NO FUTURE FOR MEGAPOLIS
E.F. Schumacher
MODERN
URBANISATION, as we all know, is a very recent thing. Although the first cities
arose some 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, the kind of metropolis or megalopolis which we now
accept as ‘normal’ is a good deal less than a hundred years old.
Kingsley
Davis, one of the best known students of the subject, said a few years ago:
“Clearly the world as a whole is not fully urbanised, but it soon will be.” One
may wonder on what he bases this prediction. I suspect it is based on little
more than past and current trends. As a statistician, I am never happy with the
extrapolation of trends, unless I can get some understanding of what lies
behind the trends themselves, what has made them possible and what keeps them
going. Kingsley Davis holds that “urbanised societies, in which a majority of
the people live crowded together in towns and cities, represent a new and
fundamental step in man’s social evolution”. I do not know whether he means to
offer this thought as an explanation of the past hundred years, during which
this “new and fundamental step” was taken in so many parts of the world, or as
a justification for his assumption that full urbanisation of the world as a
whole will soon be implemented. The idea of a new and fundamental step in human
social evolution seems to suggest something which, once accomplished, will
stay for good. But here lies the very question: Why did it happen? What are the
forces that have made it happen? What is the material basis of this happening, and
is this material basis permanent or perhaps impermanent? The idea of evolution
may be a useful way of describing the past, but rarely serves to explain it,
and when it comes to the future its predictive value is more than doubtful.
To
obtain another view of this astonishing phenomenon — a majority of the people
crowding together in towns and cities — we might remind ourselves of the
well-known fact that seventy percent of the citizens of the United States, and
comparable proportions in other industrial countries, live in cities occupying
little over one percent of the total land space. This gives some idea of the
degree of concentration. “The large and dense agglomerations comprising the
urban population,” says Kingsley Davis, “...exceed in size the communities of any other large
animal; they suggest the behaviour of communal insects rather than of mammals.”
For mammals to behave like communal insects may be described as a new and fundamental
step in their social evolution, but it is not immediately apparent that it is a
step in the right direction.
Towns
and cities consist of a huge variety of more or less permanent structures, and
that is why it cannot be a waste of time for those responsible for these
structures to give some thought to the kind of questions I have raised. What is
the relevant ‘time horizon’? Buildings made of stone or concrete are not
erected with the idea of early destruction. If they are to stand up at all,
their basic structure must be sound, and if they are able to stand up for ten
years, there is no reason to believe that they cannot equally well stand up for
a hundred years and even a lot more, given a reasonable amount of care and
maintenance. If I were an architect, this thought, I suspect, would worry me,
even to the point of paralysis, which is no doubt a sufficient reason for my
not having become an architect. Doctors and surgeons, to give an obvious
example, are in an easier position. Their worst mistakes are quickly buried.
But the mistakes of architects remain in the fullest evidence for countless
generations!
All I
wish to point out, or rather to recall to mind, is that the relevant ‘time
horizon’ for anyone concerned with permanent structures is formidably long.
These structures do not merely have to ‘fit’ today; they have to continue to be
‘fitting’ for a very long time. Some civilisations have drawn the conclusion
that they could not take it upon themselves to enter, as it were, a commitment
for an indefinite, and possibly very long period; so they used only such building
materials as were subject to a ‘normal’ rate of decay: wood, bamboo sticks, or
even paper. Other civilisations, like medieval Europe, drew the conclusion that
buildings, being ‘of the nature of eternity’, could and should not be subjected
to the economic calculus, like other human artifacts: only the best would be
good enough; only something worthy of being dedicated to the glory of God would
be worthy of the dignity of human beings. And if this aspiration could not be
fulfilled in all cases, it was certainly fulfilled with regard to the great
majority of prominent buildings. Our
civilisation disposes of building materials of a truly awe-inspiring
durability. Some of the bomb shelters built for what was happily thought of as
a strictly temporary emergency during the last war, are of such
indestructibility that the cost of demolishing them is something no one can
face: so we leave them standing in all their hideous glory.
