P2P urbanist Nikos Salingaros was interviewed by media on Mauritius, where the debate rages on new powerplant.

A short extract of the longer interview here:

“MS: What measures do you propose to drastically reduce demand for electricity, because a reduction means no need for more power plants?

NS: The waste of energy is mainly due to the construction and running of cities. After World War II, cities were built according to a model based on the insane waste of energy. It was done on purpose, following the dreams of certain architects of that time. It is a model of the 1920s, when planners and architects dreamed up images of a future of science fiction without really thinking ahead: a city of skyscrapers among parks and beautiful highways (empty of cars!). This dream became a nightmare. It does not work. In contrast, the sustainable city should be built upon traditional models of cities, where scale, geometry, fluxes, and transport give priority to pedestrians. The sustainable city is assembled from and works on all scales, it does not concentrate energy in nuclei like skyscrapers or a transport system that is purely vehicular. Therefore it does not need huge amounts of energy costs. These mixed-use cities that I propose are congested, of course, but if you try to change their geometry according to the image of skyscrapers, you kill the city. You just have to see how they killed the major cities in Asia.”