Capture and Concentration

David Fleming
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(often shortened to “concentration”)

The practice, characteristic of civic societies, of concentrating population and production in large-scale centres (hubs), and maintaining an extended transport system to support them. As the civic society gets larger, it has to build even bigger infrastructures for energy, food, communication, waste disposal, law and order, administration and transport. This is the giant intermediate economy which will fail when reliable flows of energy break down, and it is the key aim of the Lean Economy to devise ways of living without it.

Efforts to address the concentration by making structures more efficient (high-speed trains, for instance) tend to have the perverse effect of increasing concentration in the hubs, leading to even greater dependence on transport: a positive (or amplifying) feedback.

 

Related entries:

Intensification Paradox, Neotechnic, Complexity, New Domestication, Wheel of Life.

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David Fleming
Dr David Fleming (2 January 1940 – 29 November 2010) was a cultural historian and economist, based in London, England. He was among the first to reveal the possibility of peak oil's approach and invented the influential TEQs scheme, designed to address this and climate change. He was also a pioneer of post-growth economics, and a significant figure in the development of the UK Green Party, the Transition Towns movement and the New Economics Foundation, as well as a Chairman of the Soil Association. His wide-ranging independent analysis culminated in two critically acclaimed books, 'Lean Logic' and 'Surviving the Future', published posthumously in 2016. These in turn inspired the 2020 launches of both BAFTA-winning director Peter Armstrong's feature film about Fleming's perspective and legacy - 'The Sequel: What Will Follow Our Troubled Civilisation?' - and Sterling College's unique 'Surviving the Future: Conversations for Our Time' online courses. For more information on all of the above, including Lean Logic, click the little globe below!

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