair infrastructure is going to give a lot of people increased mobility. Unless we are going to surrender all control over to corporations, there needs to be people living in farming villages and the surrounding countryside and those people need access to quality services.
I live in a 38.2 m2 (411 square foot) apartment in Ottawa that is next to a shopping plaza with a small transit hub and is walking distance to several parks/community centres. While it's a great that I live in a "15-minute neighbourhood", Ottawa suffers from "urban sprawl" where the city has amalgamated several smaller communities (e.g., Kanata, Barhaven, Orleans). As a result, public transit has been spread thin causing unreliable service in several areas and many people relying on cars.
The ideal situation would be living in a walkable city, but I can't deal with having walls that are directly connected to my neighbors (anxiety triggered by loud and sudden noises). So I think we also need to take into consideration that some people can't live in very dense areas and make sure there is a robust bus (and train!) system in the more rural areas.
I saw a thread about unconventional ways to improve urban life, and an underrated suggestion I saw; sacrificing a little bit of space efficiency for improved noise proofing and safety in apartments. I too have never really lived in a soundproof, truly private space, and feel so much value in moments of it. I think it would massively improve wellbeing to invest more in true privacy for individuals. Also yeah, as a noise sensitive autistic person, living in rural areas meant no accessible employment and long drives for everything, but living in the city meant unreliable public transport and near permanent usage of noise cancelling headphones in public. The rental crisis has forced my affordability into an area with awkwardly mixed factors; long drive to a train station to be able to access inner city facilities (CBD driving and parking is terrible)
I have lived in soundproof apartments most of my life. In the right buildings you can easily live for years in a huge apartment building and don't know who your neighbours are and even less how their voice sounds or how they spend their time at home. Good infrastructure and buildings make living in the city really enjoyable for most people.
@hannahk.598 this, I would love cities that are built for human wellbeing as a priority. Where houses are intended for as many people as possible to feel safe and happy, rather than whatever maximises income.
It is possible to noiseproof apartments, but it has to be done at construction time - it's expensive and adds very little to the value of the property, so there's no reason for construction firms to go beyond the bare minimum required by law.
@@lilpetz500 Unless you do not have any neighbours in the surrounding area, suburbs or villages, even rural ones, may not be as quiet as you think. At any hours, people may blast loud music from their garages or yards, use power tools of all kinds, roosters crowing at all hours starting at 3:30am, dogs barking, barking, barking, ...
How much does it cost to get food into the cities? How much does it cost to maintain the city infrastructure? What is the carbon emissions of a city compared to a rural area 10x the land area? The sustainability lies in the people’s ability to do two things: consume less energy and consume less products that require logistics. The inefficiency lies in the individuals willingness to make small life changes.
I wasn't surprised by this. I lived in a high-rise condo for seven years and never once had to turn on either the heat or the air conditioner. It stayed at a comfortable temperature ambiently. One mail delivery stop serviced 320 residences. One garbage stop did the same. One water system, one boiler system, one electrical system, one roof, one foundation. There was no need to own a car, because everything was accessible by foot or public transportation. I realized while living there that a high-rise condo building is one of the most energy efficient living configurations around.
I work as a R&D engineer for a modular house/dwelling builder. We make houses and apartments in our factory and than transport it to location, which means we can also move it in 20 years if needed. My focus is on making it all more sustainable, but something that is very difficult is the materials needed to make a house safe. You need plasterboard for fire safety, and when building high appartment buildings (4 floors or more) you almost always need a lot of steel. So I think the impact of one house (even though small) is bigger now than it was a couple years ago...
I'm glad to have found a video that explains the simple point that a city can be much more efficient than people being spread out in the countryside. It's sad to see, however, that many people seem to be unable to arrive at this obvious conclusion themselves...
Moved to the countryside to my boyfriends house two years ago. One thing that's also a struggle is shopping for other things than the average food shop. We need to order many things online because the other option would be driving minimum half an hour by car to the next bigger city to hope you can find what you need there (mostly you don't and still need to order it after that).
I get that you wanted to challenge the assumption that sustainability equals country living. But you definitely oversimplified some things to a degree of misinformation. You assume that country homes are large which is definitely not always true and from this you conclude that heating is a bigger polluter in country homes. When in fact sustainable heating like geothermal energy is much more common and attainable in the countryside. You assume that country people drive, while city people walk or take public transport. Plenty of cities are not walkable and many younger people move to the country side because the internet has made it possible to work remotely and so they probably leave their home much less than city residents. Add to this that in the country people have more room for solar panels or windmills on their property, to provide electricity for both their home and car. Trash can be reduced greatly when you have a composting system and when you can buy from neighboring farms using less packaging than the supermarket. Plus: owning land outside the city is a great way to give areas back to nature that agriculture has taken away. Rooftop gardens are great but you definitely can’t accommodate all species with the air, noise and light pollution that cities have. In terms of human health there’s a massive difference between spending an hour in a city park a few times a week and actually being free of pollution most of the time. Bad sleep is really damaging to your health and studies show that people who sleep next to a trafficked street has greater chance of depression, obesity and other serious lifestyle diseases. I normally think you have very well-researched and nuanced takes so this just seems like a bit of a miss. Hope you’ll consider following up with other perspectives.
Counterpoints : less pessimism (thus increasing the likelihood to make positive environmental change), less bureaucratic drama BS if you want to do even the most basic stuffs (such as rooftop gardening), LESS CONSUMERISM that was caused by all of the stress/insane social ills in the city. Even if rural life is boring/stressful your medicines are right in front of you/just walk a bit further into the woods than before, thus there's little/no need for consumerism (the closest minimarket that sells even the most basic products are 20 min drive anyway). Plus all of your concerns for rural life are easy to fix : 60% - 90% sustainable communal living (reducing the need to travel individually by cars) + vernacular architecture (reducing cement use) + horses/other animals as subtitutes for cars (if possible) + customizable water management system(s) (literally impossible to control if you live in the big city).
When I lived in a very rural area there was no trash pick up. Everyone brought their trash to a comunal recycling center. Because they did this with their vehicles it used way less energy than a big garbage truck. And and the farthest points in town were about four miles from each other, and there was no traffic, so gas use was minimal. Plus because no one really enjoys loading their car with garbage it incentivized people to create less waste. And there was a spot at the recycling center where people would put things they would have thrown away but could still be used. There was no fast fashion and no fast furniture or anything of the sort. Clothes were passed endlessly from family to family and furniture was always scooped up by someone else as soon as it was available. Most things were recycled not by a recycling plant but rather by a community member. And most things were made by local people with local resources. I met the man who built my house. All water came from wells and was disposed of in septic tanks. Everyone knew how to use them and cared a lot about the quality of the ground water, and the quantity as well, because it was a shared, essential, and limited resource. Despite not being zero waste or aesthetic or anything like that, people in rural communities care deeply about their impact on their environment and use considerably less resources than people of more means in urban communities. There is a lot of truth to this video in that isolation, car dependency, etc. is problematic. But there are many rural communities that are more interdependent and use significantly less resources per capita
Many people in a city has a car which makes a big parking lot in a city. Also a lot of people use fossil gas to heat up their apartment and to get warm shower. Also AC in every apartment. I don't find this way of living more sustainable. The way how it's said in video people could live sustainable but they actually don't. When you live in countryside you plan when to go to city or when you go for work, you cold pick groceries on way back etc. - but people in a city they just hop in a car any time and go for groceries whenever they want for even few things
I lived on a 5+ ac off-grid permaculture homestead farm in the middle of the National forest. Prior to that, I lived in Chicago, a big city. Which is more sustainable? I would say that it depends upon your life choices. If you live in the city, use public transportation ALL the time (never commute), walk or ride a folding bike from the train or bus ALL the time (never take a taxi), grow and consume your own food in a nearby rooftop or community garden or a hydroponic setup in your apartment (if you have the space and can afford the space) and NEVER eat out or consume food at work, collect and filter ALL your potable water from rainwater (if it’s legal and pure enough) and never buy or drink and other water, place solar panels on your balcony (if it’s legal and if your patio faces the sun) and never use electricity at work or at the coffee shop, etc. etc., etc. then you could be more sustainable. The vast majority of city dwellers do none of these things. In contrast, My permaculture farm called “Jubilee” did all those things and more. Not just for us but for our neighbors (who traded labor or teaching for fresh food), for the poor and the homeless at local shelters. and for our customers at the local farmers markets, restaurants (some in the big city), our grocery store products (some sold in the city). My farm also provided a home for or livestock, an oasis in a desert of burned out monoculture ag and forestry land for wildlife, educational facilities to train other people in off-grid living, survival courses, local cultural heritage. Space for an art studio (may painting were sold to customers in the big city), quite conducive for writing my books (sold worldwide). I hiked and ran in the local forest and paddled on the local lakes for exercise. I fished and hunted on my farm and in the local lakes and woods. I could also ride my horse in the forest for free. I Produced so much electricity from my Agrosolar farm that I could be a power company (if only the power company would pay me for my electricity at the same rate as I pay them for theirs - no matter, it was more than enough to charge my electric vehicle, electric bike, electric velomobile, by kids electric stuff, pump water uphill so that I could irrigate my entire farm using gravity flow). But the biggest product that my farm produced was my LIBERTY. If you are dependent upon ANY external provider for your subsistence life-support, then THEY OWN YOU. You are their slave and you will do whatever they want to have them continue to supply your life support. You have to work for them and then pay them what you earned to buy your life support. In my case, I provide my life-support. Therefore, I control me and nobody else controls me. I am therefore free to act in a responsible manner in accordance with my conscience - the definition of liberty. Few if any people who live in the big city can say that as they, with few exceptions, are ALL dependent on big business or big government to provide their life-support and are thus owned and controlled by the same. They have zero liberty.
I learned that cities were more sustainable than rural areas when I visited Futurism in Berlin a couple of years ago. (I highly recommend this free immersive museum for anyone who travels that area!) I still live in a rural area, but considering that my workplace is just 200 steps away from my home and I only have to go into town about once a week, I'm doing the best I can while taking advantage of the "fairytale" life!
I live in an appartment right now, renting, and I'm daydreaming about living in a village for privacy and nature related reasons. However I do understand the simple physics that heating a private home in winter will be way more expensive than heating the appartment I live in right now due to a dumb heat loss in every possible direction. That's just heating, not including everything else mentioned in the video. So for a while I'm looking for opportunities to have joned tiny homes for 4-6 families with common yard, as it seems to be the best option for me to still have some degree of privacy but better energy efficiency compared to an isolated house.
Thank you for the analysis ! I lived in a big city for 10 years and I couldn't agree more with what you said. It's easier to be sustainable when you have public transportation and every comodity within a 15 min walk. Right now I live in a small house in a smaller city and it was a must to have a train station. I still work in the big city, but it's only a 20 min train ride from where I live and it improved my health a lot. It's so saddening that cities tend to build new "sustainable" neighbourhoods that are not low-income friendly and do very little to renovate, maintain what already exists. What is heartwarming is that communities advocating for permaculture or sustainable gardening are more and more popular and big ! Little by little, even us, as individuals, can change relatives, friends, neighbours' perspective on sustainable gardening.
After 20 years of living your ideal, I'm trying to leave. I live in a tower block, in a 15 minute town, with great public transport. It's not as much fun as you seem to think it would be. Medium and high density living kinda sucks because of the neighbours, and there being no rules restraining what the neighbours are allowed to do or how much noise they can make. Other city problems can be fixed, as you say in the video. But for some reason this one never gets mentioned...
That's a good point! I have chronic migraines and neighbors (in an apartment building) that throw loud parties sometimes, and something I'm excited about is that the technology for soundproofing and sound cancelation and sound systems that direct sound better are all improving. I think being more strategic about sound isolation could help a bunch ✨️
This "neighbors" issue is much better regulated in some countries like Switzerland and Germany. So it can be managed, just need the laws in place and the enforcement.
@@udishomer5852 Yes, and also a matter of construction quality, in Europe most buildings are made of concrete/mortar/bricks, and thus much better for sound insulation than wood.
