Why stay in suburbia?

Once again, over the past couple of days I've been musing over the comments you've left on my last post about the advantages and disadvantages of staying in suburbia in a post Peak Oil society. I thought I'd address some of the comments and my reasonings in this post, where I can expand on them more fully. Of course, I am absolutely no expert on the matter and it is entirely possible that my reasoning is flawed, so I'm happy to take any and all further comments on board :-)

Firstly I want to point out that our choices of places to live are very much constrained by our current single income and mortgage, where are families are located (why would we move further away from them?) and the prices of land and housing in these areas. There are many options that we haven't seriously explored, but we feel that the only real options we have currently are to either stay put in suburbia or move to my parents' rural town, on a couple of acres of land. We also considered doing a deal with and moving in with my in-laws, who currently own a couple of acres, but discounted it primarily because a) their acreage is heavily covered with gum trees, which means it is heavily shaded, and the gum tree roots suck all of the water out of their small existing gardens. They'd be horrified if we cut them down (as would I), and it would put a big hole in what is left of a lovely wildlife corridor through their subdivision. And b) it is some distance from schools, shops, doctors and services, with no public transport available. Not such an issue if you are relatively self-sufficient and don't need to work, but in the mean time we'd be spending up big on two cars, including a bigger, seven-seater car, and petrol getting to and from work, school and doctor's appointments with the in-laws.

So, the issues that we've considered in the decision to stay put have included (but haven't been been limited to) the following:

Health Care Provision
This is an issue that I have been dwelling on a lot lately. For a start, my in-laws are in their late 70's now, and up until recently have been extremely fit and healthy for their age. Lately however, they have had number of medical issues that are - in our current society - considered minor, but do require regular monitoring from medical specialists. For example my MIL now has Type 2 diabetes, and - despite walking around 5 kilometres every day at a speed that I can barely keep up with - may possibly have osteoporosis.

I myself am about to undergo treatment in hospital for my thyroid disease, and will have to have all four wisdom teeth extracted at some stage in the near future.

My middle daughter, aged 4, decided to climb on top of the freezer yesterday (because "fairies live up high") and fell off, splitting her lip open; fortunately it didn't require stitches, but the possibilities for an emergency hospital visit after such a stunt were almost endless.

Where we live at the moment, I am a five-minute drive from both my GP (whom I can get in to see the next day, or straight away for more serious issues) and a weekend and after-hours out patient medical service, and a 15-minute drive from the largest hospital outside of metropolitan Sydney.

In contrast, my parents live in Tamworth, in rural New South Wales. It's a large regional centre with a population of 50,000 people in the town itself and surrounding district. My mother has just made an appointment with her GP for an annual check-up and has had to wait six weeks to get in to see her. More serious, but not life-threatening, issues take around three weeks.

The radiology department at the hospital only operates on alternate weekends. So if you break your arm on the off weekend, you are forced to drive yourself to Armidale, 110 kilometres (68 miles) away, for an x-ray and setting. Recently it was reported in the local newspaper that a man had (I think) dislocated his shoulder playing football in Coonabarabran, some 2.15 hours away by road, who'd had to drive to Tamworth for treatment, only to discover it was radiology's off weekend and he had to drive a further hour away to Armidale.

In addition, most medical specialists now only operate one week a month, or alternate weeks if you are lucky, otherwise you have to travel to Newcastle (3.5 hours) or Sydney (5 hours away).

Ridiculous!

What happens when petrol reaches $3 (and more) a litre? When it's only available sporadically? It makes me shudder to think. The current health system (in NSW anyway, but I don't see other states being held up as paradigms of virtue) is appalling and is only getting worse. Add to that the complete lack of preparedness for Peak Oil by any government (anywhere), and I see complete chaos.

Which is not at all to say that staying where we are may be any better - it's possible that moving to less crowded rural centres where they can grow their own food, may suddenly become an extremely attractive proposition for medical practitioners in the future (we can only hope), but I can't help but worry about it in the meantime.

Climate and Rainfall
We are seriously blessed to be living in one of only a couple of areas of NSW that remained drought-free during the recent drought. In contrast, my parents' place turned into a complete dust bowl and they had to abandon all but a few vegetables in order to concentrate using what water they had to save their established fruit trees. Fortunately they've had more rain lately, but it could just easily happen again in the near future; who knows what changes we can expect over the next couple of decades from global warming? What would be the point of moving to somewhere with room to grow lots of food, only to be thwarted by drought (or floods for that matter).

The most obvious answer to that is to move to acreage within this rainfall zone. The answer to that is: we can't afford it. For various reasons (some to do with profit), small acreages are not at all favoured by many local government areas around here, so small holdings are not commonly available. What are, have been driven up in price by their rarity, and tend to be quite expensive. Those that are more affordable (to us, on our one income), are affordable because they aren't close to facilities and have no, or very limited, public transport - hence lots of driving to get anywhere to do anything, even simply shopping for essentials. I want to be driving less not more.

