• From the center of Amsterdam you can bike to a horse pasture in like 20 minutes. You can go from high density urban to farm land super fast. Farmers were heavily involved in constraining how the Netherlands urbanized, so you have a lot of dense cities surrounded by farms and forests.

      It definitely isn’t self-sustaining, but it could be. The Netherlands is one of the biggest agricultural producers in Europe.

      There’s tons of green space within the cities too… And bikea are the primary mode of transit.

      It’s pretty close… About as close as you can get under capitalism.

        • I moved here from the US and you cannot possibly comprehend how much better it is. From the perspective of someone escaping the US, it’s one step away from an ecotopia. But yeah, it does suck in a lot of ways. There are still cars everywhere and I even see trucks sometimes. I don’t understand how y’all could have gone through the whole “Stop da Kindermoord” thing and still let in trucks.

          There’s a lot of bad things to fix, but I haven’t seen anything closer to what I want and with two kids who are growing up I don’t have time or capacity to fight to make the US survivable.

          It’s a good start that most of the rest of the world could copy and be far better off, even if it’s still a long way from optimal.

            • Perhaps not copy everything. :P

              The thing I actually hate the most is the whole enclosure of the commons/foraging is illegal (or at least super gray area) thing. I’m an immigrant and I don’t want to go back, so I’m not about to see how far I can bend the law. But I also know there’s so much food that could be grown in the city and so much that could even be collected right now.

              The Netherlands seems super domesticated.

                • And what’s the deal with corn? In the summer I saw single or groups of two or three corn plants, not dense enough to pollinate, too short to have been started inside. Do y’all grow it as an ornamental or do y’all not know how corn works?

                  Also the one food forest I’ve found needs a goat.

                  I take it you’re in one of the cities then? I’m in Amsterdam.

                  • I’m from around the area of giethoorn. Lots of water!

                    About the corn. I don’t know. Maybe it’s a field used for research? I’ve seen some of those and they do weird things.