Did you watch the talk?

The advantage is everyone knows everyone.

There are no cars on the streets to kill kids.

The "truncated alleyways" are just off the main Plaza so the Plaza is meant to be all about attractive shops and businesses and the creative guild* and some space, a fountain and communal play area etc.

The "popsicle index" is higher than suburbia. That's a main advantage! ("Popsicle Index" asks if it is safe enough to let your 6 year old walk down to the local shops on their own to buy a Popsicle or ice-block).

The school classrooms are part of the village, and can be used at night for other functions. There's no "School" separate from the rest of the village, it is just a part of it. A recent economist podcast just stated that smaller schools can possibly help improve school culture and accountability.
http://tinyurl.com/matqmx

* The Creative Guild can be everything from a potter, arts and crafts store & industry, through to graphic design or musical enterprise of some sort. It's in the "parallel" real estate contract. 1 Creative guild must be in each Village.

Gated cities are nothing more than human zoos run by corrupted political systems and their big business masters.

Human beings are descended from wild animals. The notion that you can subvert the worst outcomes of OVERPOPULATION by posicle technologies is laughable in the context of human willpower and Campbeltown cunning..

Population dynamics dictates the carrying capacity of nations down to the level of suburbs. The second law of thermodynamics predicts chaos at certain population densities due to fundamental resource shortages and accessible free range space is an overlooked but critical resource.

When Population dynamic breakpoints occur (as in New York & many parts of Africa) kids will carry guns and not popsicles to the local store. Scientific analysis of the gated city situation GUARANTEES this.

The other guarantee here is that with subtle resource shortages resulting in escalating violence in gated communities, businesses will prosper even if they have to sell the drugs and guns that population chaos requires. And politicians will become More and More powerful as hitlerian lobbyists cunningly take hold.

The advent of gated community mentality is a problem:

Solution:

Whilst it is a woman's right to have all the children she wants and to propagate the lie that "it takes two to have a child when in fact it takes two to make a child and only ONE to HAVE it", the concept of gated communities from hell will move rapidly forward.

It is clearly up to the conscience of women to understand that while it is their right to have as many children & thus power as they want, it will ultimately be their obligation to send those children to war on behalf of some fanatic polititian and his/her big economic growthist business partners. For War is where the ideologue of "endless economic (nee population) growth" is headed.

Eclipse now,

Your Kibbutz idea is all good and well, but completely ignores the reasons cities formed in the first place.

People specialised, and needed access to larger markets.

Your idea is a lovely thought, but completely impractical for 90% of the population.

If China continues to grow at about 8% p.a. and its consumption patterns mirror those of the US or Australia today they will require 99 million barrels of oil p.a. to power their transport by 2031. The whole world today produces only 84 million barrels of oil p.a. Do our planners know this? Do they care?

One thing for sure is it will not be business as usual and whatever means our cities evolve in their attempts to house the populace will have to rely much much less on private vehicle transport and inefficient road freight. Until the penny drops (if it ever does) our governments will continue their myopic focus on road infrastructure as its answer to stimulating the economy, providing employment (they may as well encourage the workforce to a cycle of digging holes and filling them in)and using up its boom time windfalls.

Shadow Minister, what is it you think I'm proposing? All I have done is made the point that we need to live with less oil, design cities that are "More European than European", and there are a variety of interesting models to consider for this.

The "Village Town" idea maintains a critical mass of diverse industries with a population of 10,000. He has worked out the population density required to support certain industries... how many people it takes to support a local watch repairer, etc. So while maintaining a 'sense of place', 10 thousand people hardly represents a "Kibbutz" and is more one alternative out of many possible viable alternatives for a region as large as Sydney to adopt. That means some bits might be "Village town", some might become more "New Urbanist", some might become more "eco-city", and some might stay roughly as they are because economies of scale in certain industries are essential.

I'm just discussing the "general" trends here and possible models to go buy, each region should probably vote on how they'd like to progress into a post-oil future.

The interesting thing for me? The International Energy Agency announces 10 years till global peak oil and what do we hear on the headline news? Nothing. We're just going to sleepwalk into this crisis and then we'll see how people stuck in the vast distances of suburbia cope!

(If you're meeting your local MP just remember the following 4 words: "peak oil" and "Trolley bus".

Trolley buses are 5 times cheaper than trams).

*The International Energy Agency announces 10 years till global peak oil*

Ah Eclispe, but peak oil does not mean no oil, just that the stuff
is going to become more expensive. When it does, people will adapt,
cut on waste, move house to closer where they work etc. That is human
nature for you. People prefer a bit of pain to learn things.

So we'll be back to a rush to gas conversions. We'll see the first
electric cars hit the market, we'll see mopeds become more popular.
Long distance transport will have to focus on good logistics planning.

Whilst oil is as cheap as it is now, these things are not going to
happen.

Smart developers will indeed develop the sorts of ideas that you
mention, driven by consumer demand, ie some consumers, not all.

Who will be the big losers from peak oil? Most likely the third
world poor, living in cities. For their food costs will rise
dramatically. Abundant cheap grains rely on cheap oil for production.

Depending on the oil price, biofuels will certainly be competing with
food crops for resources. In my own case, I'll simply grow a
patch of canola for the oil, grow a bit less wheat. There is already
a press in town to turn it into biofuel, the moment that prices
justify it.

So no need to panic, change will happen, but change will be taken
seriously when the market signals make it happen. That is just not
the case right now.