13 replies on “Pleistocene Urban Archipelago”

  1. In the Pleistocene we had physical cities.

    In the 21st Century, we have social networks.

    Thus we can expand into less dense and more healthy residences.

    BTW — most USA people don’t live in “cities”, they live in one of 30 metropolitan areas which include mostly suburban and exurban areas surrounding a decaying high rise oriented core. As in the case of Seattle’s Smith Tower, which is 100 percent vacant, the core is increasingly crumbling.

    BTW — Honolulu is America’s only livable metropolitan area:

    http://www.metropolismag.com/pov/2009070…

    I’m a sucker for best-of lists, so I always look forward to Monocle’s annual ranking of the world’s top 25 most livable cities—and I’m always amused by how poorly American burgs fare in the editors’ estimation.<i>

  5. “Apparently, cities enabled agriculture to evolve rather than the other way around.”

    See Jane Jacobs, The Economy of Cities, published about FORTY YEARS AGO.

  6. Idiot.

    The article claims that dense populations allowed CULTURE—“modern behavioral traits (ornamentation, use of ochre, and possibly rock art) “— to develop not that “cities enabled agriculture to evolve”. Even Sullivan didn’t misstate this as badly as you do.

  7. @1: Suburban and exurban growth in Puget Sound has largely slowed while growth in Seattle has picked up (as a whole, those “wow, boom!” population change percentages are much smaller than screaming “Black Diamond added 600% to its population!!”). Moreover, Seattle itself, while carrying only about 20% of the population of the MSA, has about 45% of its office space, even today. Oh, and on the Eastside, one company holds over a quarter of the office space.

    And the reason for the Smith Tower’s issues is that it has not aged as gracefully as other towers (cf. Seattle Tower) in the area and is in a corner of downtown that is troubled. Well, troubled might be putting it lightly. Oh, and the owners keep threatening to turn it into condos.

    Your slack-jawed interpretation of pretty basic economic and social structure is funny, though. Probably the reason you insist facebook is a good replacement for basic human interaction.

  10. every time the pleistocene is brought up i get pissed about the wooly mammoth extinction. and the giant ground sloths. but not the sabre-tooth tigers so much.

  11. I don’t think you really understand the size of “cities”.

    Agriculture was a result of cities the size of what we now think of as large towns, or at best small cities.

    Sure, eventually they grew into larger cities, and this encouraged the spread, but this also increased diseases and other fun things like riots.

  12. I think both are a part of Americana. And the dichotomy is not exclusive to the U.S. You see it everywhere. It’s all a part of the human condition and the attempt to survive.

  13. @1 – Please provide a link showing a 100% vacancy for Smith Tower, because the last article I read a few days ago had the tower with a still sizeable, but not totally vacant 70% while the owner of the tower was figuring out their next steps (such as converting it to condos).

    Here’s my link-
    http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/bu&hellip;

    Seeing as how you’re using made up facts to make your primary point, I am going to assume that the rest of your comment is just as asinine. Thanks for playing!

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