Once central to rural life, cafe-bistros are closing in the face of depopulation and falling alcohol consumption, but campaigners are seeking new ways forward
After the country-wide quarantine was lifted here in France, I hoped for a moment that we would capitalize on the remote-work experience to push as much employment as possible out of the cities and suburbs and into rural communities, but that never materialized.
I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, I personally prefer more rural living, even though that’s not an option for me at the moment. There’s also something to be said for localized food sources from less monoculture farms.
On the other hand, cities are extremely efficient in delivering services; in a properly designed city, personal transit isn’t really needed at all, and each service can just serve many more people.
The currently-employed “more efficient” farming methods are also only possible by continuing to centralize more and more land under single owners
This I don’t necessarily agree with, at least not in a capitalistic sense. Fewer entities , maybe, but if these are run as worker cooperatives, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.
Granted, this is a problem under the current system where fewer entities ain’t going to be cooperatives more often than not, but this is a wider problem.
heavy use of fertilizers and mono-culture
This is true, but I can’t see how we go back without a population crash. We just can’t sustain the current population without modern farming practices, I don’t think. I think birth rates are finally slowing down, and I’m actually somewhat optimistic we’re, despite some predictions, kind of reaching a natural carrying capacity; but even at our current levels, we’d need a huge shift in society that would push many, many more back to sustenance farming if we had no fertilizers or otherwise modern farming, which I’m not sure is a good thing overall from a human well-being perspective. The current situation is obviously rife with problems as well, I agree with what you’re pointing out.
I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, I personally prefer more rural living, even though that’s not an option for me at the moment. There’s also something to be said for localized food sources from less monoculture farms.
On the other hand, cities are extremely efficient in delivering services; in a properly designed city, personal transit isn’t really needed at all, and each service can just serve many more people.
This I don’t necessarily agree with, at least not in a capitalistic sense. Fewer entities , maybe, but if these are run as worker cooperatives, I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing.
Granted, this is a problem under the current system where fewer entities ain’t going to be cooperatives more often than not, but this is a wider problem.
This is true, but I can’t see how we go back without a population crash. We just can’t sustain the current population without modern farming practices, I don’t think. I think birth rates are finally slowing down, and I’m actually somewhat optimistic we’re, despite some predictions, kind of reaching a natural carrying capacity; but even at our current levels, we’d need a huge shift in society that would push many, many more back to sustenance farming if we had no fertilizers or otherwise modern farming, which I’m not sure is a good thing overall from a human well-being perspective. The current situation is obviously rife with problems as well, I agree with what you’re pointing out.
It’s certainly a tough nut to crack at any rate.