Malthusian Planning
by David Deutsch
The eighteenth century featured a wide variety of thinkers: social and political theorists, philosophers, revolutionaries, scholars, painters, sculptors, musicians, and all kinds of interesting people. Among the more famous ones, at least famous to those of us in the nerd business, was Thomas Malthus. Malthus was one of those deeply insightful—some might say inciteful—kind of guys. At the time, he caused a bit of a panic by postulating, quite logically, that the growing human population was unsustainable. Malthus argued that a limited number of farms could only produce so much food, and that humanity needed to either drastically increase the number of farms or reduce the human population. If they didn't, Malthus said that food would become increasingly scarce to the point that panic, famine, social unrest, and maybe the return of Gozer the Destructor would be imminent (while probably running around screaming in panic). History tends to not be terribly kind to the insightful (see: Socrates, hemlock) nor the inciteful (see: same). Fortunately for us, Malthus' predictions could not foresee one basic premise: that farming would become increasingly efficient, producing far more per acre than ever before. That is why we can now feed much of the world’s growing population on food produced on very small quantities of land.
Even though Malthus was proven wrong in that context, many of his beliefs linger today. The modern world has its own so-called Neo-Malthusians, or people who argue (again, quite logically) that our scarce resources are not replenishing. Like oil, for example. And that even the most advanced extraction techniques will eventually deplete our world of our ancient, finite resources.
Shortcomings notwithstanding, Neo-Malthusian thought could be useful when planning transportation policy, since scarce and depleting resources need to be taken into consideration when planning transit projects. For one thing, there is a scarcity of “equitably distributed employment,” geek-speak for “most jobs are in urban areas and few jobs in rural ones.” If a group of people live in a rural area and the only jobs are in far-flung urban areas, something needs to be built to accommodate them. While I am generally a big proponent of mass transit options, it usually doesn't make sense to build an extensive (and expensive) train system to rural areas. The cost per rider is just so high.
But this creates a very unfortunate paradox: people in rural areas need cars to get to work and need work to get their cars. While commuter rails can often be useful, they are oftentimes located far from where people live, and if they don't get a car they can't get to the train in the first place. By the way, I am not someone who believes that the Earth is vastly overpopulated and that humans need to be spayed, neutered or culled. Anyone who has driven across Texas can tell you just how empty our planet really is. What we may need is more equitable distribution of employment resources in these rural areas or reduced urban job density, or else living in rural areas just won’t be sustainable.
Urban dwellers face a different scarcity dilemma: as urban centers become more and more concentrated, open space becomes more scarce. Malthus might have said that there are only so many people that can be crammed into a finite urban space. While that is technically true, much like farming, advancements in architectural design allow us to cram many, many more people into less and less space than our 18th century predecessors could have possibly fathomed. I wonder how Thomas Malthus would have reacted to a studio apartment in a 50-story skyscraper. Indeed, the Chinese community considers Los Angeles to be a relatively small village; Shanghai's population alone tops at a sardine-like 47 million people. Transportation policy can certainly help to alleviate the stress on this insane density. Like in rural areas, urban planners can zone residents around mass transit projects to discourage auto use as well as distribute housing and living spaces throughout an urban area.
Along these lines is the rarely-mentioned issue of light pollution: when most Angelenos look up at night they are lucky if they see a smattering of stars. Anyone who looks up in a completely pitch-dark area, like a desert or a star party like Stellafane’s in Vermont, instantly understands the need to curb light pollution, which shields one of nature's most wondrous and increasingly scarce resources: the sheer joy of looking at the strip of the Milky Way. The more condensed our cities and urban regions become, and the more random and scattered our transportation becomes, the more stars are shielded from our sights. Poor urban and transportation planning may hinder observatories from doing important scientific work, like monitoring the night sky for giant meteors. Yes, light pollution could indeed create a hazard for humanity by preventing astronomers from monitoring Earth for incoming asteroids. So we need to create transportation policy to make sure stray asteroids don't wipe out Earth's population (although I probably would have been fired as a Federal transportation auditor for even considering this).
These examples, in order of increasing ludicrousness, demonstrate how Thomas Malthus lives with us. His incorrect famine predictions notwithstanding, scarce resources need to be taken into account when planning roads, trains, airports and zoning.
And, of course, giant meteors that might kill us all.
Comments
No comments.