Urban decay and evolution.

[Play by Numbers]

Recently I had decided to start posting threads. None to great, but definitely earnest and based around a desire to share a deepening concern I have for our rights and civil liberties and find out what other people think about the subject.

You might also say I have an interest or passion in regards to how we humans act as a species, especially to do with the urban environment both physical and social.

What draws me in most are two things. Decay as expressed by increased rates of violence, corruption, in my opinion a decrease in freedoms and in some ways social awareness (though we have never had the ability to be more aware) and our relatively immature development in terms of embracing as well understanding the natural growth and decay of the complex urban societies we have created.

Not all of this is necessarily negative though. Conflict and decay eventually leads to new growth and there are many examples of human activity in the forms of art (stencil and poster art, chalks, street murals etc.), music, thought and sport (urban spelunking, parkour, breakdancing, free running) which are new or rehashed adaptations to or responses fuelled by this process.

So the point. I stumbled upon a great article recently which slipped from my mind for a bit, that ties the creative aspects I am talking about to the process itself. Beautiful, insightful yet tragic.

It is about the abandoned battleship island in Japan, which was once a booming mining colony now left to decay and disrepair.

I also think that there are many interesting points that could be raised, in relation to Australia, it's economy and our dependence on mining and exporting of natural resources. The context being urban decay, the current economic crisis in general terms and the idea that when species (or in our case perhaps societies, projects and communities) become to specialised, when faced with change they may find it incredibly difficult to adapt.

http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/battleship-island-japans-rotting-metropolis/?src=us

Battleship Island - Japan’s rotting metropolis

These days the only things that land on Hashima Island are the shits of passing seagulls. An hour or so’s sail from the port of Nagasaki, the abandoned island silently crumbles. A former coal mining facility owned by Mitsubishi Motors, it was once the most densely populated place on earth, packing over 13,000 people into each square kilometre of its residential high-risers. It operated from 1887 until 1974, after which the coal industry fell into decline and the mines were shut for good. With their jobs gone and no other reason to stay in this mini urban nightmare, almost overnight the entire population fled back to the mainland, leaving most of their stuff behind to rot.

http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/04/battleship-island-japans-rotting-metropolis/?src=us

 

[bit_pattern]

This is sort of thing you think about at 3n the morning??? Go to bed man!

 

[Dont be a lemon]

Good article

 

[Play by Numbers]

This is sort of thing you think about at 3n the morning??? Go to bed man!

I try to think whenever I am awake.

With mixed results......

 

[vealesy]

Being in the building game myself, I have concern for all the new homes that are being built, not only are they overpriced, but with the materials used (cheap and weak) and the lack of effort that goes into building them (rushed), I fear a lot of these new FHOG type homes will start collapsing in 30-40 years time. If not collapsing, then definately requiring major + expensive repairs.

Will read the article later, only had a glance.

 

[evo]

I also think that there are many interesting points that could be raised, in relation to Australia, it's economy and our dependence on mining and exporting of natural resources. The context being urban decay, the current economic crisis in general terms and the idea that when species (or in our case perhaps societies, projects and communities) become to specialised, when faced with change they may find it incredibly difficult to adapt.

Looking for analogies in nature can be fraught sometimes. Specialising is actually what species have evolved to do (hence the commonality of the two words). While it can be their weakness in a changing world, it is also their greatest strength.

Is there evidence that Australia is becoming more specialised? I would've thought it was the opposite, but I haven't looked at any studies in this regard.

 

[Tex_21]

I think Australia is in serious danger of becoming victim of the Dutch Disease, in that while our resources boom is pushing our economy along, we can't continue to rely on the exports of rocks and crops and sunshine forever, especially with the lack of access our agriculture has to overseas markets. Our manufacturing sector, while small in size compared to what it once was, is vital to keep in some form or another, as it is much less volatile than the service industry. Look at the current situation in Britain, where they are trying to re-start the manufacturing industry which fell by the wayside in favour of the financial sector, which has now gone belly-up. It is vital that Australia holds on to some semblance of a manufacturing industry. Though, this industry needs to be competitive, and strive for productivity increases.

