beginning in the 1850s, by a rail system, which wove farms producing staple foodstuffs like wheat into a complex network of exchange that bound cities and countryside together. The cities and towns were where the grain elevators and packing houses were, and where the buyers and brokers and exchanges were located. Farms were not located in or on the periphery of cities, but were spread out across the land, and produced products for distant markets in exchange for cash.>>
Sorry-- what I originally said about the majority of agricultural production seems innacurate.... I'm trying to remember something I studied a long time ago. I do know that there was a stage where there were far more urban and semi-urban agriculture in the 19th century, but the trucking industry and highway system wiped this out completely.
My larger point was that cities are not necessarily "unsustainable." Why buy into the capitalist conception of what cities are? They seem far more sustainable then having 300 billion people trample evenly over an entire land mass. Cities are also cosmopolitan centers of culture, education, and diversity-- these are things which I think ought to be preserved in some manner in socialism.
Best, David