Eclipse Now, When will you be making an application to build this village?

*Remember, 97% of freight in this country is done by truck.*

Yes Eclipse it is, but again there is at present huge wastage, due
to relatively cheap fuel. Trucking can also be extremely efficient.
Take a road train. For a 200km trip, it sucks around 150l of diesel,
but given that it can move 50 tonnes of freight, per kg that is
negligable. Freight logistics is the secret here.

Now lets say that you eat a tonne of food a year. That's just
3 litres of diesel to move your yearly food supply 200km.

In fact the Kiwis showed that it used less energy to grow a leg of
lamb in NZ and ship it to the UK, then it did to grow it in the UK,
due to extensive versus intensive farming systems.

New urbanism is great for those people happy to live that way.
I've lived that way in Europe and would never go back to it lol.
But I admit, it does suit some city people. Great, so give
people that choice, don't try to enforce it.

*and all agriculture coming from the beautiful farms surrounding the village*

Its not going to happen, you are dreaming. For things like wheat,
barley, rice etc all have specific requirements and cannot just
be grown anywhere

Eclipse now,

You claim I am using the straw man approach. I would describe your approach as a combination of the "chicken little" (the sky is falling) and the "field of dreams" (build it and they will come) approaches.

As we have seen with the financial crisis, oil demand can shrink rapidly. Even when peak oil arrives, the price will force a reduction in consumption most of which will be through efficiency increases.

I am glad one woman is happy with the design, but the polls indicate that 84% of Aus is not. People come to the cities for a reason, and the country side is struggling to get people. Similarily people are prepared to pay a premium for houses instead of apartments.

As we have seen with the financial crisis, oil demand can shrink and RISE rapidly.

Even when peak oil arrives, bloody-minded murdochesque & macquarieesque competition, NOT the price, will force a massive increase in consumption by the rich elite. Most of this increase will be consumed by wars, and cleaning up the ensuing dead bodies before they spread pandemics that will kill the entire human race.

The proof lies in the current "too good to be true" stock market rebound, which is nothing more than a forced return to greed and bubble bursting economics. The 'final' burst tending over time to WAR.

Remember the saying: "If it seems "too good to be true" then it probably ISN'T true"

The 'footprint' information that Eclipse Now refers to is for direct energy use only; however, direct energy use is dwarfed by indirect energy use, and the dwellers of multi-unit housing have very high indirect energy use, by virtue of the nature of their lifestyles. See: http://www.propertyoz.com.au/library/RDC_ACF_Greenhouse-Report.pdf
People living in flats are no water misers either; see: http://www.fbe.unsw.edu.au/cityfutures/publications/researchpapers/researchpaper5.pdf
Also, people who move into new multi-unit housing tend not to use public transport to the degree that planners expect; see: http://dtl.unimelb.edu.au/R/UA33AMXTYMQ4QDJ9J7TQ1U5IM44XJFJ7EK5ESHERLAXNKR2D2B-01101?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=66410&local_base=GEN01&pds_handle=GUEST
There is no shortage of available and suitable land on the fringes of most Australian cities to accommodate further suburban development, without alienating good quality farmland or areas of high conservation value. The costs of extending services into new areas is quite reasonable compared with the cost of upgrading and expanding infrastructure in established areas. In any case, as the Industry Commission demonstrated in its report in the mid-90s, the issue is not so much what urban form costs less; it's what does the market want and is it prepared to pay for it. In other words, the arguments typically used by planners to justify urban consolidation (that is, replacing lower density housing with infill and redevelopment) are specious. More power to Tony and his group!

TonyR, yooohooo, where are you? Answer Manhattan and Peter Newman on young people in Australia please?

Yabby, it seems you and I may have a more synchronised outlook than I initially thought. You appreciate New Urbanism for the city folk, and I appreciate the need for village escapes in the bush.

Would you agree that we need less suburbia, and more farmsteads *as well as* more New Urbanism?

Interesting stats on the NZ leg of lamb! What the HECK is wrong with UK lamb? Raised on petro-chemical feedstocks instead of grass would be my guess? Our local butcher had a community night where he demonstrated butchery and discussed why he prefers grass-fed beef that’s *aged* over grain-fed *fattened* meat that is faster to end-use in restaurants where it cooks easily (with all the fat disguising the fact that it had less aging. And is not as good for us!)

Shadow Minister, but the sky IS falling! Suburbia is now stuffing the sky with Co2.
Peak oil is so fast it takes 20 years warning to move off liquid fuels safely!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirsch_report

EV’s will take 16 years. With New Urbanism, we won’t need a quarter as many cars in 20 years and have compounding benefits!

"One woman" caused the demand in the USA for those 600 extra New Urbanist projects, and had the following built in Australia?

New South Wales
Breakfast Point

Queensland,
*Sippy Downs Town Centre Sunshine Coast,
Kelvin Grove Urban Village, Brisbane
Varsity Lakes Town Centre, Gold Coast

South Australia
Mawsons Lakes, North Adelaide
Cape Cabarita, Cabarita

Victoria
Beacon Cove, Port Melbourne
Kensington Banks/Lynch’s Bridge, Kensington
Rippleside, North Geelong
Waterford Green, Footscray

Western Australia
Ascot Waters, Belmont
Claisebrook Village, East Perth
Cockburn Central, Cockburn
Ellenbrook, Ellenbrook
Marlston Hill, Bunbury
Subi Centro, Subiaco
Wellard Village, Wellard

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examples_of_New_Urbanism

*OC, I think we both know those papers analyze the way people live in *today’s* apartments in *today’s* lifestyle, not in a post-peak oil world and “Cradle to Cradle” Industrial economy with correctly designed eco-apartments.