Comment 100744

By Joshua (registered) | Posted April 30, 2014 at 22:30:14

These are great comments and clarifications. Thank you to all who helped to answer my questions. I was suffering from a misunderstanding of exactly what density entailed in terms of urban planning, so thanks for that.

Even if people live, however, in apartment buildings or low-rise condominiums for the balance of their days, I still wonder whether everyone having their own home and a plot of land upon which to grow food is still best. My concern is that the centralization of people into smaller communes with single power, water, and heating source is that it makes that small community easier to control: don't like what those folks are saying? No problem, just shut off that unit's power and six to twelve units that contain an innumerable amount of people are without those watered, heated, and electrified comforts. What I'm after is a sense of decentralization and moving off-grid, in some fashion. This can be done for apartments and condominiums with the installation and maintenance of solar panels and a concomitant reduction in power usage by the building's tenants. I talked with a friend today who told me that someone in Hamilton had, some years ago, developed a functioning solar panel with aluminium pots and copper wiring; none of the rare-earth metals being consumed by Chinese production needed application in his panel. That was encouraging to hear. But these concerns are coming from someone who was alarmed at the number of data requests given by government agencies to Canadian tele-communication companies, an article featured in today's Hamilton Spectator.

I realise that I'm now moving the discussion away from density toward renewable energy, and I hope that's alright with readers. The question of density seems to have been settled, from the tenor of written comments. However, despite the province's Renewable Energy Facilitation Office, we don't seem to have the push for renewable energy that is required, especially in a province that receives 53% of its energy from nuclear power. Where are those spent nuclear fuel cells going to go? Into the groundwater and aquifers of northern Ontario communities? Please don't tell me that it can't happen here or try to reassure me that it's unlikely given our safeguards and other panaceas of that nature. Solar panels, geo-thermal heating, and other sustainable methods of home construction should be the first element of any purported sub-urban sprawl; I hope Losani Homes and the rest of Hamilton's developers are examining these concepts, though I'm not holding my breath.

Comment edited by Joshua on 2014-04-30 22:37:18

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