Post Carbon Cities Blog
Rutgers University planning school Dean James W. Hughes recently imparted two essential lessons about planning and the economy in the 21st century. First, resource constraints and reduced consumption are the future. And second, distance matters again.
Rutgers University planning school Dean James W. Hughes recently imparted two essential lessons about planning and the economy in the 21st century. First, resource constraints and reduced consumption are the future. And second, distance matters again.
Back in June, I was invited to speak at a symposium on the economic future of northern New Jersey (essentially the 6.5 million-person urban/suburban region just to the west of New York City). As such policy sessions go, it was a surprisingly illuminating event -- it's all described in this publication, and audio and slideshows from each presentation are available here.
What most caught my attention were the remarks of James Hughes, Dean of the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University. Although he was largely speaking about New Jersey, I think his comments largely apply to the rest of urban/suburban America:
Hughes noted that we have undergone two major societal / economic transformations in the last 100 years: first the shift from agriculture to industry (manufacturing), and then the shift from industry to the service and knowledge-based economy. A third transformation is happening now, and it is very different from the first two.
What's driving this new transformation?
- Energy price and distance. "Distance matters greatly in a world of $100 oil."
- Massive price increases. "Consumer retrenchment is about to ripple through the economy."
- Global warming and the push for sustainability.
- De-leveraging and the rediscovery of risk. Wall Street and financial markets are already structurally adjusting.
This is pretty much the same view we have here at Post Carbon Cities, of course. What struck me was that the Dean of one of the top planning schools in the country was making observations which, just a few years ago, would have been considered quite radical:
- "An era of resource constraints and reduced consumption is upon us." The early years of this decade were the last gasps of the previous transformation [from manufacturing to the knowledge economy], and driven largely by cheap energy.
- "Global supply chains as they exist today may not be the supply chains of tomorrow."
- There'll be no more "salad bowl train" from California to New Jersey. "We may be forced to grow our own food."
(If my professors at Rutgers had been saying things like this fifteen years ago, I may well have stayed in New Jersey!)
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