I'm actually not very surprised, since I grew up in the countryside, too, and we had the same problem of having to drive everywhere. At some point, every person in my family had their own car. When I got my job in a big city with great public transportation, I decided to retire the only car I had ever owned (and driven for half my life), find an apartment (in an older, bigger complex and with good access to bus, underground and local trains, a mall around the corner, and several parks and green spaces nearby) that was also relatively close to my workplace, so I could manage to get there by bike. It was a very deliberate decision taking all of these aspects into account in order to live a more sustainable life since we are fortunate enough to afford it and my partner and I sifted through hundreds of ads to find a few apartments meeting our criteria. Shockingly, some of the apartments we looked at had no place for bikes whatsoever, not even outside, but our house has a room in the basement with outside access ("Fahrradkeller" in German). I think our neighbourhood is very close to the walkable city ideal. Due to great sound insulation of the building itself and the buses going by being electric, we also don't have to deal with too much noise, even from our neighbours, and we don't even need to turn the heat up too much, benefiting from the heat of all the apartments around us. Yes, apartment life can be both sustainable and comfortable.
Thank you for your video! I knew the basics on this topic, but not so much details. And yes I am one of those people idealising country live because I am so fed up with city live. So maybe there is a chance to save my bubble... The thing is...We have a 110 year old house in the mittle of nowhere were we stay in summer. It's in a village with about 200 inhabitants. There is still a bus about a 7 minutes walk away, that comes every 30 Minutes. The recycling truck comes once a month. At the moment, we live in a large city in an equally old apartment building. We have parks around, we have everything is in walking distance and we have a perfect public transport, so everything is great. But... because it's a rental our warm water and heating is run on gas 😵💫, in summer it gets so hot that a lot of people I know are now buying airconditioning, we have found a method of kind of keeping the temperature down without but it still get's pretty hot. Also a lot of them take the car, because they don't want to sweat in public transport with the peasants and at least in my neighbourhood I have noticed that people spend more time in the parks and it's much more littered than it used to be. I know that we are lucky in the countryside with our infrastructure, but do you think that in this case, the "sustainabilty numbers" could turn and I can stay in my bubble? 😊
My house is 68 years old! I live in western Canada so that is very old by our standards. It has been renovated/modernized. I got a heat pump installed earlier this year to replace the old air conditioner that came with the house and greyly reduce the use of the natural gas furnace in the winter.
Here where I live in Indonesia, there are no many apartments or public transportation. They are individual houses, and everyone moves by motorbike. There is no good waste management here, so it’s almost the same to live in the city center or “country side” because here they have shops, schools etc everywhere. I am moving 20km from the city center and I am planing to make a house from old wood. Hope thats sustainable… because I am not Ok to rent a house here made from concrete and full of humidity. Houses here don’t have space for composting or place were we can separate the trash. And I could have that in my new old house. I hope I can have my own small garden for me and for my neighbors. I want to libe more sustainable, hope I am not making a bad choice moving and making a new house from old materials
I’m never going to live in a big city. I don’t even like staying in them for a few days but I do think how we design cities, with a focus on mental health of inhabitants, is imperative.
I remember learning about the footprint of living in a city vs. living in a rural area years ago. I was a bit sad at first, but ultimately relief settled in.
These big apartment blocks are surely economically sustainable. Socially sustainable, it is not. Literally everyone hates it when they have to live there. They hate noticing their neighbors through constant noises and smells. They hate that they can't actualize themselves by shaping their direct environment. They can't paint their walls how they want. They can't install a satellite dish if they want one, they have super-limited space for growing their own vegetables. And if any of the instalments fails, they are not allowed to repair them themselves and need to pay a company. Down the line, they become less selfreliant, less competent in daily life, less independent. Up to the point that what could be a fulfledged human being has degenerated to a mere consumer.
I guess you are from US. In Europe most people live in flats/blocks and we generally do not have those problems. You need better buildings with better sound insulation. And more civility - in Europe we are losing civility in many areas due to the mass immigration.
@@olga1_____30 I literally live in Germany, born and raised here. And the immigration wouldn't be an issue at all if we were able to respect each other's human dignity, instead of the rich telling the poor to cram themselves into habitation blocks. I lived in one. My grandma lived in one. Friends live or lived in those. All of us hate them. So, respectfully, shove your xenophobia and focus on the class warfare that is being fired by billionaires and politics.
@@Tenajeh Shove your insults and disrespect on those who deserve it. We in Spain (and France, and UK, and ...) are suffering from daily incivility, knive-assaults, machete deaths and rape from african immigrants, yes. Those are the facts and I am sorry you refuse to acklowledge them.
I enjoyed reading about LEED certification in the US- living in a denser urban area, near public transit, libraries, groceries, etc is section to have a green certified home.
We’re not just escaping the traffic, the noise, the garbage, the smog… we are also escaping the drugs, the homeless, and the hectic pace of life. I would rather die than live in a city over 20,000 people again. I’m a mountain girl and need country roads, greenery, animals, trees, and wild spaces. A cultivated park with kids playing ball isn’t bad, but it’s not at all the same. We don’t have to choose between grass or concrete? We do, though. We aren’t free to let plants grow tall or let dandelions thrive. Sad, but true. Choose to live more sustainably wherever you are. I cook on an electric stove many have owned before; it’s 98 yrs old! I wash clothes in the sink and hang them to dry. I take a bath (not daily, far from it) enough with a basin half full. I use a deodorant with a paper wrapper and few chemicals. I save and reuse fabric. I buy little, fix much. I eat less, no soda chips etc in the house. I bake. Yes the bakery can make a cake more efficiently, but not with fewer ingredients and save me money. There are so many things we can do to be more sustainable. Look at everything you bring in, and do better. ❤
I live on a 70 hectare property and I 100% agree with you. We created a nature reserve out of degraded farmland and burnt forest, accesible to anyone, for people with disabilities we made a trail. We grow our own organic food, planted 40.000 native trees 18 years ago and protect the existing forest from ilegal deforestation. All that has a ( environmental) impact as well, we have to drive sometimes with our car to get to places, we burn firewood and unfortunately don't rely on gas that comes from other places. As we are far from a city unfortunately we can't go to restaurants and always have to cook our own food. For most people in the world who live in the countryside it is not a choice but a not so idealistic reality sometimes.
I couldn’t agree more with you. I grew up in the country and driving was an absolute necessity. Now I live in the city and I love being able to walk and ride my bike to most of my necessary destinations. Edited to add: living in a 76 year old 2/1 and hearing that most buildings last only 39 years is 🤯
There is A lot of good info here, but you also made the choice to paint the cities in the best light possible, while putting rural life in the worst. I built my house in western nebraska and it is far more efficient than the apartment i had in Colorado. I built it above and beyond code, and don't even have 20k into the structure. I have an office and bathroom in my shop, as well as some very power hungry tools and my yearly expense on utilities doesn't pass 1k. It has a heat pump and uses a pellet stove (which actually is way more carbon neutral than you would guess) during the four coldest months. I'm 20 minutes from a large town, and 20 minutes on the highway is way better for emissions than 20 minutes in city driving. My half acre garden requires very few inputs because it is properly managed, and every year i get a share of beef raised on my pasture. Majority of cattle emissions come from large feedlots, and especially from the lagoons that they use. I have planted literally thousands of trees and im not even half way done yet. The property gets more lush every year and was designed to become a generational homestead. Now, i am actually a big fan of 15 minute cities, the apartment i had would have been in such a location and yes, we should strive to design cities as such. I park and use local transit when i an in a place that offers it, and i have even rode amtrak more times than i have flown, and i have flown a lot. There is always going to be people living in cities. But there is also so much that can be done in small towns where the cost of living is low and the potential is high. Just a few days ago i was visiting a friend that paid 20k for his house, and half an hour later i was at the state fair. Meanwhile there are people that spend an hour committing across their city to go to work. What really needs to be addressed is the true evil- suburbs.
Public transportation is better in Europe than pretty much anywhere else in the world. I have lived in both cities and out in the country in the USA, and I have never lived in a situation where I didn't need a car. Our public transportation just isn't good enough, and too often, we end up having to take jobs in a different city than the one we live in. Even when living in a city, a carless commute might mean two hours by bus and half an hour of riding your bike the rest of the way. I've only spent a few months living in a place that had a 24 hour bus system, and I've never lived in a place with an actual 'metro.' Everywhere else either had busses that would stop running early in the evening, with large gaps between busses, or was limited only to airport shuttles that ran a couple times a day!
One thing to also consider in this ever heating world is the effect of needing more AC in small city apartments. Before moving to a small countryside town (i use train to travel and bike, no need for a car) I lived in a stone apartment building from the 50’s, which was fantasticly ecologically heated during winter, but with the summer heatwaves it was IMPOSSIBLE to get the inside temperature to drop once it got past 24c, and during the heatwave when it was 28-33c outside for weeks, I could not get it down from 28c inside. No AC, and even if you open the windows during the night and have the blinds on during the day, it doesn’t help as the stone in the building has collected the heat and keeps it in. Shading the buildings with greenery would help, but putting AC in these apartment buildings will crank up the electricity use to sky high during summers so thats not very sustainable. I moved into an old log-house from the 40’s with only fireplaces as the heating, but houses like these keep a pleasant temperature during heatwaves so no need to even run a fan in the summer. And taking good care of old buildings is always better as they’ve been built from materials that last basically forever if you just keep up with the maintanence. Unfortunately many new logbuildings are built with mixedmaterials and plastic within which means they’re not going to stand the test of time. This is always the challenge with countries that have 4seasons, you need to let the building breathe to keep it healthy, but when it breathes it means you’ll loose some heat so it’s not optimised, but it works and has worked for hundreds of years. Also, if the electricity goes down, everything in your house still works. I’d never want to live in a ”smart home” being dependent on a computer.
Units that share walls are more efficent for heating cooling mostly. Expect you are really sitting at the southwest side of a building. Single family homes have much higher demand on AC and most tiny houses are having higher energy demand then similar appartments.
Still country side building do have some pros they are often cooler and more exposed to wind and heating up less expect you are really in places like el paso or Phoenix. Countryside living can be sustainable and calm. A good opportunity can be reusing old structure and modernising those.
@@paxundpeace9970 modernising old structures often ruins them (at least if they’re traditional log houses). But this is why buildings should be made according to the climate they’re in, not what’s in trend. Here (Finland) the brick houses were fine, but summers like these are new in the north and it’s like living in an oven, especially if you have a tiny apartment with only one window. This current summer has been okay, only a couple of weeks around 28c. When I was a kid, we never saw temperatures over 24c during summer, the norm was between 17-21c, and it was considered a heatwave if it was 22c! Now that’s just on the colder side of summer. The weather patterns are more extreme which is a challenge for housing, I’m just speaking out for the old buildings that have been built using materials and methods that have proven to last hundreds of years, you can even leave them unheated and empty for a couple of years with no damage done because they breathe. The one I live in now, this apartment had been empty for over a year, no bad smells, perfectly healthy inside air, just clean up, let the breeze through and chase the damp away with lighting the fire places and it’s good to go. But these kind of building are ruined with modern air heat pumps or putting plastic as insulation. People who want modern comfort should buy modern houses and leave traditional old ones alone, it’s much harder to save these from ruin than to just keep up with the basic maintenance. If you want inside showers, even temperatures with no draft, and AC, don’t choose an old log house.
I just have to point out: a single person having a car, but growing most of their own food would probably have lower emission, than a city where nothing is produced and everything is delivered with trucks/per person. People in the countryside have to ride everywhere, but they have less reasons to drive everywhere if most of the things they need is already in their home.
I live in the states and there is no way I would ever live in a city again. It’s ugly and always feels dirty and unsafe, and there’s no space of your own. I feel incredibly claustrophobic with the buildings towering above me, blocking my view. Not to mention having three kids during covid was rough, even with a yard for them to play in. Being cooped up in an apartment all day with small children, unable to even go out for a walk, much less to a park would have driven me crazy. Being sustainable is awesome, but you also have to do whatever is best for you and anyone who may be dependent on you. For me, that’s doing as much as I can where I am, and that won’t be in a city.
The problem isn't the city, it's how cities in the US are built. My own experience living in cities in Europe is a completely different one from your. I have trees in my street, a huge park nearby, everything is walkable and many streets are perfect for taking a stroll because car traffic is reduced to a minimum. I also lived in the country side for a couple of years as a teenager and I felt trapped because I couldn't go anywhere without someone having to drive me. Streets between villages didn't always have pedestrian and cycle paths, making cycling super uncomfortable and dangerous...etc. I really missed my freedom that I had as a child in the middle of the city. It's simply all about the infrastructure and there is no reason why US cities have to suck. Many European countries also went down the path of car centric infrastructure and reversed it during the last decades. The US could do the same
I Lived in cities in Poland it was shitty exprience. Being dependand on public transport made me feel caged, bicykling was way more dangerus than in country side, way more dangerus dangerus around and in general too many peopole. park and trees on the street don't compare to having your own garden. i was born in country side and went back to living there becouse i missed the freedom and safety of living there. The only thing good in city was that i don't have to worry about heating my apartament and only pay for it.
