I agree with Marjan Krebelj. Please do the numbers, to take one little example, drinking water. Do you know how much energy goes in to get it to you and then away safely? And what happens when it doesn't come running out of your tap.

Complexity comes at a high price, namely fragility. And our current cities (unlike the Maya's by the way) are extremely vulnerable. Well organised commons at bio-region/watershed level are on a systems-level far more resilient. (interesting to know that nature invests 3-5x more in resilience than in efficiency - meaning those with lower values simply haven't survived.

But I agree that nature leaves no margin for error. All the more reason to really understand what we are doing and not to repeat the mistakes we make in the past. So time for a governance system that can neutralise the sociopaths in our current societies. That means replacing democracy with systemic consensus.