 

[Play by Numbers]

Looking for analogies in nature can be fraught sometimes. Specialising is actually what species have evolved to do (hence the commonality of the two words). While it can be their weakness in a changing world, it is also their greatest strength.

Is there evidence that Australia is becoming more specialised? I would've thought it was the opposite, but I haven't looked at any studies in this regard.

Indeed, but I am not the first one to use this analogy (probably not in reference to Australia either).

Just to lay my cards out on the table, in my field I have been required to study Environmental Biology/Evolutionary Biology.

Specialisation in biology (or specialist species), refers to a (or set of) characteristics which have evolved with a certain species that help it survive in a particular habitat (specialist species opposed to generalist species).

It is speculated that isolation, co-evolution or a highly specialised ecological niche are reasons why this may happen.

Specialist species usually have incredible difficulty adapting and are among the first to become extinct when their environment changes, as opposed to generalist species.

An easy example is to do with an animals digestive system. Pandas or Koalas have both developed amazingly efficient digestive systems, to gain nutrition from a very specific food source prevalent in their environment. Unfortunately, remove these food sources through deforestation (or any number of reasons) and the animal is unable to survive. Compare this to an animal which can eat a variety of vegetable or plant material which may simply migrate or change food sources when the proffered becomes scarce.

Personally I agree with Tex_21 but I might even go further. Not only are we dependant on commodities exports, but one or two major trading partners. Our economic fortunes at present, whilst partially of our own making are fairly closely tied with one trading partner in specific.

Parallels could be drawn between this (or our situation) and some of the factors which lead to over specialisation.

Personally I feel there is often a disconnect between how we look at human development and evolution of other species as well as ecosystems in general.

We may be far more complex in many ways but are still subject to the same laws as the rest of the natural world. Analogies are not always accurate but I think make for good conversation and often interesting insights.

Bad analogy maybe, but am I wrong in my assessment?

 

[evo]

Specialisation in biology (or specialist species), refers to a (or set of) characteristics which have evolved with a certain species that help it survive in a particular habitat (specialist species opposed to generalist species).

It is speculated that isolation, co-evolution or a highly specialised ecological niche are reasons why this may happen.

Specialist species usually have incredible difficulty adapting and are among the first to become extinct when their environment changes, as opposed to generalist species.

Ok. Well with that in mind I think it would be fair to say Australia has widened its habitate- or exposed its habitate to the wider world - by embracing globalisation.

We are the opposite of the Galapagos Lizard in my view. We are subject to the vagaries of the wider world. If for some reason no one wants wool any more, farmers will start growing cattle.

An easy example is to do with an animals digestive system. Pandas or Koalas have both developed amazingly efficient digestive systems, to gain nutrition from a very specific food source prevalent in their environment. Unfortunately, remove these food sources through deforestation (or any number of reasons) and the animal is unable to survive. Compare this to an animal which can eat a variety of vegetable or plant material which may simply migrate or change food sources when the proffered becomes scarce.

Point taken. I don't really think Australia is that Panda though; we are suitably diversified; moreover we take education seriously and have a history of being innovative and pliable. The Middle East could be like the Panda if /when a viable alternative for petroleum is developed. I think we will cope very well.

Personally I agree with Tex_21 but I might even go further. Not only are we dependant on commodities exports, but one or two major trading partners. Our economic fortunes at present, whilst partially of our own making are fairly closely tied with one trading partner in specific.

Even if it were true I don't know that being a market leader in exporting food and iron ore is actually the worst business to be in going forward.

those extra 5 billion Indians and Chinese are going to be interested in wheat, rice and owning a fridge and a car. Someone is going to have to grow it and dig it up. May as well be experts.

We have something that nearly every other country in the world doesn't have: space. it is going to be a pretty useful commodity in the future. Seems to me we are more like the shark than the panda; perfectly adapted and with a few extra special attributes.

Parallels could be drawn between this (or our situation) and some of the factors which lead to over specialisation.