I think the biggest mental barrier for people is the lack of public spaces in existing metro areas (outside of the ones doing a good job with urban development). This was further ingrained during the COVID lockdowns since people were stuck in their homes. You don’t need much space if there are cost-free shared spaces you can inhabit for free outside of your home that are enjoyable to be in and that have good public transport. But if there aren’t, you need hobby rooms, a garage, a yard, 1-2 cars, storage space, etc. For me, I really enjoy woodworking and gardening. If there were better and more public spaces for those activities (maker spaces, community gardens, etc.), I’d downsize in a heartbeat, but that also leaves you vulnerable to public policy decisions that you don’t have much control over. Additionally, rent should not be the predominant housing solution. It leaves people with zero equity so they have to pay perpetually inflating costs for their housing. There should be more condo-style housing arrangements and apartments should be niche market options available for people temporarily inhabiting the area. You still pay for the maintenance/taxes of the property through communal associations, but you still eventually pay off the mortgage portion of your home.
Yeah, people know that. Less pipes, cables, roads.. we know that. But for the mind is much better to live in a small independent house than in a building with neighbours above, below, and by your side... The car noise, people screaming, strong smells, no nature or parks.... Yeah, I wish I could live away from the city. I don't care if I'll need a car or if it's not sustainable.
As someone who lives in a big city in the United States, it's just simply not affordable. I think thats why country or off grid living is becoming so popular around here. Though i dont think you're talking about the country side living im thinking about. My goal is be self sufficient on my own land, not needing to go into town much at all and hope my kids would like build tiney homes on or near the land so we can all take care of eachother.
I read that study on conventional ag vs gardens. A huge detail that makes the study numbers invalid to me, is that they amortize commercial equipment over a longer timespan than the gardens, based on the assumption that gardens are used for a couple of years only. The numbers will be very different if they authorize the equipment equally, to remove the time variable.
We currently live in a very small apartment in a large building near the metro aka as sustainable as it gets. But the flat is basically just one room and there is four of us in 250 sq feet (24 sq meter), so I am really looking forward to moving to a somewhat bigger house (think 80 sq m) in a smál-ish city. We will still be able to walk to most places or take a train to mayor cities close by and the house itself is build to be sustainable: heat pump, solar panels, reusing water, collecting rainwater etc. For the garden we are poanning to try the no dig method. All of this is to say, nuanse is key!
This was great! I knew most of this before watching, but urban farms were a bit surprising. Everything made sense though. I would love to hear your take on urban food forests from a sustainability perspective! I’ve been researching them more from the city planning side of things, with the intent of allowing for better food availability and less big box grocery store dependence (not sure how it is outside of the US, but it’s awful here) but having new perspectives is always useful:) Thanks for the video!!
I am always guilt-tripping about not growing my own vegetables as we have a little garden in our (as I learned today, very sustainable) compact apartment in a bigger apartment complex. Great to hear that it actually wouldn’t be that sustainable!
You won't be able to sell me your lifestyle in a city 😂🤣😂! I live in the middle of nowhere and I love it. I do my best to live in the most sustainable way. Love your content!
I think we need a good balance of both. Not everyone can live rurally in a sustainable world, but some people need to. Anyways, doing some sustainable activities is always better than none at all
The most environmentally sustainable way to live is to live the shortest life possible and delete oneself. Obviously that’s not a goal we want. I’m still moving towards my countryside life goal
Look into the Soviet urban planning model. We solved the issues of commuting long ago. You can have a green calm environment in the city. In the lovely commie block I grew up in, we had a big communal garden in the backyard. Neighbors cooperated to plant and care for various fruit trees, flowers and herbs. We had benches where elders and children gathered every day. Playground for the kids. Schools and kindergarten were within walking distance. So were 24h shops and most jobs. The soviet model had great urban planning, that planned pedestrian neighborhoods, where nobody had the need for a car because they had every service they needed within walking distance. The capitalist model simply tries to exploit profits to the max, sacrificing consumer needs and comforts. It is not profitable to have blocks with space for people to actually enjoy, it is more profitable to just plop buildings ridiculously close to each other so you can sell more housing units. A system that is focused on extracting the max profit from every single angle is not beneficial for the subjects of said system. If you think that living in the city is bad, it is because you have never seen a good pedestrian-centric city.
Genuinely, I would not mind being stacked into a sustainable appartment box....if I had the chance to actually afford it, and could access autonomy over all my needs from within it. Like, I don't mind sharing things, I've just been brutally taught from a young age to fear sharing things with those who will hoard all the resources and not care if masses go without, like companies and billionaires, or even just smaller scale greedy people. The fantasy of a private homestead is the one of being free and far away from a very artificial threat that appears to be very well sustained systemically. It's an act of giving up on expecting capitalist colonies to actually serve human and global needs. I don't want it to be that way though.
You missed the building footprint. Building with reusable materials compared to concrete is a lot more environmental friendly. And there is still the middle ground where living areas are still in the countryside and also well connected to the next city.... City buildings are build with concrete, but single homes can be built reusable.
@@rohj4825 but how many of them are that old? Here you will find anything older than 1800 in villages not cities. But I have to admit, my homeland is in that regard kind of special, because most of the city buildings burned down 80 years ago - while villages mostly remained unharmed.
As an urban planner I found this video refreching, but also frustrating. Not because I don't agree with what is said, but becaus it is so hard to actualy get to see the changes. The reason beeing that for the last 40 years our cities has been developed individualy one progject a time. If you are a land owner or project developer you dont want to have half of your plot as a green park. There is no monney in it. So you would not plan for that. And if the goverment said it should be a park here, or green spaces the developers would hust ignore that plot until the goverment changes their mind. Slovly we har though seeing a shift with more regulated green spaces, buss and metro projegts, bikepaths but it is painfully slowly. I am looking forward to the day when the cities are built for humans and not cars, but that is unfortunatly a long way to go.
Cut profits to boost quality of people's lives? Dont be silly
Planner here too 🖐
Well said! I was a planner for nearly a decade and found this to be true as well. It always felt like developers ran the show. The designs that are submitted are negotiated down with the addition of health and safety regulations added by the jurisdictions. The parks, gardens, separated bike paths, etc. are the first things to go if they can get away with it. It's up to the community to place pressure on their local government and participate through general plan and code amendments to really see changes. Also, trying to get the anti-development people on board with policies can be equally part of the problem we are facing as well.
I wrote me thesis about placemaking! Its a movement from people to make cities for humans and not for capitalisme. Very interisting!
I don't want " green spaces". I want my yard .
I live in the countryside in the French Alps
1) I have public transportation until my work - mostly because is a public obligation to have transportation for students to go to school and the high-school is 20min from our village, near Grenoble, so we do have public transportation! And it's like this in all of the Isere region
2) we have a producteurs shop in the village with a lot of stuff and a big organic shop less than 10min by bus
3) for the recycling, we have two recycling points and the recycling centre is actually closer to my home then to the big town 😂
All this was important when I decided to go live in the countryside. I truly love working from home 3 times a week, that I can grow a big garden, that I have lots of trees (and fruits)... And I have saved lots more cats 😊
It's really less stressful, I have a need to travel less and enjoy my home and the countryside!
Which city do you live in? I'm moving back to France soon (around Lyon) and this is 100% my dream life, I want in!
@@themotherbeeco I live in Herbeys, near Grenoble
@@anatempass I live in Grenoble! Hi there!
I've travelled on the school bus a few times, sometimes to the stern objection of the driver who insists that the bus is only for students, not the general public, and as I am clearly not a student I am not permitted on the bus. I had to explain a few times that I am indeed not a student at the school - I'm staff.
Fully communal living isn’t for everyone. I’m neurodivergent and have ptsd, and I need a completely private space in order to feel comfortable and safe. I have lived in big share houses most of my adult life, and sometimes the thought of interacting with people keeps me from leaving my room to make food or do chores or it keeps me from coming home. (I hate the feeling of being perceived). I like the idea of an apartment building with a communal kitchen and hang out space, but I want those spaces to be something that you opt into when you’re feeling like it and not a hurdle between me and my bed or food when I’m having a bad day. Bring on the solarpunk cities of the future, but let me have a little home of my own.
I am so relieved folks on the internet began to speak of this dislike of “being perceived” as you said. I didn’t have the right words to describe it to my loved ones, this intense discomfort in being seen or heard at times. It might seem like a little thing, but knowing there are others who also have this discomfort, is oddly comforting! ❤
I mean this is something the Soviets figured out very early on. Sure put people in large, socialized housing blocks, but you better make sure everyone has a private kitchen and bathroom bc people will get in agitated if they don’t have those spaces. I think probably the best way to accommodate these needs aside from full on separate homes is to essentially stack homes so people get the feeling of being in a house with its own space and privacy, but you get some of the benefits of building tall.
@@SizzleCorndog So a condo.
Yeah, and a kitchenette can be very small, you can have a micro-apartment set up with a hot plate, air fryer and rice cooker, 6sqm is just fine for this purpose.
Depends how it's done, live in an apartment we have some communal spaces that are up for use, but I still almost never see my neighbours as everyone has their own kitchen and bathroom. It's optional but it's good that it's there (:
i know it's selfish to want to move somewhere less sustainable, but i grew up listening to drunk people yelling at night and loud music and a busy city. honestly i'm just tired of living in a city. i want to not hear sirens all the time, i want to be able to sleep without neighbors yelling on the phone, i want to be able to open the windows at night in the summer without listening to horror movie osts and screams. i want to be able to go for a walk without feeling suffocated by the sheer amount of people on the streets. i'm so tired. i know it might be selfish of me but i just want a house with a small garden close enough to a city to not be ultra isolated. i just want some rest. i find the city beautiful but i can't stand it here anymore. i grew to hate living in the city i love.
Your not selfish for wanting this. The problems are bigger than you and what just one person can do. Tge biggest thing you can do to help the planet is vote, unionize, and protest the government and big businesses. They have the power to make sweeping and long lasting changes in their policies.
Neither places are sustainable at least self-sustainable. The country is dependent on cars, but cities struggle when trash isn't removed from the location, including waste water, snow, salt drainage, chemical cleaners. Issues with flooding increase as paving goes up because the ground able to absorb water quickly is below the tar and for water to penetrate the underlayers it has to be moved through concentration in drains. Plus, she brings up recycling is more efficient but usually 70% of plastic doesn't get recycled simply because it's either almost impossible to repurpose or highly toxic. Then there is the medical needs during things like disease outbreaks which effect more people than they can in a country side because of crowding.
Earbuds!! Buy good comfortable ones not cheap foamies that pop out and also are disposable rather than cleanable and reusable.
@FranciscaPires Then you want to live in Hamar City in Norway!.
Beautiful and mostly quiet neighborhoods above a small sparsely populated, city center, bike paths everywhere, every neighborhood has wide streets etc.
Ofc at times you have trimmed teen scooters rolling by at day/nighttime, some loud teens walking outside at night, and once a year the Russ playin music from their party busses as they pass by.
But i have no complaints, good night's sleep!.
That’s not selfish. Humans aren’t meant to live in constant noise and surrounded by thousands of humans at once. I do think there is a middle ground in all of this if there was consideration for both human mental health and sustainability. American style suburbs are just not sustainable, but living in constantly noisy tiny apartment high rises is also not mentally sustainable for A LOT of people even though many are forced to stay out of necessity.
As an architect I totaly agree with everything you said. When we bought our house 10 years ago (build in 1935) and introduced ourselves to our neighbours they were surprised that we said we wanted to live sustainable in the city. They also the idea you should live on the countryside for that. But as we live close to a trainstation we don't need to own a car. And we still have a small garden to grow some food!