To
return to our starting point: urbanisation in the modern sense is a very recent
phenomenon, less than a hundred years old. If it had been possible before, why
did it not happen? If it had been impossible before, what was it that made it
possible? These, I suggest, are the two questions, to which we must turn our
attention. I think there is plenty of historical evidence that important
cities, Rome, for instance, have tended to grow and grow, until they could grow
no further. What was it that stopped their growth? The answer is simple: they
could not be provisioned any more. They lived on their surroundings, and as
they became bigger they had to be provisioned from ever more extended
surroundings; and as distances had to extend, transport could no longer cope.
The bottleneck was transport, and the bottleneck of transport was energy.
Human and animal power cannot manage long distances, except for imperishable
goods, and even when it does manage them it becomes, at a certain point
intolerably expensive.
During
the nineteenth century, Western society broke through this barrier by learning
to exploit nature’s storehouse of fossil fuels, first coal, then oil. Coal led
to rail transport, because it is rather crude and heavy and therefore best used
in locomotives pulling a large number of coaches or trucks; while oil led to
motor transport because it is subtle, easily divisible, of high calorific value
per unit of volume as well as per unit of weight, and therefore ideally suited
for fast, small-scale, decentralised transport from any point to any other
point, provided only there is some kind of a road. The exploitation of fossil
fuels was the primary factor, while the flowing of technical ingenuity was a
secondary factor, because, in a certain sense, the material, in this material
world, is the indispensable basis of the intellectual.
The
development of large-scale urbanisation, as we have witnessed it over the last
hundred years, required the intervention of a further factor: How could people
leave the land and crowd together in towns and cities, and still get fed? The limiting factor on urbanisation is the
productivity of agriculture, and the measure of ‘productivity’ in this context
is output-per-person rather than output-per-acre. Towns and cities exist on the
agricultural surplus of the countryside; pure subsistence farming cannot sustain
even the smallest degree of urbanisatjon. How, then, has it been able to
sustain the high degree of urbanisation which has occurred during the last
hundred years? By an immense improvement of the productivity-per-person in
modern agriculture. Fewer and fewer people were required to till the soil, with
the result that more and more people could leave the soil and go into cities.
Every
answer tends to lead to a further question, and our next question must be this:
How has this stupendous and historically unparalleled increase of productivity
per person in agriculture been achieved?
The most important single factor has been the introduction of new
technologies based on fossil fuels. Modern agricultural technology, as
practised in the United States, in Western Europe, in the areas affected by the
‘green revolution’, and in many other parts of the world, is essentially
oil-based. Its tremendous success in raising productivity-per-person was
achieved by the introduction of an intensely oil-based technology, intensive
mechanisation and, even more importantly, intensive chemicalisation. In terms
of physics and chemistry, modern society eats a variety of foodstuffs, but in
terms of economics, it eats oil.
If the
modern type of urbanisation has not been possible before, roughly speaking, the
middle of the nineteenth century, what was it that made it possible? The answer
is threefold: the exploitation of nature’s storehouse of fossil fuels, the
development of a highly efficient transport system, initially coal-based but
now primarily oil-based, the development of agricultural technologies which are
virtually dependent on oil.
Until a
few years ago, we took oil for granted. In the autumn of 1967, for
instance, the then Minister of Power presented a White Paper to Parliament,
entitled ‘Fuel Policy’. Its central message was this: “Subject to overriding
considerations of adequacy and security of supplies, the Government’s basic
objective can be summarised as cheap energy. . . What is important is that we
should take full advantage of the cheapness and technical merit of nuclear
power, North Sea gas, and oil.” The Minister had no real doubts about the
adequacy and security of oil supplies and therefore mapped out the further
contraction of the British coal industry, the speed of which, however, would
have to be controlled so as to avoid undue hardship to coal miners and their
communities. In a sagacious paragraph
he dealt with future oil costs. “It is difficult to predict the course of oil
prices. There are a number of reasons for expecting them not to increase. The
industry is continually searching for ways of cutting costs, as for instance by
the use of very large crude oil tankers to reduce freight charges and increase
flexibility and security of supply, and the surplus of crude oil seems likely
to persist for many years despite the expansion in world demand. Here and
elsewhere oil will be up against increasingly strong competition from natural
gas and nuclear power. On the evidence available, it seems likely that oil will
remain competitive with coal, and that pressure to force up crude oil prices
will be held in check by the danger of loss of markets.”