Personally I feel there is often a disconnect between how we look at human development and evolution of other species as well as ecosystems in general.

We may be far more complex in many ways but are still subject to the same laws as the rest of the natural world. Analogies are not always accurate but I think make for good conversation and often interesting insights.

Bad analogy maybe, but am I wrong in my assessment?

Even if you are right it seems to me the important question is what would you like done about it; and how would it be done?

Becoming the least specialised country would require a lot of central planning, wouldn't you say?

 

[Play by Numbers]

I actually agree with many of your points evo.

More just trying to start discussion.

I don't see us as being overly reliant on say commodities exports to China, but I see that as a potential risk.

As for education, we have seen funding reduction at times over the last 10-15 years, whereas many other developed countries have gone in the opposite direction.

I don't see why Australia needs to diversify to greatly our reliance on commodities, but perhaps focus more on building trade relations with say India, which may end up being the major competitor with China in the Asia Pacific region.

Another point is if Japan ever manages to drag itself out of it's malaise, I wonder if there is any future in this country being an exporter of intellectual property but on a far grander scale.

We already do this to a degree, due in part to a lack of innovation in our private sector forcing many researches to take their IP elsewhere.

I wonder if this could eve become systematised. A true information economy, where IP is the commodity or scarce resource. It would require a number of factors, among which large increases in funding to our tertiary sector.

Have you ever heard of the flying goose formation?

Anyway it is a little cheeky for me to relate this stuff to the article. I have seen a bit of the urban decay in Japan first hand though. Like time stopped and the future never came. It makes me think about Australia and this article, whilst the similarities are tenuous at best and fairly superficial made me wonder whether we can adapt or will we need to go through a downward trend/decay before we can change.

Think of the layoffs and cancelled investment in the mining sector. How quickly projects can be abandoned and we see places like this popping up (albeit different and remote so maybe not fitting the criteria of "urban"??).

I just find the process interesting is all and wonder what parallels can be drawn (between various examples of urban decay) or what we can learn from it and what it may reveal about our future.

Kewl pictures in the article though

 

[evo]

As for education, we have seen funding reduction at times over the last 10-15 years, whereas many other developed countries have gone in the opposite direction.

I'm pretty open to improved and intelligently targetted funding for education. It seems to me an area we should aspire to be a market leader in.

I'd prefer billions of dollars going towards universities and innovative institutions like the CSIRO rather than $900 to each person to be used to stimulate their package.

 

[Cap]

I think we need to become a nation of soldiers for hire.

Its a job that is never out of demand regardless of economic cycles and in the end you can name your price

 

[medusala]

I'm pretty open to improved and intelligently targetted funding for education. It seems to me an area we should aspire to be a market leader in.

Have you come across this woman? Heard someone talking about her on the radio the other way and found it very interesting. Below is quite a long review of the book.

http://www.la-articles.org.uk/eoe.htm

DOES EDUCATION MATTER? myths about education and economic growth, by Alison Wolf.


But when employers hire graduates, might they just be looking for a method of ascertaining the ability of a particular candidate, not looking for particular skills? Wolf maintains that the answer to this question is yes. Education has become a socially acceptable method of ranking people.

..

Suppose, Professor Wolf says, “that everyone left school for good at the age of fifteen, or even twelve, instead of the modern habit of staying on longer and longer. Suppose too that, before leaving, everyone took some exams which provided a clear ranking of population. How much less productive would the economy, and most of these people, then be?” (p.30)

----------------------------------

re Urban Decay, see public housing in London.

A cancer on society.

 

[Play by Numbers]

Have you come across this woman? Heard someone talking about her on the radio the other way and found it very interesting. Below is quite a long review of the book.

http://www.la-articles.org.uk/eoe.htm

DOES EDUCATION MATTER? myths about education and economic growth, by Alison Wolf.


But when employers hire graduates, might they just be looking for a method of ascertaining the ability of a particular candidate, not looking for particular skills? Wolf maintains that the answer to this question is yes. Education has become a socially acceptable method of ranking people.

..

