Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

mindforgedmanacles wrote (edited )

I couldn't think of one that could be ecologically sustained at a large size, let alone one that could be ungoverned.

John Michael Greer suggested quite a few years ago that pre-colonial Shanghai had as many as 1.5 million people that were sustained by intensive rice agriculture from immediately-surrounding regions, and Tenochtitlan likely had at least 200,000 people sustained by its chinampas. These examples might not bode well for the future, being that both of these cities were governed by states and existed on a planet with its biosphere remaining relatively intact, in the relatively benign climatic conditions of the Holocene.

All of this being said, if humans even manage to survive the next few hundreds of thousands of years of climatic chaos I feel like new cities will be where whatever states manage to persist, or for new ones to arise. Perhaps Graeber and Wengrow will be proven correct, and some of these cities will manage to throw off the shackles of domination. Unless cultural tendencies keep these urban forms within the carrying capacities of their landbase, they will send tendrils out to hinterlands and attempt to dominate their neighbours to sustain their artifice. It's a tale as old as civilization.

So like, all my self-indulgent rambling aside... I'd say that maybe it could work on a scale with no more than a few thousand people, depending on if they've managed to find some exceptionally fertile river valley or are doing to their landbase what many indigenous peoples of the Amazon did to their soil (making terra preta, and the like). But at a scale of millions? You need global trade and vast systems of exploitation to keep the thing running for a single day, let alone a single lifetime.

10

lentils wrote

I don't think so bc even if you have a city that uses "green" technology how are you going to get the metals required to make it sustainably?

5

Majrelende wrote

All cities seem to have formed around and been held together by states and ecological unsustainability, so I am very doubtful. Towns of at least 2000-3000 people have existed self-sufficiently, though, and possibly without government.

5

Fool wrote

A city is unable to be transported or deconstructed without ceasing to be a city. As such, a city can only be sustained through structures which are susceptible to governance and consolidation of power.

8

veuzi wrote

Maybe if you go by the bolo'bolo model and have effectively self-sustaining mini-cities or neighborhood villages, within an already existing city.

Anything resembling current cities, though, I think is not feasible.

5

kano wrote (edited )

Think the person is specifically referring to homo sapiens which puts their percentage closer but still high, would probably say that it's less than 5% probably more like 3%, depending on when you place the advent of either.

3

fortmis OP wrote

Unless cultural tendencies keep these urban forms within the carrying capacities of their landbase,

Can you elaborate here?

I couldn't think of one that could be ecologically sustained at a large size,

Your points on sustainability are interesting, but I think my use of the word might not have been precise, since I said "sustainably ungoverned" because we know it's possible for a city to be temporarily ungoverned, and I wanted to ask specifically about the possibility of a long-term ungovernability.

You need global trade and vast systems of exploitation to keep the thing running for a single day, let alone a single lifetime

Haha yepppppp

5

Tequila_Wolf wrote

I'd say no just on the sustainability part, and will explain why, but, then I'll explain an example of an anarchic text that would potentially undermine my explanation. There are actually a lot of other factors at play I just won't mention because I have some brainfog today.

For me cities are that thing that when constructed become the founding site of an urban-rural binary, where the rural becomes a site of extraction for the urban in a way that is alienated from those in the urban.

So, usually people in cities don't know in any intimate way where for example their food comes from or where their waste goes to. Without that intimacy with the land there becomes a tendency for alienated consumption and waste, which in turn means the rural is increasingly exploited and there is a need to increase territory as resources are used up. This in turn becomes a basis for colonialism.

However, none of this is necessarily the case in the model from bolo'bolo, an anarchic text that argues for a specific kind of world constituted by 'bolos' which are like communes of a few hundred people - whatever the amount of people is that people can actually personally know and remember. cities would essentially be made up of patchworks of communes with each commune having a direct corollary in the rural.

With regards to cities, what is proposed is that the bolo is split in two, with an urban section and a rural section, and these spaces would work together to provide for each other's needs. I don't remember, but presumably any person would work for some period in each part of the bolo (both the rural and the urban). This kind of model might be able to avoid the kind of alienation across urban and rural that I've mentioned.

7

mindforgedmanacles wrote

Can you elaborate here?

Absolutely, sorry for not providing more detail on what I was implying. As has been stated in other replies, places like Çatalhöyük might have only initially been inhabited for small parts of the year, putting less continual ecological strain on the landbase of those who lived there. Also, an urban area comprised of hundreds of bolos could potentially even out the strain on a specific area, even if the populations were sedentary. This is just me speaking in hypotheticals, of course.

Your points on sustainability are interesting, but I think my use of the word might not have been precise, since I said "sustainably ungoverned" because we know it's possible for a city to be temporarily ungoverned, and I wanted to ask specifically about the possibility of a long-term ungovernability.

Aye once again my apologies, I guess to ponder on the possibility of long-term ungovernability, perhaps ritual might play into it? It's questionable as to whether or not some sort of temporary "fluid" hierarchies (like what Graeber and Wengrow described in the Inuit) would be avoidable, but rituals, festivals, narratives and more could all urge people to cast out domination whenever it would attempt to rear its Leviathanic head.

I think of what Perlman talked about with the Potawatomi and their rituals to cast out Wiiske (a trickster deity who brought the double-edged sword of useful technologies and their potential for great ruin), or the ways that different "uncivilized" peoples use satire and mockery to keep those with pretenses to rule in check. That being said, all of these peoples mentioned lived (or continue to live) in societies with no more than several thousand people, and so in a context where the vast majority of people you interact with are strangers? I try not to buy into biological essentialism for most things, but Dunbar's Number really does seem to have a lot going for it.

Sorry if that didn't really answer anything you didn't already know of.

6

fortmis OP wrote

rituals, festivals, narratives and more could all urge people to cast out domination whenever it would attempt to rear its Leviathanic head.

Pierre Clastres talks about this in his series of essays on native tribes in South America, such as the Yanomami... The collection is called Archeology of Violence. It's so so good.

and so in a context where the vast majority of people you interact with are strangers?

And yess exactly... I see this as being at the core of the problem with cities

4

fortmis OP wrote (edited )

Yessss yes yes to all of this.

So, usually people in cities don't know in any intimate way where for example their food comes from or where their waste goes to. Without that intimacy with the land there becomes a tendency for alienated consumption and waste, which in turn means the rural is increasingly exploited and there is a need to increase territory as resources are used up. This in turn becomes a basis for colonialism.

You said ittttt

The bolo model is the closest thing to a strategy worth consideration that I've come across.... It's a connected division in a way .... Has it ever been tried / has it ever worked??

4