My travels thus far have been a whirlwind of a variety of places from remote corners of the world to dense urban centers. Now that I've had the time to slow down, I've find myself incredibly curious about the core elements and infrastructures central to all of these places. I've detailed three musings from New Zealand that I wanted to noodle on in writing:
1. Homes: In New Zealand, we spent two and a half weeks living in a van. Our bed was a piece of plywood over the folded down seats in the back and our kitchen was a gas camping stove. While we were certainly operating on less of a budget than most of our campervan tourist peers, New Zealand has a robust campervan tourism industry and many phenomenal campsites. Some of these campsites housed permanent mobile homes, where residents surrounded their RVs with temporary structures and gardens. It made me wonder about what defines a home, if that definition varies from culture to culture, and what that means for the housing crises of now and the future. Is the dream of a picture perfect suburban home an American social construct or a result of the desires of the collective middle class American culture? Either way, can we rewrite that narrative to be more friendly to density? Is there another alternative sustainable path forward that does not require density?
2. Water: Also, while we were there, New Zealand declared that the north island was experiencing a drought while south island was experiencing dramatic flooding that closed parts of the Milford sound. We would often stay at campsites on private farmland and the farmers would tell us how their water tanks we're empty and there was a waitlist on the government trucking in water tanks so they might run out. Is this the best solution we have to distribute water to farmland? How did ancient people do this effectively? My gut instinct says that the future of farmland is density to minimize the distance water has to travel (e.g. Vertical farming). Would farmers be able to transition to vertical farming with minimal support or is that a different skill set? Could their land be changed to remain productive (perhaps even in a way other than farming) while being more local and sustainable? Or does a sustainable future require taking farmland away from farmers to, for example, reforest?
3. Human waste: in an eco-homestay on a farm, the toilets had a "pee catcher" to separate feces from urine. The feces was then used for fertiliser while the urine was disposed of. From a quick conversation with the owner, this was primarily done to minimize the smell in the outhouse. Are there ways we can similarly reuse human waste in urban environments? Could sewage facilities simply get connected as a collection stop in compost infrastructure? If not, what complicates it? Would it be worthwhile to split urine and feces collection in this ideal waste infrastructure?
As you can tell from these little windows into the chaos that is my unemployed brain, I'm becoming increasingly interested in the infrastructure and systems that organize and operate our lives. If you have any book recommendations on the topic, I'd love to read them! Hopefully, I’ll add on to this blog post with some answers to these questions.