Suppose, Professor Wolf says, “that everyone left school for good at the age of fifteen, or even twelve, instead of the modern habit of staying on longer and longer. Suppose too that, before leaving, everyone took some exams which provided a clear ranking of population. How much less productive would the economy, and most of these people, then be?” (p.30)

----------------------------------

re Urban Decay, see public housing in London.

A cancer on society.

Yeah but meds this may apply to areas that are not highly skilled or require a vast amount of knowledge to function in.

Fact is many jobs are becoming more specific and require a greater level of skills and specialisation to be successful in.

It will also decrease the potential pool to draw from for research and innovation, with a smaller portion of people being able to obtain the education and training required.

Remember there is still a skills shortage in many areas, even internationally and with the economic downturn. Most of these are areas which require a fairly high degree of education.

Also it is a patently unrealistic idea. What tests would be reliable enough? Children at the age of 15 are also far to emotionally and intellectually immature to get an accurate gage on how capable they will be in certain fields, or "ranking".

The act of learning and process of education also helps with the development of a child's brain at certain phases and the learning of specific social skills.

It is a patently ridiculous suggestion. There are also all sorts of social problems which could stem from children being pigeon-holed or "ranked" at such a young age.

Lastly there are no real world examples of developed countries doing this. It also defies the trend in developed countries where life expectancy is increasing, as is length of required education and training for specific jobs therefore people are socially maturing at a slower rate.

 

[Play by Numbers]

Anyway some more pretty pictures.
http://home.f01.itscom.net/spiral/t_rando/t_rando1.html

This is from an abandoned amusement park in Tohoku Japan.

There are many of these which litter the urban and suburban landscapes.
One particularly striking example is in the centre of the Namba district in Osaka.

They stem back to the halcyon days of the 80's where Japan was still riding the wave of it's boom. In virtually no time the market crashed and demand for this sort of entertainment dried up, places such as this were abandoned all around the country.

A couple of examples of this in fiction are provided in Spirited Away, where an abandoned theme park serves as a setting and also metaphoric plot device, in which the protagonist goes from a state of stasis as represented by the abondoned theme park, to one of personal growth and renewal (where she moves into her new home).

Another is the movie Tekkonkinkreet based on the manga Black & White in which urban decay is a central theme.

I wonder if in Australia we will see an eventual virtual abandonment of the interior. As mining projects then towns close and the drought/droughts continue, will we continue the trend of clustering around urban centres on the coast.

Are there any major examples that anyone knows of of this happening?

 

[BigBadCam]

I was reading a book about a forestry town in Tasmania that had only recently been rediscovered. Early loggers had abandoned it and people had forgotten about it for 100+ years. There are other forestry settlements that have long been abandoned and have been taken over by nature. Some of the smaller mining towns on Tasmania's west coast are headed down this path as well.

 

[evo]

Have you come across this woman? Heard someone talking about her on the radio the other way and found it very interesting. Below is quite a long review of the book.

http://www.la-articles.org.uk/eoe.htm

DOES EDUCATION MATTER? myths about education and economic growth, by Alison Wolf.


But when employers hire graduates, might they just be looking for a method of ascertaining the ability of a particular candidate, not looking for particular skills? Wolf maintains that the answer to this question is yes. Education has become a socially acceptable method of ranking people.

..

Suppose, Professor Wolf says, “that everyone left school for good at the age of fifteen, or even twelve, instead of the modern habit of staying on longer and longer. Suppose too that, before leaving, everyone took some exams which provided a clear ranking of population. How much less productive would the economy, and most of these people, then be?” (p.30)

----------------------------------

re Urban Decay, see public housing in London.

A cancer on society.

Fair enough, she might have some argument. It's not exactly my field of expertise, but she'd definitely be in the minority.

 

[medusala]

Fair enough, she might have some argument. It's not exactly my field of expertise, but she'd definitely be in the minority.

Of course she is, there is a huge army that lives off the education budget.

Once you get to a certain level of development in an economy additional spending on health and education tends to bring very little improvement to outcomes.

