Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing and The Economic Crisis

[balaji (balaji]

As I sit here in Salzburg, Austria, I have reason to agree with Zev's
remarks.  The land around me is still agricultural.  There is a noticeable
absence of big-box stores. The pedestrian walkways are full of walking
pedestrians -- wonder to behold.  In the United States, we grew complacent
on a steady diet of free-market triumphalism.  "Old" Europe (as Rumsfeld
once called it) was seen as stiff and phlegmatic -- unable to respond to
the opportunities of the "globalized" world economy.  Now, perhaps, we are
beginning to see the virtue of Europe's traditionalism, even its huge
labor inefficiencies.  One can imagine, for example, the techno-accretions
of Salzburg disappearing overnight and revealing -- mirable dictu! -- a
functioning medieval city based on the trade of salt.  I am reminded, once
again, of William Morris and his book, News from Nowhere -- a must-read
for anyone with an interest in the medieval resonances (they do exist) of
cohousing.  Zev is right:  things are changing.  Small European cities
with functioning agricultural hinterlands offer a glimmer of where we
might end up -- if we are very, very lucky.

Charles W. Nuckolls
Utah Valley Commons
www.utahvalleycommons.com






>
> The news these days is sometime hard to hear. The trend is ever
> downward for so many. The mantra seems to be "we have never seen this
> before," and it is true for anyone less than 80 years old. What I
> find so interesting is the continual expectation that these
> challenges will eventually smooth out and we will get back to some
> semblance of order.
>
> My intuition tells me something much different.
>
> A recent column by Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Thomas Friedman
> said the following.
>
>      We have created a system for growth that depended on our
> building more and more stores to sell more and more stuff made in
> more and more factories in China, powered by more and more coal that
> would cause more and more climate change but earn China more and more
> dollars to buy more and more U.S. T-bills so America would have more
> and more money to build more and more stores and sell more and more
> stuff that would employ more and more Chinese ...
>
>      We can?t do this anymore.
>
>      ?We created a way of raising standards of living that we can?t
> possibly pass on to our children,? said Joe Romm, a physicist and
> climate expert who writes the indispensable blog ClimateProgress.org.
> We have been getting rich by depleting all our natural stocks ?
>%