I live in NYC and hate it here, constantly being surrounded by people has made me realize how much I actually don't like people. The constant yelling, screaming, fighting, not to mention the high rate of poverty and all the joys that come along with that namely you know, crime. The constant blasting of music, all the drug addicts and drunkards strewn about, the vacuousness in constantly being pressured to consume and buy, and the very limited nature, all the while you live in a small box that consumes 50% of your income. Maybe this is "good for the environment" but it's no way to live. There's a reason people sought refuge in the suburbs. The dream for many is to get away from the city, just about every person I know is miserable and hates it here, and this is reflected in people's hostility, and the crime rate. Even if you got rid of cars like many city planners want to do, there's still the issue of crime, homelessness, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, lack of space, and poverty; illiteracy, being prone to violent outbursts, and capitalist hell. If being a better environmentalists means I have to want this than I'll gladly be forfeit my environmentalists card.
Thank you for this video! I was really surprised by what you shared. Ive always thought of really living sustainably as something I can't do until I have a higher income, but because of my low income, I have lived in rented apartments, I bike and take public transport everywhere, and I rely on secondhand goods. I'm learning to make my own clothes with secondhand fabric because I can't afford new clothes and I usually only have meat with dinners. This video was kind of a revelation for me. I've always felt bad for not doing more and told myself I'll do better once I finish school and get a nice job. I think instead I'll focus on what Im doing now and what else I can do to both save money and live sustainably.
Seems you can't easily do MORE. Reduce is a common first step for a reason and that mostly means reducing consumption of new goods - aka you don't buy that new super stylish mug or light fixture because the ones you have are perfectly functional still. Not having disposable income makes these decisions easier (I say, sitting on my second-hand IKEA sofa that was out of production by the time I got it and badly needs replacing, staring at the huge old armoire I hate (dislike the style, also, has not aged well in the thrifting-and-flipping sense, water damage, chipped veneer etc) but can't justify changing out because it works and I got better things to do with my income, so, I know what you mean.) Enough nutritious food is more important than package-free extra ecological food and (to myself) throwing trash out matters more than meticulously separating every single thing if that option leads to 'undecided' trash piling up.
Love this ! I won’t ever move back to the city again as my mental and physical health has been so much better . I think a huge thing is how terrible apartments are in the us . Overpriced , moldy , rude neighbors, no recycling ect. Since moving to a home out in the middle of nowhere I have been able to afford to survive, gotten more than 3 hours of sleep a night ect. The apartments also had terrible access to public transport and constantly towing our car. Also most us cities don’t let you buy apartments you are stuck renting with rent increases every year 😢
I’ve been able to compost, garden, (all secondhand and organic using home compost) plant a pollinator garden and so much more .
Alternately I know so many people who love city life and I’m glad it works for them . I hope there is a future for room for both!:) ❤
Unfortunately, at least in my city, you need to make $200k+ to live a nice life in the city. Any less, and you will live in a miserable part of town with crime and zero walk ability/public transit.
It really sucks.
@@hogblubbers I grew up in a city like that and with my disabilities that type of pay won’t happen 😂 and it also feels like big cities like that ESPECIALLY in the us aren’t designed with having everyone living comfortably in mind. I hope you live somewhere comfortable and safe!
From Montreal here, in a neighborhood that has been working for many years to create what we call "micro neighborhoods" where everything you need is very close, like a "15-minute city". It's awesome 👍
I live in Montreal too. I can't get everywhere I need to go by walking 15 minutes but I can get everything I need by cycling 30 minutes or less.
Aww, I visited a friend in Montreal last October. She lives in the Rosemont/Masson area which I quite liked.
This is such a dream. But what I'm scared of is that just discussing the benefits of this has seemed to offend many influential figures. Conservative people are literally making up problems and secret agendas we must apparently have, to prevent even the start of this discussion catching on, and it's exhausting.
Walkable cities are LITERALLY just spaces for humans to live, designed for humans to take priority over cars and companies. The point is simply finding practical ways to actually make existence pleasant for more than the 1% who can afford to bypass the troubles of urban planning.
I live in an apartment, it's a small building, only 10 units, we have our own private garden, there are several bigger blocks across the road from us, they have a large green park that was created when the "community" was built in the 80's. It has a few park benches and paths. You see people walking their dogs and kids and just sitting in the shade of the trees, it's lovely. I'm also really fortunate to have 4 different bus lines less than 200m from my home and 2 metro lines less than 15 minutes away. 3 supermarkets in less than 500m, a 24 hour pharmacy and lots of other stores. The biggest urban park in the country is just over 2km away, the beach is just over 3 km and I have 2 hospitals, one state, one private less than 1,5km away. I thought that I had downgraded when we moved countries and went from a big house to an apartment, but I really don't think that at all now 😊. I'm glad that I live in a very convenient location 😊
@@lilpetz500 good for you. I hope you won’t have to ask a government bureaucrat permission just to go visit somewhere else. I refuse to be forced to live in one, but if people choose to live in these 15 minute cities then good for them.
I flinched a little bit when you suggested we should all live in smaller apartments and use communal spaces more - but then I reminded myself you're speaking to a global audience, and probably that comment applies more to Americans. I'm in the UK and for a golden period between approx. 1940 and 1970 we had strong state building design guidance about minimum domestic space/size needs - buildings from this period tend to be sized so well (rooms are generous enough to be flexible, but small enough to heat efficiently, and layouts are really functional). I've lived in a 1930s flat that was designed for a middle class bachelor with a live-in servant - so it was actually cramped for 2 people to share, as the servant's spaces (kitchen and bedroom) were little more than large cupboards. And homes from the 1980s onwards often have really awkward layouts and inflexible spaces (because developers were maximising profit by reducing costs per square foot) meaning they "age" poorly in terms of how our domestic needs have changed over the past 40 years.
Our new government should bring in space standards again, but something that "turns off" people from living in apartments is a concern space will be cramped with no quick access to the outside. We live in an apartment block built in 1959, and it is one the best homes I've lived in (and I've lived in incredibly modern, "top of the market" apartments in London, as well as growing up in the countryside in a very small town in a fairly sizeable - for the UK - 120 year old terraced house).
I love the idea of efficient living spaces and shared community resources, but it is fundamentally going to need to roll back the capitalist forces to actually work and not be a yet another channel of exploitation.
Fundamentally, capitalism has to go. It is anti-human. It is literally the incentive for why profits and the establishments that make them are prioritised over life and wellbeing. And why those not benefiting from it are too exhausted and can't afford to build these communities. How those who are massively benefiting from it, will need to altruistically give up their throne and join the commoners to make these things happen (and never actually seem willing to)
Ditto to both above comments. Design can be done well or intentionally for other not-so-well purposes.
Thank you for this video! I’ve always been a city girl. Although, I grew up in a car centric city in the DR, I’m now living in a “walkable” city in the South of France. I always hear people around me talking about their dreams of moving to the countryside, but it has always given me anxiety. Being so isolated and car dependent is a big no no for me. I hope we can develop more sustainable cities in the future. 🌿
Depending on what we mean by sustainability, I would argue that no room for trees/green areas isn’t sustainable. Climate change adaptation is unfortunately a thing that needs to be considered, and trees make a significant difference to the heat in the area.
My wife and I have a backyard urban vegetable garden and have done so for 15 years, still using the very same EarthBox containers we started with. We only use a small amount of organic (manure) based fertilizer at the beginning of each season. The only pesticide we use is neem oil, on an as needed basis. We use a drip irrigation system to optimize our water usage. We grow primarily herbs like basil, rosemary, and mint, as well as tomatoes. I feel pretty good about the environmental impact of our gardening practices, and it is extremely satisfying to supplement our shopping with delicious fresh herbs and vegetables from the garden.
Future tiny house homesteader here, we didn't really pick this, we literally can not afford to live in any city in the US! We scored super cheap undeveloped land with the onetime payment in 2020. We will be self building, literally, not paying contractors but with our own hands, and/or converting sheds. The local area has no building codes or rules about what you can build on your land. We can't afford rent anywhere, we are basically homeless until we build things. I would love to live in a city, but my disability won't even cover rent on a one bed apt much well utilities! Sometimes survival trumps sustainability, and that sucks! Yes a fireplace is more noxious (maybe, still have coal plants around here) but wood can be acquired for free.
Well managed wood lots can be carbon neutral. Using deadfall, coppicing...
Well managed wood lots can be carbon neutral. Using deadfall, coppicing...
@@beth8775it’s not just CO2 though. It’s other pollutants - soot for example. It makes air pollution worse. Especially compared to, say, heat pumps
@@adambrinded70not if you use a gasification burner. The only thing left is water carbon dioxide and a little ash
you could also do biogas digestion and convert your waste to methane and use that for heating and design your house for solar heating, in the way if you live in a sunny area but is cold you will rarely use a fire place. passive house as much as possible and build underground
As a city person I am not surprised and am happy for the validation. To me, the countryside sustainability myth is more aspirational and about privilege than helping the environment.
Of course sharing space and resources is more sustainable. Also the infrastructure is more sustainable. Schools, hospitals etc can serve more people and those people drive shorter distances. The roads, sewer systems, water systems also serve more people.
When I would invite my friends from outside the city to an event such as a concert in the park, they would complain "But the traffic!". My response was, I don't have traffic. I'm already within walking distance. It's the people who aren't already within the hub who have to deal with the traffic and all that entails.
Unfortunately, I had to move to a suburb. I am trying to adjust.
Commercial agriculture may produce less carbon to grow, but transportation to large cities increases the footprint quite significantly. Most sustainable is to have large towns that can have land nearby that produces a large amount of it's needs.
I personally can't live in built up areas, I am an extremely light sleeper and suffer over sensory issues with noise. We live tiny , in the country sharing other people's land.
40% of veg in America during WW2 was grown on balconies backyards and porches. Commercial agriculture is a soil strip mining operation which requires more and more mineral mining to sustain and all of this requires massive transport.
Where did you get that 40% figure? @@davidcanatella4279
Thank you for this! I live in a car-centric city that suffers from urban sprawl. I was aware of a lot of this from calculating my carbon footprint years ago and finding it was about 1/3 home utilities, 1/3 car travel (in a small car) and 1/3 everything else put together, including food and banking. Lately I've been getting taken in by the idea that growing one's own food is of the utmost importance. Thank you for the reality check that by moving to a central apartment I have in fact maneuvered my life into a pretty sustainable place already, and undoing that to grow my own veggies doesn't actually make sense. The home and the car use are HUGE impacts.
Thank you for this video! I don't live in the country side but I think this does not apply to a lot of places in Switzerland : you have public transports everywhere, you have to bring to the recycling center your own stuff (no one is coming to your door in most of the regions), we don't have big big companies that produce enormous amount of veggies ( you talked about this mentioning CO2 of a home garden) and we have restrictives laws on pesticides and so on
I live in a rural area of South Brazil. We have a small house, 50m2. We grow part of our food, and buy 60% of our food from local communities and an organic cooperative, and other products from the local market place. We have grocery delivery, organic products, artisanal breads and pizza delivered to our door. We live 4km from the local village and 20km from the city. We have a small local waste management center in the community. We compost the organic portion and treat our own sewage. Wood is one of our energy sources, which is spectacular and could be fairly sustainable. We are reforesting 80% of our 40-acre farm. And of course, our diet is plant-based.
Noise is an issue. Thr constant rumble of a city is wearing. Covid showed how much racket we habitually make. That is my main reason for preferring less densly packed
If we all head off to live in the countryside, it won't be long before there isn't any countryside.
I mean, there's a reason people gathered in cities. If everybody was owning even a small single family home (we're not even talking about USA suburb houses), the amount of public service things (hospitals, ambulances, police, schools, etc) would need to be much greater, with a lot more administration, and with much more fuel consumption.
villages wouldn't be so bad, I think the economically it would nt work anyway someone would need to be selling land and developing it, and let us build illegal structures that aren't codified in any building codes yet, and would require a Herculean effort in order to talk to government authorities if you want to do it by the book
Only if you are a consumer and dont care about ecosystem regeneration
Seattle, WA USA has a City-run urban gardening program that hosts over 90 gardens (P-Patches) where resident gardeners care for their own small plot but collectively share seeds and gardening equipment (and care for some of the shared spaces). No commercial fertilizers are permitted. I think its a great model and I know other cities do this too. I like the points you make about gardening but also that there are simple solutions to lower emissions! Thanks for the lovely video.
Impact series suggestion!!!!::::::::::
I would love to see your evaluation of people living on wheels. It's very popular now to have a van, schoolie, camper, and live in campground situation or stealth camp in cities, or find a land owner who has space and needs help. There are also tiny homes on wheels or container houses.
In my situation, I live in a pop up camper that I can transport with my truck. I work at festivals around America for two months at a time about 30 mins out from the city limits of larger cities.