The same also applies to police numbers and crime rates.

This is in start contrast to infrastructure as per this thread.

Spending on the first two (and welfare) is popular so pollies ramp it up at the expense of spending which actually achieves something.

Here is but one example (what do you think these 300k cost per annum?)

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/e...classroom-assistants-report-says-1781462.html

Children do worse in tests and exams the more time they spend with classroom assistants, according to a major study published today.

The report, due to be unveiled at the British Education Research Association conference in Manchester this morning, says the classroom assistants have significantly reduced teachers' stress levels - but had a negative effect on pupils' progress.

Since Labour came to power in 1997, their numbers have risen from 133,500 to 322, 500 last year

 

[Oakland Raider]

Being in the building game myself, I have concern for all the new homes that are being built, not only are they overpriced, but with the materials used (cheap and weak) and the lack of effort that goes into building them (rushed), I fear a lot of these new FHOG type homes will start collapsing in 30-40 years time. If not collapsing, then definately requiring major + expensive repairs.

Crazy thing is the amount of perfectly good strongly built older homes that are being knocked down to build flimsy "modern" rubbish that wont last. Bit like the car manufacturing business. Set up for spare parts etc..

 

[fairdinkum]

 

[Chief]

Being in the building game myself, I have concern for all the new homes that are being built, not only are they overpriced, but with the materials used (cheap and weak) and the lack of effort that goes into building them (rushed), I fear a lot of these new FHOG type homes will start collapsing in 30-40 years time. If not collapsing, then definately requiring major + expensive repairs.

Will read the article later, only had a glance.

This has been the case for many years. Houses are built as quickly and cheaply as possible on land that is barely settled (you get more if the house is elevated so they truck in fill, dump it and shape it to give a nice sloped driveway).

Whoever can squeeze out the most profit per house can pay the highest for the lando a point. That's capitalism!

A guy I know is pretty fabulously wealthy from this (one hundred or more million dollars and counting). His price point was up until a few years ago about $40,000 per house block for the land. If the numbers work out he snaps up the land, slaps houses down and markets the estate. Not sure what he's paying per block nowadays.

 

[Chief]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/e...classroom-assistants-report-says-1781462.html

Children do worse in tests and exams the more time they spend with classroom assistants, according to a major study published today.

The report, due to be unveiled at the British Education Research Association conference in Manchester this morning, says the classroom assistants have significantly reduced teachers' stress levels - but had a negative effect on pupils' progress.

Professor Peter Blatchford, who headed the research, said one of the key reasons was that less than a quarter of the teachers surveyed had been trained to manage teaching assistants.

So apparently it's a management problem? The article also mentions the lack of feedback on the assitants and the removal of time from teachers.

The obvious answer is more teachers and smaller class sizes, not more assistants.

 

[medusala]

The obvious answer is more teachers and smaller class sizes, not more assistants.

Not at all. There is a wealth of evidence to suggest smaller class sizes beyond a young age do nothing for academic outcomes.

One of many studies

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7262586.stm

Further reductions in primary school class sizes probably would not be good value for money, research suggests.

The study by Professor Dylan Williams of the Institute of Education in London questioned the benefit of lowering class sizes below 30 pupils

 

[HolyWars]

Being in the building game myself, I have concern for all the new homes that are being built, not only are they overpriced, but with the materials used (cheap and weak) and the lack of effort that goes into building them (rushed), I fear a lot of these new FHOG type homes will start collapsing in 30-40 years time. If not collapsing, then definately requiring major + expensive repairs.

Will read the article later, only had a glance.

Agreed man, while working in the steel industry, I wouldn't have seen as much as you in the way of new housing....but from what I have seen 99% of new developements are populated with flimsy matchstick houses. Even alot of the steel framed houses are cheaply and quickly built with 0.8mm studding that is just roughly tech screwed together.

 

[Blight von Torp]

Detroit owns this thread

Check out this website for example. It's unreal http://www.detroityes.com/toc.htm

EDIT: here are some pics from the site. There are pics of hundreds of buildings like this. It just blows your mind.