These
sanguine arguments did not go unchallenged, but no one was willing to listen to
the challengers, because the enticing dream of ‘cheap fuel for ever’ kept
everybody happy. We now have a very rude awakening. The following official
figures makes the point: in 1970, our average monthly crude oil
imports amounted to 8.3 million tons; at an average value per ton of £4.80,
these monthly imports cost the country £40 million. In March 1974, our
crude oil imports were rather high at 9.6 million tons; the average value per
ton was £28.9, and the total bill came to £178 million; compared with four
years ago, an increased burden on our balance of payments of nearly £240
million a
month.
Pressure
to force up crude oil prices, we had been told, would be held in check by the
danger of loss of markets. Do you think the oil exporting countries are worried
about a loss of markets when the export of one ton of crude oil produces for
them an amount of money which, only four years ago, required the export of six
tons? On the contrary, they would rejoice in the loss of markets, if only they
could see it happening. They have been pleading for years that the oil
importing countries should reduce their requirements. From their point of view,
a loss of markets is the very thing they have been longing for ever since they
realised, some ten years ago, that their own proved oil reserves were by no
means infinite and would be exhausted in a matter of twenty or thirty years if
they ‘maintained their markets’. In ever more insistent tones they have
pleaded: “Please mitigate your requirements; if we sell all we have got within
twenty or thirty years, what is to become of us? We cannot build up an
alternative livelihood for our peoples within two or three decades.”
On the
sixth of October 1973, the outbreak of yet another Arab-Israeli war provided the historical
opportunity for the Arabian oil exporting countries to establish a radically
new situation as regards crude oil prices. Within a few months, these prices
quadrupled, and their fundamental aim, which is to conserve their proven oil
reserves to last longer than a mere twenty or thirty years, can now be attained
via the so-called price mechanism. We hear nothing more about using oil as a
political weapon; what we shall be hearing more and more insistently from now
on is this: “Of course, you can buy all
the oil you want, but how are you going to pay for it?” And the truth of the
matter is that we cannot pay for the amount of imported oil which our economies
have got used to.
Whether
the crunch will come within three months or three years is hard to predict.
But, I suggest, nothing of any real importance hinges on precision in these
matters, certainly not for builders, architects, town planners and such like,
whose ‘time horizon’ is counted in decades, if not centuries. That the days of
the cheap-fuel economy are counted, in fact that they are over, there cannot be
any reasonable doubt. The sooner we realise and accept this, the better will be
our chance of adjusting to the new situation without having to go through a
period of unimaginable troubles.
The effects
of a hundred years of cheapness-and-plenty as regards fossil fuels have been
extraordinarily far-reaching. The effects of the coming period of
dearness-and-scarcity as regards fossil fuels, not necessarily in all parts of
the world, but inescapably in Western Europe, Japan, and many of the so-called
developing countries, will be equally far-reaching.
The
cheapness and plenty of fossil fuels also led to the large-scale production of
highly fuel-intensive building materials, such as cement and steel; to building
methods characterised by the substitution of fuel-intensive mechanisation for
human labour; and to the erection of buildings such as high-rise flats, hotels,
and office blocks, which in themselves are, as it were, engines dependent for their
functioning on a continuous high rate of fuel consumption.
If
cheapness-and-plenty, as regards fuel, has produced these effects, what is
going to be the effect of dearness-and-scarcity? This is the crucial question.
It is a question of such overwhelming magnitude that we have to give ourselves
a very big push to be prepared to look it in the face. It is much easier to
shut one’s eyes and go on dreaming; to divert attention to such questions as:
“How do you propose to persuade people to change their life-style?” or: “Are
you sure that people want change?”, and to engage in endless debates on
possible alterations of the ‘political system’, etc. I am not suggesting that
these and similar questions are completely irrelevant, but they are of a
secondary nature: in future the tune will be called by fuel supplies, and not
primarily by our likes and dislikes. Even if the great majority of people had a
strong preference for crowding together in huge cities, the fact remains that
high-density living patterns can be sustained only by high-density fuels. If
the availability of the latter is called into question the possibility of the
former is called into question. In other words, far from accepting Kingsley
Davis’ prediction that the whole world will soon be ‘fully urbanised’ we have
now to consider the possibility that some of the most highly urbanised parts of
the world, such as Western Europe and Japan, may have to find ways of achieving
some degree of de-urbanisation: because, if high-density fuels become very
expensive and hard to obtain, high-density living becomes increasingly
unsupportable.