There are so many factors that go into each situation so I know it would be hard to calculate.
Although I travel thousands of miles several times a year for work in a non efficient truck, I find that I actually drive less this way. In America, most cities aren't built to support public transportation or biking, walking situations. So when I find myself needing to live in the city, I drive more commuting to work and to friends, and to nature.
Here in this community, I live in the same property as work, and as all my friends, and many times the nature I seek is steps away. My home has very little material compared to a normal apartment. Most of the year, I live with no actual running water or power, so I am very conservative of the energy I get when I charge a small battery, and fill and haul my water by hand. I do find that there are not many options for recycling on the road unless you travel to cities with more inclination for drop off recycling centers. And for many, food is definitely not grown when living on the road.
I hope to one day build by own tiny home with repurposed materials and live in a tiny home village with my closest friends making a homestead, where we barely ever need to leave our land for necessities. I think this might be the in between we need as humans. A group who can combine resources and efforts, while working with nature, in nature. Get community, food, water, shelter, and connection with nature, all in one place?
The idyllic scene you painted here was not so much a community living off the land, but an individual or nuclear family, who is so far from others that they have to still drive to work, friends, and many grocery items too. I'm curious how much the impact would change if you shifted that tiny off grid house in the country, to community of small homes, permaculture gardening together, a big closer to a town but still living off the land
I was so confused when you mentioned peat, I have had my home garden for more than 5 years and I have never touched peat. :') I then went to Google where peat is used largely used and oh wow my eyes open. No urban gardens do not need peat.
Eh the whole deal with peat can be a bit complicated. For those who cannot grow in ground or in large raised bed gardens, peat is one of the few viable options. For potted plants you are pretty much stuck with either peat, coconut coir, or bark based growing mediums. Each of them have their own disadvantages. Coconut coir is, well, made from coconut husks, the problem being that coconuts are only grown in tropical regions of the world, meaning if you live in a place like Europe or North America the coconut coir has to be shipped from thousands of miles away (most of it is produced in India and Southeast Asia). Bark based mediums have the problem of quick decomposition, meaning they have to be replaced every 6-12 months, increasing the carbon footprint.
Peat moss is good in that it can last for 5-10 years before needing to be replaced and the physical/chemical/biological properties are about as good as it gets for plant growth. The answer as to whether peat moss should be avoided or not is... as with most things in life... it depends. If you're in a tropical country then coconut coir is the more sustainable option. If you're in Europe where the vast majority of peat bogs have been destroyed already, then bark based mediums are probably best. In North America, where there are vast expanses of peat bogs in Canada, peat might not be a bad option. Canada also has very strict regulations on peat moss harvesting, requiring that the rate of harvest does not exceed the rate at which new peat moss is formed. To put it into perspective, less than 0.03% of peat moss in Canada has been harvested for agricultural use. The major threat to peat bogs is land development, representing about 15% of peat bog destruction.
I've gotten decent yields just plowing and mulching with locally grown hay, and grass
@@Meleeman011 Growing in ground is always best but the point being it's not possible for everyone.
Thank you for the truth of the plus and minus of an idea. No rose colored glasses but truth. Keep making us all think about our existence in the world not just another marketing ploy. ❤❤❤
Great video! We're so here for the nuance. Re-thinking our built environment is essential to our climate goals, and doing it right will also result in better homes for everyone, whether in the city or the countryside. In the EU, heating and cooling in residential buildings account for 44% of households' greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020, the heating and cooling sector was responsible for about 9% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions. That's why we're advocating for decarbonisation by 2040!
"the average building has a lifetime of 39 years" blew my away. Why are we building so much? There are so many buildings already! Repurpose that shit!
I am lucky to live in one of the best compromise solutions I can imagine. On the outskirts of Berlin, 10min walk to our local forest, 30min hard cardio cycling to work. It's an apartment building but with a balcony that allows for at least the inevitable balcony tomatoes, chilies and herbs and buzzie food plants. It also keeps the flat cooler by several degrees, provides a relaxation space we appreciate the hell out of and always has some buzzies hanging around. I do compost with bokashi buckets or by just mulching with green leftovers as the peat-free compost soil you can get here seems to have come with compost worm eggs in it. It's little in terms of self-sufficiency, but it does feel really good, and it feels like a compromise solution one can work from.
Pesticides? Professional growers of fruit spray up to 20 times per year. No person uses this in their garden ever, because you'd essentially have to not have job to do it - which would sort of make you a professional grower. Few people i know use much peat anymore - it is, again, used by large scale producers. Heating with a fireplace on a homestead is done with 'waste' wood, that is crooked pieces not good enough for construction wood, parts of fruit trees removed for maintenance etc that the industrial producers of the same products will most often just dump into a pile and burn in one go. You need much less transport when you already have most of what you need just growing in front of the house. Also, it is questionable if housing and transport are the biggest issues - it is important to factor in erosion that is caused by modern farming practices, some farms are many feet lower then they used to be (as it is left bare after plowing etc), the carbon content is just released into the air, leaving the soil with very low carbon percentage.
Excellent video, you really shed light on the complexities of these situations. I want to add that I cannot ever live in an apartment, whenever I"ve lived in an apartment, my spirit feels caged. I would love to buy land in the city, but that is much more expensive than I can afford, so likely, if I buy land, I would have to either relocate entirely to a much more affordable city or just buy it somewhere very remotely.
I'm in Strasbourg, with community permaculture garden, biking and walking everywhere, buying my food from local bio producers, enjoying the many parks. Yet, all this year has been a non-stop tour of eco-communities, making me part of that lifestyle. I've seen the increased resource consumption of the countryside, but also the nature restoration, and sometimes, a much less impactful lifestyle. La Ferme Légère was a great example. They had 1 electric car and a few e-bikes for 8 people, produced their food and electricity, heated and cooled the house passively. What appealed most to me is the possibility to escape the need for a job in this Capitalist megamachine to pay my rent and food. It's inspiring, but it's true that better city design can go far. The channel Edenicity talk about better designs, especially once cars are banned within cities.
I think good news about that statistic on home gardens is that the lower emissions methods are also lower cost - compost is one of the most expensive things in home gardening, and pesticides cost a pretty penny too! I'm lucky that I have enough space behind my townhome/rowhouse-style apartment that I may be able to start a little compost pile, and we live backed up right to the woods, so my main pest control is the local birds and pest predators! Since we started putting out birdseed I've hardly had anything eating my leaves.
I think it is important for people to remember that on a small scale, and without learning to reuse recycle, vegetable gardening on your own is not a money saver but a hobby that will cost you money, because mass monoculture planting is so vast and cost-optimized (and often subsidized)
Remember, the planet has found the resources and systems to make human thriving happen, that's literally how we got here.
We just need to actually mirror them; maybe instead of poisoning all the bugs that eat all the produce humans need to eat, we can prompt the bugs to be part of the system as they fit and be sustenance for birds.
Maybe instead of hoarding the ability to meet the needs of millions of people, as some humans are in the form of money and goods, we need to let those resources actually flow into the system and enrich lives. There is more than enough for everyone.
I mean home grown vegetables are always a hobby. You should only do it, if it brings you joy, you've got the time - and you like the taste and freshness more.
You will be almost equal to commercial gardening if you are really frugal with money like she mentioned - produce your own compost and use it to improve earth (don't buy new earth or earth improvers), use second hand/older gear from someone else and don't buy much stone/wood to decorate. Don't dig, but try to do permaculture - or at least don't use pesticides. If you also add an insect hotel and some spaces that stay as they are, you've got an oasis.
Sadly most of the current home owners and gardeners don't do that - as it is more time consuming, and may look not as picture perfect.
There we have to educate and leave stereotypes behind.
Savannah, Georgia, here! We live in an apartment, but very far from the type described. We live on the second floor of a carriage house that was turned into apartments, it is old, poorly insulated, and requires multiple air conditioning units to run at a time in order to not be a legitimate health risk in the extreme heat. However, we will be moving to Virginia soon and purchased a house! I definitely already knew that this was not necessarily the most sustainable thing to do, but as two parents who work from home and have a toddler, Not having that space is simply not an option for us if we want to to keep our jobs. I’m looking forward to finding ways to continue to minimize our impact in this new phase of life!
@@erinfagan405 I feel like there is a majority of people who can live in and WANT to live the city life but I think there’s way more nuance to be discussed around houses and sustainability ESPECIALLY in the usa! Also hi state neighbor I’m in nc lol
I've moved to a small town in Germany in a somewhat rural area (1,5 hour drive to the city). I have noticed most people don't know much about crops or wild gardening and only cover their gardens in lawn and some laurel hedges to make it look neat. No meadows, plants for wildlife, etc. People are often surprised at the amount of crops I've grown with very little money and a lot of DIY. Especially the elderly seem to want to make their yards as neat as possible and then wonder why the one crop they're growing is getting eaten by wildlife. The apartment buildings all have an outside area which is a lawn no one ever uses.
In contrast, my university friends in the city make their tiny balconies as green as possible and utilize every space to plant stuff. It's fun to look at. Also, the people in the city tend to care more about the enviroment than the people in the countryside. Things like zero waste or being accepting of veganism.
People like to joke about me "Germans grow flowers and lawn while Asians grow crops". I'm half Asian and in Asia I've seen people using every small space to grow stuff like spring onions.
Something that helped me a lot about recognizing what city life can be like in the future is that cities themselves aren't loud, cars are! So much of the background noise where I live would go away with more sustainable transport ❤
Hi, I live in NYC and it's very loud even without cars, the trains, buses, people blasting music every where you go, the constant yelling and screaming, fighting, people standing on the sidewalks selling drugs and blasting the most obscene music. What a joy this is. -_-
I live in a rural area, having lived most of my life in urban areas, and I do recognize some of this in terms of driving, and having to have couriers drive to deliver things to your home. However many of the issues you raise suggest the need for systemic change (ie. greater availability of zero emissions vehicles, local recycling schemes) rather than being simply urban is more sustainable than rural, and also your reference to the totally flawed home growing study was disappointing. There are some really important aspects that you miss, such as high rise apartment buildings use a lot of emissions intensive materials to build, and urban heat problems lead to high usage of air conditioning. A cob and straw structure that can literally biodegrade if left empty, it not less 'sustainable' than a tower block. And also it ignores the fact that ecosystem regeneration and rewilding is more successful with human care (try reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass!). I think the perfect set up will be different for each person, but we know that communities, small cities and towns and most importantly, great zero emissions transport options. I'm glad you raised the 15 minute city topic though...but you never mentioned the fact that this has been hooked on to by the far right conspiracy people. I was attacked recently in the comments thread of a post by the permaculture magazine by people telling me I was naive to see it as an urban planning tool, and that really it's a plan to imprison urban residents!
Thank you, Gittemary, that's a great overview. I suspect, like most on your channel, I already knew this - preaching to the converted.
There is a gulf between optimised eco living and human needs. I live in a communal development of 40 houses & flats. It's the most hostile environment I've lived in because one anti-social family has destroyed the community. For this to work, there needs to be a recognition that anti social people need to be removed and placed in lovely sustainable prisons.
100% Agreed!!!
The reason for rural living to be “not sustainable “ is if the farmer has to work off the farm. As a child from a farm we didn’t travel daily and we grew most of our food where as having your food trucked from far away places can by no means be truly sustainable. So many of these so called “green or sold as sustainable “ are far from it. Consuming less and buying truly “natural “ goods is my way of being good with our environment. Buying all these gadgetry requiring batteries that contain mined rare minerals, that I must add don’t last long. Not to mention all the really unsustainable unhealthy synthetic clothing, made with plastics, harming us and our environment. Plants need carbon to live to give us oxygen. Someone explain as the govts are pushing for so called “green energy “ at the same time as blocking out the sun to slow this heat problem? Who’s really winning at this game of marketing? I feel we’ve all be bamboozled into this marketing scheme. Fear sells that’s why this whole “world ending” propaganda is being pushed. These folks that’s intentionally pushing these it, (not those who are just naive, we all have that at times), flying private jets, buying huge houses, and having no problem with polluting our planet while increasing their profits all the while telling you and I that we need to live less squished into cities to be sustainable.
We need rural, small communities, and even small cities. We need to do the best we can to source locally grown food and handcrafted products. We need reusable items instead of all the disposable products, beyond simply cups and straws. Natural dyes to avoid poisoning our waterways. I’m an original environmentalist, not a carbon footprint believer. We need carbon for life on our planet. All I see with this theoretical “footprint” is only to tax us to death, because carbon is part of life. Go back to science. Carbon to plants, plants then oxygen, oxygen to people and animals.
