A return--of sorts; and a look at things to come...

First off, I owe an apology to those few who read my LiveJournal/Blogger entries; I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth--I've simply have developed the bad habit of not writing. Given the brief and instant nature of commentary on Facebook, long essays simply felt, well, long, and sloth has always been my bane. Mea culpa.

That being said, I expect to migrate to a different platform in the next year or so. I am considering a career change, and as part of that change, I will have to "press the flesh" in the electronic media that we know as the Web--and, to be quite frank, LiveJournal and Blogger simply will not fill the bill.

Not that I will be deleting said blogs--I still like to keep track of things that happen amongst my wide-flung circle of acquaintances, if for no other reason than you are all such interesting souls. You help me think outside the box, and that is a skill that I value highly--I hope others will as well.

All that being said, I would like to draw your attention to something I predicted would happen about a year ago. As I recall, John C Wright asked those who read his journal what we felt would happen in the US in the near future ("near" approximating the next 100 years). My prediction was that population density would increase in our cities, even as the overall population of our country would decrease; I based that prediction on the historical model of the Roman Empire, which (and I admit, this is pulled from my freshman history classes long ago, so the details might be off) experienced a overall population decline even as they experienced an increase in urban density, as the unprotected members of the empire--then bereft the protection of the Legions--withdrew from the rural settlements to the safety of fortified cities. Indeed, the situation grew so bad that cities themselves contracted in order to form a more defensible perimeter--Lyons of France, if I remember correctly, sub-divided and sub-divided again to shorten the length of wall they had to defend against invaders. I held a year ago (and I still feel so today) that our urban centers would experience a similar phenomenon--even if for different reasons.

This tidbit gives me reason to hold such a view: Dessert: Deconstructing Detroit.

Mayor Dave Bing is proposing to abandon large swaths of the city, move the few people remaining to more functional neighborhoods, tear down the buildings left behind and let what's left become forests, pastures and farmland.

The consolidation, aside from eliminating square miles of eyesores, would cut the cost of services like police, fire, snow removal, water and sewage.

Already people are said to hunt pheasants in abandoned neighborhoods, and Detroit-grown produce is sold in farmers markets. The markets are important because not one national grocery chain has a store in the city. Soon, if the city wants to have food, it may have to grow its own.

I remember when Detroit was still the center of our automotive industry, and the nucleus of the nation's economy. I imagine many a Roman patrician wondered at the decline of Rome and Milan, as well.

We do, indeed, live in interesting times.