The
modern system of agriculture is obviously extremely vulnerable to adverse
changes on the oil front. We can see this already today as we witness the
virtual collapse of the ‘Green Revolution’ in a number of developing countries.
It has been calculated how much oil would be required if the whole world, some 4,000
million people,
forgetting any further increases in world population, were to be fed by means
of modern agricultural technology. The answer is that on such assumptions all
proved oil reserves, as currently known, would be exhausted by agriculture
alone within less than thirty years. It would seem to follow that the modern
system of agriculture has no long-term future, and that there is a somewhat
urgent need for the development of alternative systems, systems much less
oil-intensive. The answer one normally obtains to such a proposition is that
these alternatives, even if they were possible, would be relatively much more
labour-intensive than the modern systems. In other words, the proportion of
people working the land would have to rise, which means that the proportion of
people living and working in cities would have to fall.
It is
precisely this possibility, or rather this possible necessity, that ought to
engage our most serious attention. If more people are going to be needed in
agriculture, it will be necessary to upgrade and redevelop the life of rural
communities. This is a very tall order. For more than a century, all the emphasis
has been on city-life, and the brain-drain at the expense of the rural areas
has been devastatingly severe. To reverse the century-old trend will not be
easy, but neither will it be impossible. There are many signs among the young
that a push of necessity in this direction might even be welcomed.
Turning
now to transport, we find a rather similar picture. Cheap and fast transport
has made modern urbanisation possible. Mobility is thought of as a very great
value, and this value-judgment has been sustained by the availability of cheap
and plentiful oil. If the forward estimates of so-called transport requirements
which underlie, for instance, the Channel Tunnel project are to be taken
seriously, we shall need to devote at least two or three times as much oil to
transport in twenty years time as we do now. These estimates stem from an
historical situation which is now gone and unlikely ever to return. The new
situation demands that we should ask ourselves: ‘Why do we seem to need so much
transport?’ What is it in our patterns of production, our patterns of
consumption, our distribution of population, in short, what is it in our
life-style that entails such enormous and ever-increasing transport
requirements? After all, the goods we shift about do not become better by being
shifted about. Why is it that they appear to become more valuable?
Production
patterns that give primary emphasis to mechanisation and automation tend to
get burdened with very high overhead costs, and it then appears to be
‘economical’ to let the product invade faraway markets, even if the net return
on such sales yields less than average revenue: it still helps to ‘spread
overheads’. Very large mass-production units obviously entail a very large
commitment to massive long-distance transport. Economists claim that this
enlarges consumers’ choice; but they generally do not mention that it reduces
the chance of consumers of choosing locations that are free from intolerable traffic
noise and contaminated air.
In
future, transport planning needs to concern itself with much more than
transport: its principal aim will be the reduction of transport requirements,
which have grown beyond all reasonable bounds. In other words, it will become
increasingly desirable to bring production and consumption much more closely
together. The present pattern with cars being produced in Tokyo in order to be
used in Coventry, does not seem to be the most rational human ingenuity can
devise, and it would assuredly not be improved if the transport of cars from
Tokyo to Coventry were made faster or even cheaper by some fantastic
technological breakthrough.
Not
only the pattern of production, but also the pattern of consumption will have
to change. Already there are reports of significant numbers of high-rise
hotels in Mediterranean holiday resorts being unable to open for the summer
season. What is to become of innumerable blocks of high-rise flats, once the
remorseless increase in energy costs has worked its way through the system,
heaven only knows. Solar energy and wind power can do little to reduce their
dependence on fossil fuels.