FYI wood burning for heat creates ashes. Those ashes put back into the soil adds minerals for the soil thus minerals for plants that grow your food thus giving people and animals the vital minerals we need. High vitamin and mineral containing food we won’t need to spend money on supplements.
All the best.
Farms are not the huge employers they used to be. For most crops, machines long ago replaced the army of labourers. There just aren't that many people employed in agriculture any more. 1.3% of the US population 2022, according to the BLS - and that includes forestry and fishing.
There aren't really many 'farmers' in the conventional sense left after decades of consolidation. Small farms have been brought up by larger farms, and those farms are often owned by major companies who just hire wage-labor to run the property. The classic idea of the family-owned farm working their own land isn't entirely dead, but it is a rarity.
You are the carbon they want to reduce.
Omg thank you for so much for making this
I live in developing country, and i feel like its such a different reality. First of all, your "underconsumption" is our "normal"😅 in the countryside we have kinda good infrastructure, mb because we are still at agricultural stage😂 but also we are not as spoiled: i dont have any shops in my tiny village, and if i need to go buy some bread to another village and it will take me around 1.5 hours - im ok with it😅 though when im in the big city i feel like im wasting so much resurses and also time that i can spend on gardening as its sooooo rewarding! But i support green cities and roof gardens and all that anyways 💚
May I ask what country you live in?
Yeah same here in Colombia
@@SaraSmiles29 Belarus
Yes...agree..coming from indonesia thos video only relevant for the "first country". I guess we are not counted in the analysis or whatsoever.
If you are self sustainable and dont need to travel to meet friends or go to work, then living countryside is sustainable. But practically no one lives that way.
But also people in city use a lot of energy demanding services just because they are easily available: movie theaters, swimming halls, shopping etc.
Also lot of apartment buildings use a lot of energy for warning "dead space" ie. stairways, cellar space etc.
Not surprised. I love the 15 minute living plan. I live in Austin Texas USA so cars dominate our planning. However, I can bike/walk to my store and park. Austin is working hard for net zero emissions by 2040. City,food,, energy,, and transportation planning are set but need full execution. Very good subject and thanks for adressit.
Person in the country 🙋🏼♀️ I so miss being in town where I can walk or bus most places
I agree that probably the best option is a city planned with more communal spaces and like that Colombian city where they brought in way more green to help cool things down, but living in Taiwan, the heat island effect is INTENSE particularly in the Taipei downtown because it’s literally in a basin surrounded by mountains.
Modern apartments should be built with more awnings, bigger balconies that might support a mini garden, and have rooftop gardens and most vital of all, adequate soundproofing and no shared air ducts so your bathroom fan isn’t bringing in second hand smoke.
Capitalism isn’t good about doing any of that yet and housing is already so expensive people are unlikely to push hard for something that will just drive housing prices from unattainable to …lolsob.
I shut that dream of a cob house dead a few years ago ... definitely 'low-key expected', but brilliant video and an excellent presentation. Thank you for sharing.
I'm the chorus, so I loved this. I live in under 280 sq ft, in an urban area, without a car, and I've been a veggie for over 50 years.The wonderful "sustainable" houses far from town drive me nuts.Not only do they cost a fortune and require lots of materials, but just getting the materials and workers to the site burns up a huge amount of gas.
Here's an unfortunate additional problem, since you brought up the environmental costs of the building industry. Ready? Almost everything built in the past 70 years should be torn out and replaced. This includes most of the urban automobile infrastructure. San Francisco has already torn down and replaced 2 sections of the old freeway system but we would be better off removing even more of it. Urban areas can't heal from those wounds until the roadways are removed and replaced by something more in tune with urban life.
This was a great video and you are really on the right track. Now I want to see if you got any irate comments....
EDIT: Many of the complaints about city living could be addressed with better windows and better sound insulation.
This was great! Our home garden is ultra zero waste because I like to garden for free aka buy no soil, fertilizer, plant starts, etc. I amend the soil with household scraps or homemade compost, fertilize with human pee and blood (what do you think blood meal is, at least I know where mine comes from), and I save my own seeds and trade seeds with other gardeners to cultivate locally adapted plants! We mainly grown squash, onions, greens, and tea because this is what thrives in my area where we have dry conditions and clay soil. Grow what you can with what you’ve got to be sustainable!
It is extremely important to note our environmental sustainability issues are institutionalized, society-wide, and cannot be fixed by our individual actions alone. Change has to come through organized action and incentives to develop environmentally sustainability on a society-wide scale.
I've heard a lot of people discussing urban "green spaces" and while I think that's a great start, it still promotes this understanding of "humans" and "the environment" being two separated things. We need to work with the reality that human living is inherently environmental. We should be designing urban ecosystems, places where human impact is intentionally directed to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the local ecosystem. How do we design our infrastructure, our transportation, or our housing with that concept in mind? I admit, that will definitely require some time and creativity, but it's where we need to be headed as a global community.
The US county I live in has a mid sized city, a few small cities a couple tiny cities and several unincorporated "villages" but by land use is mostly rural. There is a lot of bicycle infrastructure connecting the cities and villages to each other and more being built. I'm pretty sure the entire county is within 10 miles of a city or village. In areas even more isolated, bicycles night not help but in a lot of places bicycle/wheelchair infrastructure is going to give a lot of people increased mobility.
Unless we are going to surrender all control over to corporations, there needs to be people living in farming villages and the surrounding countryside and those people need access to quality services.
I live in a 38.2 m2 (411 square foot) apartment in Ottawa that is next to a shopping plaza with a small transit hub and is walking distance to several parks/community centres. While it's a great that I live in a "15-minute neighbourhood", Ottawa suffers from "urban sprawl" where the city has amalgamated several smaller communities (e.g., Kanata, Barhaven, Orleans). As a result, public transit has been spread thin causing unreliable service in several areas and many people relying on cars.
The ideal situation would be living in a walkable city, but I can't deal with having walls that are directly connected to my neighbors (anxiety triggered by loud and sudden noises). So I think we also need to take into consideration that some people can't live in very dense areas and make sure there is a robust bus (and train!) system in the more rural areas.
I saw a thread about unconventional ways to improve urban life, and an underrated suggestion I saw; sacrificing a little bit of space efficiency for improved noise proofing and safety in apartments.
I too have never really lived in a soundproof, truly private space, and feel so much value in moments of it. I think it would massively improve wellbeing to invest more in true privacy for individuals.
Also yeah, as a noise sensitive autistic person, living in rural areas meant no accessible employment and long drives for everything, but living in the city meant unreliable public transport and near permanent usage of noise cancelling headphones in public.
The rental crisis has forced my affordability into an area with awkwardly mixed factors; long drive to a train station to be able to access inner city facilities (CBD driving and parking is terrible)
I have lived in soundproof apartments most of my life. In the right buildings you can easily live for years in a huge apartment building and don't know who your neighbours are and even less how their voice sounds or how they spend their time at home.
Good infrastructure and buildings make living in the city really enjoyable for most people.
@hannahk.598 this, I would love cities that are built for human wellbeing as a priority. Where houses are intended for as many people as possible to feel safe and happy, rather than whatever maximises income.
It is possible to noiseproof apartments, but it has to be done at construction time - it's expensive and adds very little to the value of the property, so there's no reason for construction firms to go beyond the bare minimum required by law.
@@lilpetz500 Unless you do not have any neighbours in the surrounding area, suburbs or villages, even rural ones, may not be as quiet as you think. At any hours, people may blast loud music from their garages or yards, use power tools of all kinds, roosters crowing at all hours starting at 3:30am, dogs barking, barking, barking, ...
How much does it cost to get food into the cities? How much does it cost to maintain the city infrastructure? What is the carbon emissions of a city compared to a rural area 10x the land area? The sustainability lies in the people’s ability to do two things: consume less energy and consume less products that require logistics. The inefficiency lies in the individuals willingness to make small life changes.
I wasn't surprised by this. I lived in a high-rise condo for seven years and never once had to turn on either the heat or the air conditioner. It stayed at a comfortable temperature ambiently. One mail delivery stop serviced 320 residences. One garbage stop did the same. One water system, one boiler system, one electrical system, one roof, one foundation. There was no need to own a car, because everything was accessible by foot or public transportation. I realized while living there that a high-rise condo building is one of the most energy efficient living configurations around.
My house was built in 1980 and my husband and I plan to live here for another 30-50 years.
House I live in was built in 1910 ( and thankfully not destroyed in world wars) and I hope people will live here another 100 years ( I am renting) :😊
I work as a R&D engineer for a modular house/dwelling builder. We make houses and apartments in our factory and than transport it to location, which means we can also move it in 20 years if needed. My focus is on making it all more sustainable, but something that is very difficult is the materials needed to make a house safe. You need plasterboard for fire safety, and when building high appartment buildings (4 floors or more) you almost always need a lot of steel. So I think the impact of one house (even though small) is bigger now than it was a couple years ago...
Do you take sound insulation into account?
I'm glad to have found a video that explains the simple point that a city can be much more efficient than people being spread out in the countryside.
It's sad to see, however, that many people seem to be unable to arrive at this obvious conclusion themselves...
Moved to the countryside to my boyfriends house two years ago. One thing that's also a struggle is shopping for other things than the average food shop. We need to order many things online because the other option would be driving minimum half an hour by car to the next bigger city to hope you can find what you need there (mostly you don't and still need to order it after that).
I get that you wanted to challenge the assumption that sustainability equals country living. But you definitely oversimplified some things to a degree of misinformation.
You assume that country homes are large which is definitely not always true and from this you conclude that heating is a bigger polluter in country homes. When in fact sustainable heating like geothermal energy is much more common and attainable in the countryside.
You assume that country people drive, while city people walk or take public transport. Plenty of cities are not walkable and many younger people move to the country side because the internet has made it possible to work remotely and so they probably leave their home much less than city residents.
Add to this that in the country people have more room for solar panels or windmills on their property, to provide electricity for both their home and car.
Trash can be reduced greatly when you have a composting system and when you can buy from neighboring farms using less packaging than the supermarket.
Plus: owning land outside the city is a great way to give areas back to nature that agriculture has taken away. Rooftop gardens are great but you definitely can’t accommodate all species with the air, noise and light pollution that cities have.
In terms of human health there’s a massive difference between spending an hour in a city park a few times a week and actually being free of pollution most of the time. Bad sleep is really damaging to your health and studies show that people who sleep next to a trafficked street has greater chance of depression, obesity and other serious lifestyle diseases.
I normally think you have very well-researched and nuanced takes so this just seems like a bit of a miss. Hope you’ll consider following up with other perspectives.
Counterpoints : less pessimism (thus increasing the likelihood to make positive environmental change), less bureaucratic drama BS if you want to do even the most basic stuffs (such as rooftop gardening), LESS CONSUMERISM that was caused by all of the stress/insane social ills in the city. Even if rural life is boring/stressful your medicines are right in front of you/just walk a bit further into the woods than before, thus there's little/no need for consumerism (the closest minimarket that sells even the most basic products are 20 min drive anyway).
Plus all of your concerns for rural life are easy to fix : 60% - 90% sustainable communal living (reducing the need to travel individually by cars) + vernacular architecture (reducing cement use) + horses/other animals as subtitutes for cars (if possible) + customizable water management system(s) (literally impossible to control if you live in the big city).
