The less energy intensive system for providing the produce that is sold in city groceries that preceded the current oil-fed agricultural system involved a range of cities, towns, and hamlets ... and one thing that you found in the hamlets that had efficient transport access to cities and towns was a ring of truck gardening.
Europe also lives beyond its biocapacity ... indeed, in the rough estimates of the Global Footprint Network, the US, Germany and Japan each live beyond our biocapacity by similar acreages. France roughly breaks even on its biocapacity, but unless nations like the US and France with above-average biocapacity per capita are able to live within our means, that is not a technological regime that is a candidate for global sustainability. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
However, the point of my previous comment is that my comment before that was not saying that big cities would necessarily be unsustainable.
However, that food does have to come from somewhere, and we can not just wave a magic wand and exempt agriculture from the need to be sustainable, so that we can just feed the cities with massive factory farms employing some minute share of the population.
The most energy efficient source of fresh produce for the cities on a whole life cycle analysis will be truck gardens with very little trucking involved, shipped in from surrounding ex-suburbs along the same transport corridors that provide the energy efficient passenger transport. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
