There's a small creek that runs through the middle of our property. It drops about 100 feet from one corner to the other corner over about 1500 feet, so during a heavy rain the little creek can aggressively erode its banks. That's not really a problem, except where there is man made infrastructure. So I had to route the creek and slow it down through about 20 feet of its course. This requires a fairly substantial amount of material and cost, and eventually, maybe in several decades, that will fail, too.
The creek is really solar powered, while the infrastructure to contain it is mainly powered by fossil fuels and by my work. The land, here, is really solar powered too. It's the result of the ice age(s). The soil was deposited over thousands of years by advancing ice that was built up by the sun driven weather. The dynamism of nature is due to the sun and the earth's core and tectonic activity. The infrastructure of man is a dead thing.
It's pretty close to impossible to indefinitely restrain the dynamism of nature to fit a man made design. Engineering projects like the Panama Canal require constant, massive maintenance to keep operational, for example. Roads fall apart in a short time. Bridges rust away. Cars rot out in no time in a wet, cold climate. The list goes on and one. Even electronic devices fail from the cycling of power through their components.
Infrastructure technology like a Yurt or a Teepee seems to be more in line with the dynamism of nature. Simpler, less energy intensive and resource intensive infrastructure would mean less sunk cost and time to live.
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