When I lived in a very rural area there was no trash pick up. Everyone brought their trash to a comunal recycling center. Because they did this with their vehicles it used way less energy than a big garbage truck. And and the farthest points in town were about four miles from each other, and there was no traffic, so gas use was minimal. Plus because no one really enjoys loading their car with garbage it incentivized people to create less waste. And there was a spot at the recycling center where people would put things they would have thrown away but could still be used. There was no fast fashion and no fast furniture or anything of the sort. Clothes were passed endlessly from family to family and furniture was always scooped up by someone else as soon as it was available. Most things were recycled not by a recycling plant but rather by a community member. And most things were made by local people with local resources. I met the man who built my house. All water came from wells and was disposed of in septic tanks. Everyone knew how to use them and cared a lot about the quality of the ground water, and the quantity as well, because it was a shared, essential, and limited resource. Despite not being zero waste or aesthetic or anything like that, people in rural communities care deeply about their impact on their environment and use considerably less resources than people of more means in urban communities. There is a lot of truth to this video in that isolation, car dependency, etc. is problematic. But there are many rural communities that are more interdependent and use significantly less resources per capita
Many people in a city has a car which makes a big parking lot in a city. Also a lot of people use fossil gas to heat up their apartment and to get warm shower. Also AC in every apartment. I don't find this way of living more sustainable. The way how it's said in video people could live sustainable but they actually don't. When you live in countryside you plan when to go to city or when you go for work, you cold pick groceries on way back etc. - but people in a city they just hop in a car any time and go for groceries whenever they want for even few things
I lived on a 5+ ac off-grid permaculture homestead farm in the middle of the National forest. Prior to that, I lived in Chicago, a big city. Which is more sustainable? I would say that it depends upon your life choices. If you live in the city, use public transportation ALL the time (never commute), walk or ride a folding bike from the train or bus ALL the time (never take a taxi), grow and consume your own food in a nearby rooftop or community garden or a hydroponic setup in your apartment (if you have the space and can afford the space) and NEVER eat out or consume food at work, collect and filter ALL your potable water from rainwater (if it’s legal and pure enough) and never buy or drink and other water, place solar panels on your balcony (if it’s legal and if your patio faces the sun) and never use electricity at work or at the coffee shop, etc. etc., etc. then you could be more sustainable. The vast majority of city dwellers do none of these things. In contrast, My permaculture farm called “Jubilee” did all those things and more. Not just for us but for our neighbors (who traded labor or teaching for fresh food), for the poor and the homeless at local shelters. and for our customers at the local farmers markets, restaurants (some in the big city), our grocery store products (some sold in the city). My farm also provided a home for or livestock, an oasis in a desert of burned out monoculture ag and forestry land for wildlife, educational facilities to train other people in off-grid living, survival courses, local cultural heritage. Space for an art studio (may painting were sold to customers in the big city), quite conducive for writing my books (sold worldwide). I hiked and ran in the local forest and paddled on the local lakes for exercise. I fished and hunted on my farm and in the local lakes and woods. I could also ride my horse in the forest for free. I Produced so much electricity from my Agrosolar farm that I could be a power company (if only the power company would pay me for my electricity at the same rate as I pay them for theirs - no matter, it was more than enough to charge my electric vehicle, electric bike, electric velomobile, by kids electric stuff, pump water uphill so that I could irrigate my entire farm using gravity flow). But the biggest product that my farm produced was my LIBERTY. If you are dependent upon ANY external provider for your subsistence life-support, then THEY OWN YOU. You are their slave and you will do whatever they want to have them continue to supply your life support. You have to work for them and then pay them what you earned to buy your life support. In my case, I provide my life-support. Therefore, I control me and nobody else controls me. I am therefore free to act in a responsible manner in accordance with my conscience - the definition of liberty. Few if any people who live in the big city can say that as they, with few exceptions, are ALL dependent on big business or big government to provide their life-support and are thus owned and controlled by the same. They have zero liberty.
I learned that cities were more sustainable than rural areas when I visited Futurism in Berlin a couple of years ago. (I highly recommend this free immersive museum for anyone who travels that area!) I still live in a rural area, but considering that my workplace is just 200 steps away from my home and I only have to go into town about once a week, I'm doing the best I can while taking advantage of the "fairytale" life!
I live in an appartment right now, renting, and I'm daydreaming about living in a village for privacy and nature related reasons. However I do understand the simple physics that heating a private home in winter will be way more expensive than heating the appartment I live in right now due to a dumb heat loss in every possible direction. That's just heating, not including everything else mentioned in the video. So for a while I'm looking for opportunities to have joned tiny homes for 4-6 families with common yard, as it seems to be the best option for me to still have some degree of privacy but better energy efficiency compared to an isolated house.
Thank you for the analysis ! I lived in a big city for 10 years and I couldn't agree more with what you said. It's easier to be sustainable when you have public transportation and every comodity within a 15 min walk. Right now I live in a small house in a smaller city and it was a must to have a train station. I still work in the big city, but it's only a 20 min train ride from where I live and it improved my health a lot. It's so saddening that cities tend to build new "sustainable" neighbourhoods that are not low-income friendly and do very little to renovate, maintain what already exists. What is heartwarming is that communities advocating for permaculture or sustainable gardening are more and more popular and big ! Little by little, even us, as individuals, can change relatives, friends, neighbours' perspective on sustainable gardening.
After 20 years of living your ideal, I'm trying to leave. I live in a tower block, in a 15 minute town, with great public transport.
It's not as much fun as you seem to think it would be. Medium and high density living kinda sucks because of the neighbours, and there being no rules restraining what the neighbours are allowed to do or how much noise they can make.
Other city problems can be fixed, as you say in the video. But for some reason this one never gets mentioned...
That's a good point! I have chronic migraines and neighbors (in an apartment building) that throw loud parties sometimes, and something I'm excited about is that the technology for soundproofing and sound cancelation and sound systems that direct sound better are all improving. I think being more strategic about sound isolation could help a bunch ✨️
This "neighbors" issue is much better regulated in some countries like Switzerland and Germany. So it can be managed, just need the laws in place and the enforcement.
@@udishomer5852 Yes, it is a matter of manners, civility and noise regulations! Switzerland is a paradise.
@@udishomer5852 Yes, and also a matter of construction quality, in Europe most buildings are made of concrete/mortar/bricks, and thus much better for sound insulation than wood.
I'm actually not very surprised, since I grew up in the countryside, too, and we had the same problem of having to drive everywhere. At some point, every person in my family had their own car.
When I got my job in a big city with great public transportation, I decided to retire the only car I had ever owned (and driven for half my life), find an apartment (in an older, bigger complex and with good access to bus, underground and local trains, a mall around the corner, and several parks and green spaces nearby) that was also relatively close to my workplace, so I could manage to get there by bike.
It was a very deliberate decision taking all of these aspects into account in order to live a more sustainable life since we are fortunate enough to afford it and my partner and I sifted through hundreds of ads to find a few apartments meeting our criteria. Shockingly, some of the apartments we looked at had no place for bikes whatsoever, not even outside, but our house has a room in the basement with outside access ("Fahrradkeller" in German). I think our neighbourhood is very close to the walkable city ideal.
Due to great sound insulation of the building itself and the buses going by being electric, we also don't have to deal with too much noise, even from our neighbours, and we don't even need to turn the heat up too much, benefiting from the heat of all the apartments around us.
Yes, apartment life can be both sustainable and comfortable.
City life just makes me wanna cry..... 😭😭😭 Sure... Life is more convenient and sustainable.... but.... I'm dying inside....
Thank you for your video! I knew the basics on this topic, but not so much details. And yes I am one of those people idealising country live because I am so fed up with city live. So maybe there is a chance to save my bubble... The thing is...We have a 110 year old house in the mittle of nowhere were we stay in summer. It's in a village with about 200 inhabitants. There is still a bus about a 7 minutes walk away, that comes every 30 Minutes. The recycling truck comes once a month. At the moment, we live in a large city in an equally old apartment building. We have parks around, we have everything is in walking distance and we have a perfect public transport, so everything is great. But... because it's a rental our warm water and heating is run on gas 😵💫, in summer it gets so hot that a lot of people I know are now buying airconditioning, we have found a method of kind of keeping the temperature down without but it still get's pretty hot. Also a lot of them take the car, because they don't want to sweat in public transport with the peasants and at least in my neighbourhood I have noticed that people spend more time in the parks and it's much more littered than it used to be. I know that we are lucky in the countryside with our infrastructure, but do you think that in this case, the "sustainabilty numbers" could turn and I can stay in my bubble? 😊
My house is 68 years old! I live in western Canada so that is very old by our standards. It has been renovated/modernized. I got a heat pump installed earlier this year to replace the old air conditioner that came with the house and greyly reduce the use of the natural gas furnace in the winter.
Here where I live in Indonesia, there are no many apartments or public transportation. They are individual houses, and everyone moves by motorbike. There is no good waste management here, so it’s almost the same to live in the city center or “country side” because here they have shops, schools etc everywhere. I am moving 20km from the city center and I am planing to make a house from old wood. Hope thats sustainable… because I am not Ok to rent a house here made from concrete and full of humidity. Houses here don’t have space for composting or place were we can separate the trash. And I could have that in my new old house. I hope I can have my own small garden for me and for my neighbors. I want to libe more sustainable, hope I am not making a bad choice moving and making a new house from old materials
These things aren’t inherently unsustainable! A little bit of sustainability is better than none at all. I hope you’re able to get your garden
@@buzzy.bee.crafts thank you, hope not to fall in green washing. I do my researches..
Your plan sounds perfectly sane. There is nothing wrong with wood, if it able to dry so it doesn't rot, it can outlast modern concrete.
I’m never going to live in a big city. I don’t even like staying in them for a few days but I do think how we design cities, with a focus on mental health of inhabitants, is imperative.
I remember learning about the footprint of living in a city vs. living in a rural area years ago. I was a bit sad at first, but ultimately relief settled in.
These big apartment blocks are surely economically sustainable. Socially sustainable, it is not. Literally everyone hates it when they have to live there. They hate noticing their neighbors through constant noises and smells. They hate that they can't actualize themselves by shaping their direct environment. They can't paint their walls how they want. They can't install a satellite dish if they want one, they have super-limited space for growing their own vegetables. And if any of the instalments fails, they are not allowed to repair them themselves and need to pay a company. Down the line, they become less selfreliant, less competent in daily life, less independent. Up to the point that what could be a fulfledged human being has degenerated to a mere consumer.
I guess you are from US. In Europe most people live in flats/blocks and we generally do not have those problems. You need better buildings with better sound insulation. And more civility - in Europe we are losing civility in many areas due to the mass immigration.
@@olga1_____30 I literally live in Germany, born and raised here. And the immigration wouldn't be an issue at all if we were able to respect each other's human dignity, instead of the rich telling the poor to cram themselves into habitation blocks. I lived in one. My grandma lived in one. Friends live or lived in those. All of us hate them. So, respectfully, shove your xenophobia and focus on the class warfare that is being fired by billionaires and politics.
@@Tenajeh Shove your insults and disrespect on those who deserve it. We in Spain (and France, and UK, and ...) are suffering from daily incivility, knive-assaults, machete deaths and rape from african immigrants, yes. Those are the facts and I am sorry you refuse to acklowledge them.
I enjoyed reading about LEED certification in the US- living in a denser urban area, near public transit, libraries, groceries, etc is section to have a green certified home.
We’re not just escaping the traffic, the noise, the garbage, the smog… we are also escaping the drugs, the homeless, and the hectic pace of life.
I would rather die than live in a city over 20,000 people again.
I’m a mountain girl and need country roads, greenery, animals, trees, and wild spaces.
A cultivated park with kids playing ball isn’t bad, but it’s not at all the same.
We don’t have to choose between grass or concrete?
We do, though.
We aren’t free to let plants grow tall or let dandelions thrive.
Sad, but true.
Choose to live more sustainably wherever you are. I cook on an electric stove many have owned before; it’s 98 yrs old!
I wash clothes in the sink and hang them to dry.
I take a bath (not daily, far from it) enough with a basin half full.
I use a deodorant with a paper wrapper and few chemicals.
I save and reuse fabric.
I buy little, fix much.
I eat less, no soda chips etc in the house.
I bake. Yes the bakery can make a cake more efficiently, but not with fewer ingredients and save me money.
There are so many things we can do to be more sustainable. Look at everything you bring in, and do better. ❤
I live on a 70 hectare property and I 100% agree with you.
We created a nature reserve out of degraded farmland and burnt forest, accesible to anyone, for people with disabilities we made a trail.
We grow our own organic food, planted 40.000 native trees 18 years ago and protect the existing forest from ilegal deforestation.
All that has a ( environmental) impact as well, we have to drive sometimes with our car to get to places, we burn firewood and unfortunately don't rely on gas that comes from other places.
As we are far from a city unfortunately we can't go to restaurants and always have to cook our own food.
For most people in the world who live in the countryside it is not a choice but a not so idealistic reality sometimes.
I couldn’t agree more with you. I grew up in the country and driving was an absolute necessity. Now I live in the city and I love being able to walk and ride my bike to most of my necessary destinations.
