[Dubayoo]

I've been wondering for a while if there's a literal, physical, and direct connection between people's environments and their political paradigms. I say this especially in light of the recent trends of protectionism, isolationism, and localism. These are ideas that seem to be pursued most by inland peoples while coastal peoples tend to believe more in free trade, interventionism, and globalism.

Perhaps the reason for this is due to how inland peoples depend more on industry whereas coastal peoples depend more on commerce. Inland peoples also have greater access to mineral deposits which encourage industrialism whereas coastal peoples have more fertile and lush terrain that can't be used for mining or manufacturing. For example, in Pennsylvania, there's a distinct division between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and that division seemed to come apparent in the recent election where the blue wall didn't hold in light of so many rust belt union workers voting for Trump. In eastern PA, that doesn't work so well since most people aren't factory works or craftsmen.

I guess you could say the same thing goes on between Britain versus France and Germany in Europe, and it would explain why the country wants to leave the E.U. while strengthening its trade deals with the U.S.

Perhaps the real key to internationalism is some sort of macroscopic zoning where we insist that people predominantly live along the coasts, and that inland territory is mostly mechanized and automated for industry instead. Mechanics need to become engineers who don't do the dirty work, but rather maintain the machinery that does it.

[One Degree]

Presently about 40% of the world's population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast. As population density and economic activity in the coastal zone increases, pressures on coastal ecosystems increase.
PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL POPULATION LIVING IN COASTAL ...

[url]http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/...sheets/...coasts/pop_coastal_areas.pdf
[/url]
This is what we already have and is the cause of many of our problems, not the solution. Bold added by me.

[Dubayoo]

Your link isn't working.

That said, I never said population density should increase. Perhaps too many people are around as well. Population growth needs to slow down so we don't stress out agriculture. On top of that, every area on coastlines isn't as jampacked as the mid-Atlantic metropolis.

People can also live closer to coasts than they do already, and there are rivers to be inhabited as well.

[One Degree]

Sorry, I can not seem to get it to come up as a link. You can copy and paste it if you want. I believe in decentralization as a solution which would be the opposite of what you propose. I do agree with your idea of increasing the amount of land exempted from construction dramatically. I favor spreading out the cities divided by large areas of no construction except for special use such as farming, logging, etc. and then on a short term lease basis.

[Wellsy]

One's concrete position in a society does tend to shape the sort of interests that they're likely to have and is a solid basis on which to speculate fundamental conflicts of interest. Where one could look at the conflict between organizations operating within the same market with same/different products. Their desire to be supported by state subsidies within different levels of an industry, commercial vs industrial. The desire for free trade versus protectionism because of costs for different industries.

Spoiler: show

http://www.panarchy.org/engels/freetrade.html

But no country will again be able to pass from Protection to Free Trade at a time when all, or nearly all, branches of its manufactures can defy foreign competition in the open market. The necessity of the change will come long before such a happy state may even be hoped for. That necessity will make itself evident in different trades at different times; and from the conflicting interests of these trades, the most edifying squabbles, lobby intrigues, and parliamentary conspiracies will arise. The machinist, engineer, and shipbuilder may find that the protection granted to the iron master raises the price of his goods so much that his export trade is thereby, and thereby alone, prevented. The cotton cloth manufacturer might see his way to driving English cloth out of the Chinese and Indian markets, but for the high price he has to pay for the yarn, on account of protection to spinners, and so forth.

The moment a branch of national industry has completely conquered the home market, that moment exportation becomes a necessity to it. Under capitalistic conditions, an industry either expands or wanes. A trade cannot remain stationary; stoppage of expansion is incipient ruin; the progress of mechanical and chemical invention, by constantly superseding human labor and ever more rapidly increasing and concentrating capital, creates in every stagnant industry a glut both of workers and of capital, a glut which finds no vent everywhere, because the same process is taking place in all other industries.

Thus the passage from a home to an export trade becomes a question of life and death for the industries concerned. But they are met by the established rights, the vested interests of others who as yet find protection either safer or more profitable than Free Trade. Then ensues a long and obstinate fight between Free Traders and Protectionists; a fight where, on both sides, the leadership soon passes out of the hands of the people directly interested, into those of professional politicians, the wire-pullers of the traditional political parties, whose interest is not a settlement of the question, but its being kept open forever; and the result of an immense loss of time, energy, and money is a series of compromises favoring now one, then the other side, and drifting slowly though not majestically in the direction of Free Trade - unless Protection manages, in the meantime, to make itself utterly insupportable to the nation, which is just now likely to be the case in America.

So there is certainly a grounded conflict of interest between rural and city populations or in your case coastal and inland populations based on the economy/indsturies.

In thread by another user they take note of the gap between rural and town and reference the Communist Manifesto which advocates a diminishing the distinction between town and country through more equitable distribution of the population.
http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/marx/classics/manifesto.html

Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

The author of the other thread speculates that there is to be a blend of some industry moving to country towns so that they aren't devastated by the uneven economic development of capitalism within a country, "with more urban forestry, vertical farms, community gardens, and the like, making cities more green".
That I take it that there point is that cities need to incorporate some of the things that now characterize rural production.

Which I think touches on onedegree's referenced quote I believe about sustainability in the heavily populated areas. Here's the quote in its entirety

(b) Relevance to Sustainable/Unsustainable Development (theme/sub-theme): Because of the economic benefits that accrue from access to ocean navigation, coastal fisheries, tourism and recreation, human settlements are often more concentrated in the coastal zone than elsewhere. Presently about 40% of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast. As population density and economic activity in the coastal zone increases, pressures on coastal ecosystems increase. Among the most important pressures are habitat conversion, land cover change, pollutant loads, and introduction of invasive species. These pressures can lead to loss of biodiversity, coral reef bleaching, new diseases among organisms, hypoxia, harmful algal blooms, siltation, reduced water quality, and a threat to human health through toxins in fish and shellfish and pathogens such as cholera and hepatitis A residing in polluted water. Finally, it is important to recognize that a high population concentration in the lowelevation coastal zone (defined as less than 10 meters elevation) increases a country’s vulnerability to sea-level rise and other coastal hazards such as storm surges.

Leaving aside the ability to actually make a city green, it seems that cities productive capacities are destructive and need to be balanced somehow. This doesn't really make explicit how to resolve conflict of interests between city and rural but is just a rambling on some of the points brought up so far. I don't have a clear opinion on what could be done.