However,
I do not wish to dwell on the future of buildings already erected. What about
buildings to be erected in the future? The change in the fuel situation from
cheapness-and-plenty to dearness-and-scarcity calls for new types of
calculation and new criteria of efficiency. Needless to say, everything
calculable in terms of money will have to continue being calculated in money,
but most of these money calculations will have to be supplemented and checked
against calculations made in terms of fuel units, such as calories. We may not
be able to afford things which are expensive in terms of calories, even if they
appear to be relatively cheap in terms of money. Here again, I cannot go into
detail. At present, there is still a great deal of talk about ‘alternative
sources of energy’, and most people imagine that, although fuel may become
very much more expensive, there is enough of it somewhere in the world for it
never to become scarce. What they fail to realise is that there is not only a
money cost of fuel but also a fuel cost of fuel. The Bureau of Mines in the
United States has recently begun a study to determine how many calories it
takes to produce various types of fuels: what matters is not the gross energy
production, but the net energy gain. Professor Odum of the University of
Florida says “the biggest lesson to be learned from net-energy thinking is that
all the new technologies being developed to attain energy independence are draining
present energy supplies and are therefore hastening the day when fossil fuels
run out. For example, enriching uranium for light-water reactors consumes, in
the form of coal, 60% of the energy released from the nuclear fuel.” Whether
any nuclear energy producer is, in fact, a net energy producer at all, is
still very much an open question.
The
life-style of the modern world is characterised by a very high rate of what we
might call economic metabolism, that is to say, an enormous throughput of resources
to obtain a standard of living which still is, for most people, deplorably low.
In a strange and paradoxical way, we have to run faster and faster merely to
stand still. Although the economic metabolic rate of the average American is
something like fifty times as high as that of the average Indian, and that of
the average Western European about thirty times as high, the rich societies of
the world are pursuing the struggle for further metabolic growth with even
greater single-mindedness than the poor. Yet such further growth as is being
achieved does not seem to lighten the burden of existence but, on the contrary,
to increase it. If fuel and material shortages should make further growth
impossible or even enforce the reduction of certain activities, people fear
that nothing but misery can be in store for them.
All
this stems from a confusion of thought which takes the metabolic rate for the
equivalent of the standard of living. Is our standard of living really
determined by the rate at which we manage to consume, that is to say: to
destroy and use up, valuable goods and services? We know families who consume
very much and live very badly: both husband and wife have to go out to work;
they return from work exhausted and disgruntled and have no strength left in
them for anything but watching television; the children feel neglected and
present their parents with endless problems which are as insoluble as they are
costly to cope with; expensive holidays fail to undo the damage done during the
rest of the year, etcetera. Yet we also know families who consume relatively
very little and live rather well. How do they do it? The rate of metabolism,
economically speaking, of the former is high; that of the latter is low. Whose
is the higher standard of living?
A neat
little prescription that is often given is: ‘Cycle and re-cycle’. Cycling, of
course, is a mode of transportation with a delightfully low rate of economic
metabolism. The cyclist’s rate of physiological metabolism is somewhat higher
than that of the motorist; but that can save him, or society, a lot of doctor’s
bills! Re-cycling, on the other hand, desirable as it often may be, fails to go
to the root of the matter. Why tolerate a high rate of waste and then try to
cope with the problem by re-cycling? Would it not be more intelligent first of
all to try and reduce the rate of waste? The re-cycling problem may then itself
become much more manageable.
We
might do well to distinguish between permanent goods on the one hand and
ephemeral goods on the other. A
life-style which puts primary emphasis on the consumption of ephemeral goods
and services requires an economic system with a high rate of metabolism and
therefore creates innumerable problems of pollution, tends to ruin the
environment, and inevitably runs up against severe resource bottlenecks. Now,
of course, a certain flow of ephemeral goods, to be destroyed in the act of
consumption, is indispensable for human life; but it might be wise to keep this
flow at a modest level and to put the main emphasis on the creation of
permanent goods, that is to say, lasting improvements of the environment,
excellent tools and equipment, health of soil, plants, animals and people,
work opportunities which can be genuinely enjoyed, and even beautiful buildings,
villages, and towns, together with beautiful things to be put into buildings,
villages, and towns. Such a life-style would not require an economic system
with an unsupportably high rate of metabolism, yet there would be no smell of
misery and degradation about it.
I
believe that great pressures upon human nature will be exerted by the logic of
facts which will make our present lifestyle increasingly difficult to sustain.
We can meet these pressures with calm forethought and give them a creative response.
If we do that, why should we despair of the future of our civilisation even if
we have to lower our rate of economic metabolism? Why should we refuse to
believe that, endowed with so much more scientific knowledge and technical
ability than any previous generation, we should be able to build a much more
satisfactory life than we have ever known?