Sshh, don't mention the population crash

I met Fred Pearce, author of Peoplequake (Volksbeving in Dutch) yesterday in Utrecht, for an interview. For those who are not familiar with Pearce: he is one of Britain's leading environmental journalists and authors.

In Peoplequake he exams all aspects of demography. I interviewed him mainly on the future of European cities. There's a population crash coming towards us and we're pioneering it in Western Europe.

The fact that the whole global population will reach a tipping point about midcentury and go into a rapid decline isn't mentioned a lot in the media. Pearce tells me why: "Demographic researchers tend to hush it up. They say it would endanger their funding." The population crash is politically incorrect and even taboo as a topic.

As for Europe, Pearce says: "we will have to redesign the whole concept of cities and make them work for a shrinking, greying population."

The main reason for the continuous drop in fertility is the feminist revolution. Pearce: "Women can now choose between a career and children. Increasingly, espcially in countries like Italy and Germany, they go for their careers. Our main goal should be to complete the feminist revolution with adequate facilities that make it possible for women to combine career and children and an attitude that makes it possible that both partners share parents' responsibilities."

Fred Pearce compares the differences between Italy and the Nordic countries. "In Scandinavia these theings have been taken care of. Fertility in the Nordic countries is down only to 1.8 child. This allows for a gradual and copable decline in population. In Italy it's 1.3 child - a catastrophe. You can imagine what this will mean for the sustainability of cities in the long run."

Photo update Dresden

I've just created a series of photos of my recent trip to eastern Germany. I made a Dresden series first, on Flickr. Use the tag Baba Reizen. There's a lot more to this city than its magnificent baroque centre. Check it out.

Stalin built this city

The city of Eisenhüttenstadt ('steel factory city') in the eastern German state of Brandenburg is a strange anachronism. Stalin had it built in the early 50's for the blast furnace workers. A perfect workers' paradise in, well, Stalinist style.

There was no economic reason to have a blast furnace there other than to make a political statement. The furnace cannot run on the brown coal from the region - the cokes had (and have) to be imported from elsewhere. This makes Eisenhüttenstadt (or Stalinstadt as it was once called) a cathedral in the desert.

Ever since the wall is gone, the area is subject to the market economy. Out of the 56.000 inhabitants, only 30.000 remain. The others have gone to get a job somewhere in the west with some future perspective.

The old Stalinist blocks of flats have been restored in a wonderful way. The outside city rings of former soviet style flats are all being demolished and the people move closer to the old centre.

The future of Eisenhüttenstadt may well be that of a shrinking open air museum city, a relic of a different time and age. The city has an interesting museum of everyday GDR life and internet companies sell Ostalgia-products online to communist retro collectors around the world.

They may have been weird times to have lived in, but they make great stories. And out of great stories you could make a new living.

136 places missing and the land is still moving

Just came back from an awesome trip to eastern Germany. The Lausitz region on the German-Polish border is full of stories. Ever since 1924 up to 136 villages and towns have been demolished to make way for brown coal quarries. It started in the Third Reich, went on in communist times and is expected to continue to at least 2030.

The only difference is: in the former GDR you got a notice on your frontdoor saying you have to be out by Monday next. Now, Vattenfall - the giant Swedish energy producer - compensates people for the loss of their homes. Like the town of Horno that fought 30 years against its obliteration from the Lausitz map. They lost. Then they could rebuild their village in the same manner some 20 miles further on, on the outskirts of the town of Forst. What arose there is Neu Horno (new Horno). It is so perfect it looks like the towns my daughter used to construct in The Sims computer game.

At the same time Vattenfall quarries the land for brown coal, creating lunar landscapes everywhere. When the mining stops, these giant craters get turned into articifical lakes for recreation. There will be 23 of them, connected thru canals.

The landscape changes all the time and towns and villages will keep disappearing. It is a difficult thing for the inhabitants: they are economically dependent on an employer who pays for their salaries and demolishes their houses at the same time.