Availability of Community Facilities
As Polly pointed out in her comment, where we are now we are close to schools and shops, a community centre, public transport exchange, sporting fields, medical facilities, churches, and a large library, amongst other things. If we get to enjoy any spare time in the future, we could also easily bus or ride to free recreation areas such as the beach, lake and forest reserves.

But what about the bad side of staying in suburbia?

Being "mobbed" for our backyard food supplies?
This is something I have worried about, after all many (most?) Peak Oil sites talk about suburbia becoming slums, full of chaos and displaced city dwellers! (Coincidentally Crone, I do have a large bougainvillea growing along our front fence, LOL).

The more I've mused about this though, the more I feel that the solution is in how we set ourselves up within our local community before the "proverbial" hits the fan.

What I mean is that if we "build an ark", arm ourselves with guns to keep out the marauders and isolate ourselves from our communities, the chances of us being targeted by desperate people looking for food and resources is pretty high!

On the other hand, by getting to know our neighbours, offering them the occasional dozen eggs, pot of jam or packet of heirloom seeds from your favourite home-grown tomatoes, and welcoming them into our homes and yards to see what we are doing and how we do it, we set ourselves up as a community asset in the future, even if they are uninterested right now.

There will always be a section of our community that are essentially unpleasant people, but I'd like to think that on the whole, most people want the same things as us, which includes a peaceful place to live. I know I'll want to be fostering relationships with people with skills that will be useful in future, like mechanics. Neither DH or myself could take something mechanical apart and fix it, for example, so if I find one living up the street, he or she will be getting preference for my jam, LOL! I'd like the think that the feeling might be reciprocated by them or other neighbours when they need advice about growing vegies or saving seeds for example (not that I know much about them yet :-).

Not having access to food items that can only be produced on farms, like wheat.
Luckily/ unluckily, depending our your view, where we are living at the moment is on the outskirts of suburbia. It means that our mortgage is substantially less, our backyard is much bigger than houses closer to the city, and although it's a pain at the moment in terms of getting to work in the city for DH (although he has just started riding his bicycle, so it's do-able without a car, just time-consuming), I have to wonder if in the future, being relatively close to potential sources of milk or wheat, for example, that can (in theory), be grown on land within a 10-minute drive of here, might be a good thing? They aren't being grown there now, and much of the land is owned by Coal & Allied (a mining firm, although coal mining ceased years ago), but who knows what the future might bring? I know that if I owned one of those properties, running a few cows for a (very) local milk supply run might start looking like a very attractive proposition in the next decade?


The interruption or cessation of electricity and/or natural gas supplies.
This really is something I worry about a lot. I constantly debate the merits of a small, grid-connected solar electricity system, versus paying that (substantial) amount of money off our mortgage. I can't help but conclude that paying off our debt has a higher priority, so I therefore have to set myself up such that we can live (comfortably?) without grid power. Fortunately, I think I have at least *some* time to work out how to do that! I have already purchased (and am learning how to use) a small solar oven, although clearly by itself that won't be enough. I have reasonable confidence that we could live without a fridge if we had to and I am budgeting to buy more (second hand) household items that don't require energy to run, like a treadle sewing machine for example.

Again, we are also fortunate to be living in a relatively mild climate were we are now. Moving to Tamworth would mean very cold, frosty winters (I remember them well!) and stinking hot summer days, which makes heating/cooling a house and growing food more challenging.

Difficulties with water supply.
Again, something I really worry about. I think many people forget that our city water supply systems require heavy inputs of energy, both in treating the water, and in moving it around the city. It's possible that this could really become an issue in the future. We have one water tank of only 2500 litres (660 gallons) and a small 200 litre (5o gal) water butt, and that's barely enough to keep the vegie garden and fruit trees going. Unfortunately, the greatest difficulty we face in this issue is that we have a large retaining wall right next to one side of our house, and fences 2 metres off the two other sides, so there is literally no room for any other tanks :-( We will certainly be installing small water butts on our remaining down pipes on the house, but they won't go anywhere close to providing enough drinking and cooking water to get through a hot summer, in addition to growing the fruit and veg. I suppose, when push comes to shove, having large rainwater tanks in your front yard, or even in your (now redundant) driveway, won't be such an odd thing to see in suburbia??


So much about what is going to happen in the future is uncertain, but I'd like to think that even though we will never have the room in our backyard to be self-sufficient, we might - as the Peak Oil situation becomes apparent to the general community - be able to be integrally involved in setting up a local system of bartering for goods and services/ skills? I don't know. But not having to maintain an acreage at this point in time (fencing and other infrastructure, for example) is quite appealing.

As is the concept of being able to call in at the neighbour's place to barter eggs for jam, on the way back from walking the kids to school, where I picked up the milk dropped off for the local co-op members by the dairy farmer living a couple miles away. Idealistic maybe, but it certainly seems possible?