Dddddd0814 at aol.com writes:
> Sorry-- what I originally said about the majority of agricultural
production
> seems innacurate....
It's OK. You inadvertently stumbled across one of those rare subjects I actually know something about, US ag history :-) Don't ever get me started talking about the history of the dairy industry or breeds of livestock.
> My larger point was that cities are not necessarily "unsustainable."
(clip)
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.
I agree with you completely about cities (and technology). The Bill Cronon book about Chicago that I mentioned, _Nature's Metropolis_, is excellent, long but highly readable. It won the Bancroft Prize in 1992. He teaches at the U of Wisconsin, Madison, and I have heard him speak and have met him several times. One wouldn't call him a Marxist with a capital M, but he is certainly influenced by Marx. Perhaps marxoid is the word. The book is many things, but most fundamentally it's an environmental history that shows how the city and the hinterland shaped each other. He wants to break down the sharp division in people's minds between the pastoral countryside and the industrial city. Neither could exist in their present forms without the other, and will always be interdependent. An earlier book of his, _Changes in the Land_, tried to show how interaction between early European settlers and native Americans reshaped the landscape of colonial New England.
I haven't seen the book about Chicago: The Pig and the Skyscraper - Chicago: A History of our Future by Marco d'Eramo; Verso, London and New York, 2002; pages 472, £20 (hardback)
that Ulhas cites in another post, but will certainly run it down. Thanks, Ulhas.
Jacob Conrad