Down With The Cities | Page 4

roads or riverbanks or seashores, the rule of thumb in modern times is to make it out of concrete. There are, to be sure, occasional pea gravel gardens or dirt playing fields in the cities, but these are few and far between. Cities are made by smothering the ground with concrete. Indeed, the city can be understood as construction itself.
Never-Ending Construction
The world is full of construction officials, who, if they cannot plan some kind of project, are capable of nothing but yawning; the proprietors of construction companies, who, in order to make money, cannot rest from their labors for a minute; the pitiful part-time farmers who pay back their loans by engaging in construction work; the proprietors of cement and gravel companies who will be in a pickle if they cannot get someone to use the tons of building materials they have made; the truckers and the dealers in construction machinery and fuel for them; the big shot politicians like Tanaka Kakuei whose life work is pork barrel; the idiotic voters who weep for joy over the services brought in by construction (that is, urbanization)... With an arrangement like this, it is almost assured that, even if the vast oceans dry up, there will always be construction going on in the world. At this rate, it will not be that far in the future before they are carrying out construction work among the peaks of the Himalayas.
There are some who will say, "Come now, they wouldn't go so far as to do such unnecessary work in the Himalayas," but if this is so, then when all the construction work in the world has been completed and there is no more to be done, is it possible to think that the Ministry of Construction will disband itself, that the construction companies will go belly up, that the cement companies will close down, or that the part-time farmers will hang themselves? There is no doubt that when such a time comes they will carry out needless construction work like covering over the peaks of the Himalayas with concrete. There will be no end to construction work, and consequently the urbanization of the Earth's surface will continue until the ground disappears entirely. [2]
Even now, in every place imaginable, they are building solid concrete walls in places where, they think, perhaps once in a thousand years there will be a landslide; they needlessly dig up bamboo groves which will most assuredly not be washed away, and stack up concrete blocks. There are instances in which by merest chance, such a place is visited by natural disaster, and they take the matter to court saying that it is the government's oversight. In actuality, however, the authorities, whom one would expect to be bitter over losing the case, are smiling contentedly. This is because the government has obtained proof of the need to pour astronomical sums of money into a totally needless construction project, the excuse being that one never knows when disaster will strike. Though the government and the construction companies openly plan and carry out needless construction projects everywhere so the contractors can profit, there is little fear that the citizens will ever take them to court over any of it.
In addition, the government uses construction projects to stimulate the economy. Using construction bonds as a convenient cover, it spurts out wads of money (merely in order to make it circulate a little better), dig up our precious land, and cover it over with concrete. [3] Why must they go to such lengths to stimulate the economy? It is for no other reason than to facilitate the even greater activities of the secondary and tertiary industries, which results in the waste, contamination, and destruction of the city.
Chapter I
Notes
1
It is possible to modernize agriculture (a primary industry) as well, but this becomes possible only with the intervention of the secondary and tertiary industries. Agriculture is meant to be in accord with the cycle of Nature; it is supposed to be ceaseless repetition.
2
Indeed, this has already been realized in Japan, for the Ministry of Construction is building a gargantuan concrete embankment on Mt. Fuji, Japan's highest. (Translator's note)
3
In comparison with construction bonds, the money-losing savings bonds are still better. This is because the savings bonds are not used to directly destroy the land (though it will come around to that sooner or later).
CHAPTER II
The Evils of the City
If we were to assume that the city brought no harm to either human beings or to the Earth, there would be no need for a discussion (or condemnation) of the spread of the cities as in the previous chapter. Yea, it would be verily the opposite: Just as most urbanites believe, the city is an ultimate good since it helps them achieve prosperity. We may even say, then,