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Part 6:  Necessary Components for Community Sustainability

Shelter and Transportation

Put in simple terms, modern shelter is what it is today because of the nature of our present transportation. These two major components to civilization are, as they say, joined at the hip. If one proves to be unsustainable, it will bring down the other and that is our biggest problem to date. Our transportation system is wholly dependent upon the present financial system. Literally, all of the energy needed to drive our transportation comes from four large corporate entities that owe their existence to the present financial system.

When this financial system collapses, causing the failure of these corporations, it will mean that our cars will come to a stop for a lack of gas. Most American communities could not continue to function without the automobile or other forms of oil-dependent transportation. Individuals would lose the ability to get to work or the grocery store but even if they could reach these places, businesses including grocers depend on long range shipping and distribution to stock the items they sell.

Even though our present shelters could easily serve their purpose without improvement or rebuilding for many, many years, the failure of our transportation systems will mean our shelters are no longer viable because we will not have what is necessary to survive while living in them.

Before explaining how shelter and transportation will need to be changed for community sustainability, we must recognize one simple critical factor...up to this point transportation has determined the nature, structure, and location of our shelters. If we are to survive, we must reverse this situation. Our transportation must be changed so that it will fit with our next generation shelters.

So what does this mean for local community? Well, history has aptly demonstrated that populations have made large migrations on a regular basis. The same could very well be true for the United States of the 21st century. There could be a very large migration from the densely populated communities built around the automobile, to more diffuse communities found throughout the country; communities that are much closer to the production mechanisms that create the products most essential for life. Since a migration of this magnitude will mean leaving behind both our present transportation systems and our shelters, they will need to be replaced.

Again, the sciences and technologies of the 4th industrial revolution will provide us with effective means for replacing what we will be leaving behind. Through next generation architectural concepts and material manufacturing processes, we have the ability to create new structures, new buildings, new controlled environments that in many ways will be superior to what we have today. With the right support, they will be capable of being produced very quickly. Among the technologies that will make this possible, will be the ability to mass produce next generation concrete building components that will allow us to create suspension buildings. Together these two technologies will allow us to reestablish comfortable shelter.

As for the replacement of transportation, technologies are already available that will easily be integrated with these next generation shelters. That technology principally is high speed overhead, maglev transportation consisting of small modular transport units built using similar technologies to that used in constructing the Atlas rocket.

As for the maglev technology, its basic concept, presented in 21st Century Science and Technology magazine does not depend on super cooled magnets but on rare earth magnets that will be well within a local community's capacity to produce.

What's more, this new transportation will derive all of its energy directly from electrical power. As for long-distance transportation, next generation turbines combined with next generation airframe construction will permit communities separated by great distances to trade goods and services without the need to rebuild roads and bridges.

Clean Water Production and Delivery
Food
Shelter and Transportation
Lighting
Heating
Clothing
Medicine
Sanitation and Waste Disposal
Generation of Raw Materials
Chemical Processing
Processing of Raw Materials - Tool and Die
Communication
Computing Technology
Education
Maintaining of Standards
Justice
Defense

Part 7: Our Future Under the Fourth Industrial Revolution

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