Actually given the fact that both my wife and I can telecommute from our little
town in the hinterlands, we only need rely on transportation in order to shop,
as the nearest source of groceries is about a 20 minute drive away.

We also have no dependencies on neighbors, in fact we would prefer not to have
them as my wife has a lot of allergies to woodsmoke, exhaust, chemicals in
detergents and fabric softeners that often drift by on the breeze etc.

We are also a different demographic than most of the people who live in the
local community - being employed by multinationals rather than local companies.
We effectively live in the country but our tastes run to the cosmopolitan.

Our kids are now grown and have moved away, so we have virtually no contact
with the local community except for the occasional word exchanged with neighbors
over the back yard fence in the summertime. The only local need we could have
would be in the case of an emergency at home. I suppose we could almost be
classified as people who "coccoon", except that we will commute for some of our
entertainment.

In the Greater Toronto Area, which spans about 60 miles, there has been a lot
of conflict recently between the people in the surrounding "greenbelt" areas and
urban developers who want to extend the creeping subdivisions further and
further into farmlands and reserved greenbelt areas. There are a lot of legal
wrangles going on, and accusations that developers are being heavy-handed and
are intimidating groups who oppose them. The developers are suing citizens
groups for damages and court costs incurred in fighting local restrictions
against building more subdivisions.

This is a new phenomenon in this region and has just started to have an
impact. The resisters are just beginning to get more organized as a result,
forming limited liability organizations to carry on the struggle.

Phil

g_baka2002 <g_baka2002@...> wrote:
Been pretty quiet here, so let's give it a stir with something a
little controversial.

Greg
****

The physical structure and layout of the proposed urban/rural
arrangement in the following article sounds a lot like Penturbia -
but the reasoning behind it is new.

What do you think?

Redefining Urban and Rural: Cooperation in a Time of Local Need

By Susan Duncan, 2-19-08
http://www.newwest.net/city/article/redefining_urban_and_rural_coopera
tion_in_a_time_of_local_need/C396/L396/
-or- http://tinyurl.com/yqdnj9

Neighbors need each other, just as agriculture and urban areas need
each other. "When they don't get along, it threatens the security of
everyone," says Susan Duncan. In this column, she discusses our
imminent dependence on local resources where rural and urban areas
will be looking to each other for products and needs. Where does this
leave cooperation?

SNIP

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