Edited to add: living in a 76 year old 2/1 and hearing that most buildings last only 39 years is 🤯
There is A lot of good info here, but you also made the choice to paint the cities in the best light possible, while putting rural life in the worst. I built my house in western nebraska and it is far more efficient than the apartment i had in Colorado. I built it above and beyond code, and don't even have 20k into the structure. I have an office and bathroom in my shop, as well as some very power hungry tools and my yearly expense on utilities doesn't pass 1k. It has a heat pump and uses a pellet stove (which actually is way more carbon neutral than you would guess) during the four coldest months. I'm 20 minutes from a large town, and 20 minutes on the highway is way better for emissions than 20 minutes in city driving. My half acre garden requires very few inputs because it is properly managed, and every year i get a share of beef raised on my pasture. Majority of cattle emissions come from large feedlots, and especially from the lagoons that they use. I have planted literally thousands of trees and im not even half way done yet. The property gets more lush every year and was designed to become a generational homestead.
Now, i am actually a big fan of 15 minute cities, the apartment i had would have been in such a location and yes, we should strive to design cities as such. I park and use local transit when i an in a place that offers it, and i have even rode amtrak more times than i have flown, and i have flown a lot. There is always going to be people living in cities. But there is also so much that can be done in small towns where the cost of living is low and the potential is high. Just a few days ago i was visiting a friend that paid 20k for his house, and half an hour later i was at the state fair. Meanwhile there are people that spend an hour committing across their city to go to work.
What really needs to be addressed is the true evil- suburbs.
Public transportation is better in Europe than pretty much anywhere else in the world. I have lived in both cities and out in the country in the USA, and I have never lived in a situation where I didn't need a car. Our public transportation just isn't good enough, and too often, we end up having to take jobs in a different city than the one we live in. Even when living in a city, a carless commute might mean two hours by bus and half an hour of riding your bike the rest of the way. I've only spent a few months living in a place that had a 24 hour bus system, and I've never lived in a place with an actual 'metro.' Everywhere else either had busses that would stop running early in the evening, with large gaps between busses, or was limited only to airport shuttles that ran a couple times a day!
Oh my goodness this was such a fantastic breakdown from highly disparate information sources. 😮 color me impressed. Kudos to you and 🇩🇰 Denmark. 💯 A+
One thing to also consider in this ever heating world is the effect of needing more AC in small city apartments. Before moving to a small countryside town (i use train to travel and bike, no need for a car) I lived in a stone apartment building from the 50’s, which was fantasticly ecologically heated during winter, but with the summer heatwaves it was IMPOSSIBLE to get the inside temperature to drop once it got past 24c, and during the heatwave when it was 28-33c outside for weeks, I could not get it down from 28c inside. No AC, and even if you open the windows during the night and have the blinds on during the day, it doesn’t help as the stone in the building has collected the heat and keeps it in. Shading the buildings with greenery would help, but putting AC in these apartment buildings will crank up the electricity use to sky high during summers so thats not very sustainable.
I moved into an old log-house from the 40’s with only fireplaces as the heating, but houses like these keep a pleasant temperature during heatwaves so no need to even run a fan in the summer. And taking good care of old buildings is always better as they’ve been built from materials that last basically forever if you just keep up with the maintanence. Unfortunately many new logbuildings are built with mixedmaterials and plastic within which means they’re not going to stand the test of time. This is always the challenge with countries that have 4seasons, you need to let the building breathe to keep it healthy, but when it breathes it means you’ll loose some heat so it’s not optimised, but it works and has worked for hundreds of years. Also, if the electricity goes down, everything in your house still works. I’d never want to live in a ”smart home” being dependent on a computer.
Units that share walls are more efficent for heating cooling mostly. Expect you are really sitting at the southwest side of a building.
Single family homes have much higher demand on AC and most tiny houses are having higher energy demand then similar appartments.
Still country side building do have some pros they are often cooler and more exposed to wind and heating up less expect you are really in places like el paso or Phoenix.
Countryside living can be sustainable and calm.
A good opportunity can be reusing old structure and modernising those.
@@paxundpeace9970 modernising old structures often ruins them (at least if they’re traditional log houses). But this is why buildings should be made according to the climate they’re in, not what’s in trend. Here (Finland) the brick houses were fine, but summers like these are new in the north and it’s like living in an oven, especially if you have a tiny apartment with only one window. This current summer has been okay, only a couple of weeks around 28c. When I was a kid, we never saw temperatures over 24c during summer, the norm was between 17-21c, and it was considered a heatwave if it was 22c! Now that’s just on the colder side of summer.
The weather patterns are more extreme which is a challenge for housing, I’m just speaking out for the old buildings that have been built using materials and methods that have proven to last hundreds of years, you can even leave them unheated and empty for a couple of years with no damage done because they breathe. The one I live in now, this apartment had been empty for over a year, no bad smells, perfectly healthy inside air, just clean up, let the breeze through and chase the damp away with lighting the fire places and it’s good to go. But these kind of building are ruined with modern air heat pumps or putting plastic as insulation. People who want modern comfort should buy modern houses and leave traditional old ones alone, it’s much harder to save these from ruin than to just keep up with the basic maintenance. If you want inside showers, even temperatures with no draft, and AC, don’t choose an old log house.
I just have to point out: a single person having a car, but growing most of their own food would probably have lower emission, than a city where nothing is produced and everything is delivered with trucks/per person. People in the countryside have to ride everywhere, but they have less reasons to drive everywhere if most of the things they need is already in their home.
I live in the states and there is no way I would ever live in a city again. It’s ugly and always feels dirty and unsafe, and there’s no space of your own. I feel incredibly claustrophobic with the buildings towering above me, blocking my view. Not to mention having three kids during covid was rough, even with a yard for them to play in. Being cooped up in an apartment all day with small children, unable to even go out for a walk, much less to a park would have driven me crazy. Being sustainable is awesome, but you also have to do whatever is best for you and anyone who may be dependent on you. For me, that’s doing as much as I can where I am, and that won’t be in a city.
The problem isn't the city, it's how cities in the US are built. My own experience living in cities in Europe is a completely different one from your. I have trees in my street, a huge park nearby, everything is walkable and many streets are perfect for taking a stroll because car traffic is reduced to a minimum.
I also lived in the country side for a couple of years as a teenager and I felt trapped because I couldn't go anywhere without someone having to drive me. Streets between villages didn't always have pedestrian and cycle paths, making cycling super uncomfortable and dangerous...etc.
I really missed my freedom that I had as a child in the middle of the city.
It's simply all about the infrastructure and there is no reason why US cities have to suck. Many European countries also went down the path of car centric infrastructure and reversed it during the last decades. The US could do the same
I Lived in cities in Poland it was shitty exprience. Being dependand on public transport made me feel caged, bicykling was way more dangerus than in country side, way more dangerus dangerus around and in general too many peopole. park and trees on the street don't compare to having your own garden. i was born in country side and went back to living there becouse i missed the freedom and safety of living there. The only thing good in city was that i don't have to worry about heating my apartament and only pay for it.
I think the biggest mental barrier for people is the lack of public spaces in existing metro areas (outside of the ones doing a good job with urban development). This was further ingrained during the COVID lockdowns since people were stuck in their homes. You don’t need much space if there are cost-free shared spaces you can inhabit for free outside of your home that are enjoyable to be in and that have good public transport. But if there aren’t, you need hobby rooms, a garage, a yard, 1-2 cars, storage space, etc. For me, I really enjoy woodworking and gardening. If there were better and more public spaces for those activities (maker spaces, community gardens, etc.), I’d downsize in a heartbeat, but that also leaves you vulnerable to public policy decisions that you don’t have much control over. Additionally, rent should not be the predominant housing solution. It leaves people with zero equity so they have to pay perpetually inflating costs for their housing. There should be more condo-style housing arrangements and apartments should be niche market options available for people temporarily inhabiting the area. You still pay for the maintenance/taxes of the property through communal associations, but you still eventually pay off the mortgage portion of your home.
Yeah, people know that. Less pipes, cables, roads.. we know that. But for the mind is much better to live in a small independent house than in a building with neighbours above, below, and by your side... The car noise, people screaming, strong smells, no nature or parks.... Yeah, I wish I could live away from the city. I don't care if I'll need a car or if it's not sustainable.
As someone who lives in a big city in the United States, it's just simply not affordable. I think thats why country or off grid living is becoming so popular around here. Though i dont think you're talking about the country side living im thinking about. My goal is be self sufficient on my own land, not needing to go into town much at all and hope my kids would like build tiney homes on or near the land so we can all take care of eachother.
This video screams that you are a real expert in this area. Very very well done.
I read that study on conventional ag vs gardens. A huge detail that makes the study numbers invalid to me, is that they amortize commercial equipment over a longer timespan than the gardens, based on the assumption that gardens are used for a couple of years only. The numbers will be very different if they authorize the equipment equally, to remove the time variable.
We currently live in a very small apartment in a large building near the metro aka as sustainable as it gets. But the flat is basically just one room and there is four of us in 250 sq feet (24 sq meter), so I am really looking forward to moving to a somewhat bigger house (think 80 sq m) in a smál-ish city. We will still be able to walk to most places or take a train to mayor cities close by and the house itself is build to be sustainable: heat pump, solar panels, reusing water, collecting rainwater etc. For the garden we are poanning to try the no dig method. All of this is to say, nuanse is key!
This was great! I knew most of this before watching, but urban farms were a bit surprising. Everything made sense though. I would love to hear your take on urban food forests from a sustainability perspective! I’ve been researching them more from the city planning side of things, with the intent of allowing for better food availability and less big box grocery store dependence (not sure how it is outside of the US, but it’s awful here) but having new perspectives is always useful:) Thanks for the video!!
We need to think of communities like old villages that provide much for themselves with shared transport to other services in local towns?
I am always guilt-tripping about not growing my own vegetables as we have a little garden in our (as I learned today, very sustainable) compact apartment in a bigger apartment complex. Great to hear that it actually wouldn’t be that sustainable!
You won't be able to sell me your lifestyle in a city 😂🤣😂! I live in the middle of nowhere and I love it. I do my best to live in the most sustainable way. Love your content!
I think we need a good balance of both. Not everyone can live rurally in a sustainable world, but some people need to. Anyways, doing some sustainable activities is always better than none at all
The most environmentally sustainable way to live is to live the shortest life possible and delete oneself. Obviously that’s not a goal we want. I’m still moving towards my countryside life goal
Look into the Soviet urban planning model. We solved the issues of commuting long ago. You can have a green calm environment in the city. In the lovely commie block I grew up in, we had a big communal garden in the backyard. Neighbors cooperated to plant and care for various fruit trees, flowers and herbs. We had benches where elders and children gathered every day. Playground for the kids. Schools and kindergarten were within walking distance. So were 24h shops and most jobs. The soviet model had great urban planning, that planned pedestrian neighborhoods, where nobody had the need for a car because they had every service they needed within walking distance.
The capitalist model simply tries to exploit profits to the max, sacrificing consumer needs and comforts. It is not profitable to have blocks with space for people to actually enjoy, it is more profitable to just plop buildings ridiculously close to each other so you can sell more housing units. A system that is focused on extracting the max profit from every single angle is not beneficial for the subjects of said system. If you think that living in the city is bad, it is because you have never seen a good pedestrian-centric city.
Basic summary of the issiue
Yes - live in the pod and eat the bugs. We know.
Ha Ha exactly.
Thanks so much for this nuanced video. I would be curious to hear what happens when tiny houses are taken into the equation :)
Genuinely, I would not mind being stacked into a sustainable appartment box....if I had the chance to actually afford it, and could access autonomy over all my needs from within it.
Like, I don't mind sharing things, I've just been brutally taught from a young age to fear sharing things with those who will hoard all the resources and not care if masses go without, like companies and billionaires, or even just smaller scale greedy people.
The fantasy of a private homestead is the one of being free and far away from a very artificial threat that appears to be very well sustained systemically.
It's an act of giving up on expecting capitalist colonies to actually serve human and global needs. I don't want it to be that way though.
You missed the building footprint. Building with reusable materials compared to concrete is a lot more environmental friendly. And there is still the middle ground where living areas are still in the countryside and also well connected to the next city....
City buildings are build with concrete, but single homes can be built reusable.
City building can stand for 500 years.
@@rohj4825 but how many of them are that old? Here you will find anything older than 1800 in villages not cities.
But I have to admit, my homeland is in that regard kind of special, because most of the city buildings burned down 80 years ago - while villages mostly remained unharmed.