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How dense is your city?

citydensity.com

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Re: How dense is your city?

#51

Post by kdmccormick »

ars wrote: post #31
kdmccormick wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sprawling suburbs are the opposite of nature. A single large park inside a dense city is far more nature-rich than acres upon acres of suburban lawns are.

You've apparently never actually been in a suburb. They typically have random unkempt forests behind each row of houses, and not just a little bit. Like you need a serious walk between houses on different roads, and all of that is a long unbroken piece of nature. The front of the house near the road has the lawn, but there's a LOT more to suburbs than that. 2 minute walk from where I lived in a suburb was a "forest"…

Yeah, I grew up in a town like that in CT. It's nice, for sure. I would call it semirural rather than suburban, though.

The issue with lovely semirural living is that there literally isn't enough space on Earth for everyone to sustainably live like that. It's a privilage to live in house surrounded by woods with grocery store a 15 minutes drive away. Many people (not you, congrats) need to live very close to one another, and the best, happiest, most sustainable way for them to do that is in a dense city with good transit, good sidewalks, and limited auto traffic.

That is all not to mention the economics of suburban and semirural living. Those nice roads with little traffic? They are crushingly expensive. Towns would not be able to afford them if it were not for huge federal and state subsidies, which are largely funded by... wait for it... tax revenue from dense cities.

Re: How dense is your city?

#52

Post by jskherman »

nerdbert wrote: post #12
pseudocomposer wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is higher density “winning?”

Better for the planet, better food and cultural options, shorter travel times for typical daily activities... in my book it definitely is.

Have you tried living in the dense cities like Mumbai, India or Manila, Philippines? It's quite clear that with population density, trash output also increases and is harder to manage. By experience, it's not a pleasant way to live or for the environment. It's a lot dirtier.

Re: How dense is your city?

#54

Post by ars »

kdmccormick wrote: post #51
ars wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've apparently never actually been in a suburb. They typically have random unkempt forests behind each row of houses, and not just a little bit. Like you need a serious walk between houses on different roads, and all of that is a long unbroken piece of nature. The front of the house near the road has the lawn, but there's a LOT more to suburbs than that. 2 minute walk from where I lived in a suburb was a "forest"…

Yeah, I grew up in a town like that in CT. It's nice, for sure. I would call it semirural rather than suburban, though. The issue with lovely semirural living is that there literally isn't enough space on Earth for everyone to sustainably live like that. It's a privilage to live in house surrounded by woods with grocery store a 15 minutes drive away. Many people (not you, congrats) need to live very close to one anot…

It's not semirural - there are no farms or fields anywhere, and there are plenty of houses. It's just they are spread far enough apart for people to have space.

> that there literally isn't enough space on Earth for everyone to sustainably live like that.

That's really not true. Half of the US lives in cities, half don't. You really think the US is so completely full there's no room for those city dwellers to have more space?

According to my quick math there enough room for 40 times the population of the US to each person (not each family - each person) to have a huge suburban lot.

> They are crushingly expensive.

No, they are not. That's an urban (ha!) myth. Roads are really not that expensive once you move out of dense cities. Rural roads cost around half or less of urban ones, and they last around 4 times as long since traffic is much lower (5-10 years vs 25-40 years). So a rural road costs like 1/10 an urban one.

And since according to http://demographia.com/db-intlsub.htm suburbs have around 1/3 the population density, suburban roads are actually 3 times cheaper per person!

Hardly "crushingly expensive".

> Towns would not be able to afford them if it were not for huge federal and state subsidies, which are largely funded by... wait for it... tax revenue from dense cities.

And cities would not exist if not for all the goods made in non-urban areas. Cities have tons of high-revenue, high-tax services, but they don't actually make anything. That's all done outside the city.

If everyone moved to the city everyone would die - there would be no food or anything else.

There's a balance in the world between cities and rural and suburban area, and you mess with that balance at your peril! You can end up with terrible imbalances and very expensive food and other goods.

And don't forget you need all those rural roads, or nobody could get any goods to cities. So be doubly cautious about suggesting fewer rural areas because of "road costs".

Re: How dense is your city?

#57

Post by CalRobert »

ars wrote: post #29
fragmede wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawns are a Veblen good, like Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior handbags. That we don't see them as ostentatious the same way is a matter of culture. By all means, people should live where they want to live; urban, suburban, rural. But let's be honest about things.

Lawns are a place where I play, or my kids play. Or where I go to just sit and enjoy nature. They are also decoration (flower bed for example) to make my surroundings more pleasant which helps my mental state. If your lawn is a Veblen good you are doing it wrong.

Lawns exist in part because we made it too dangerous for kids to play in the street (this obviously will have a good deal of variance by location).

Re: How dense is your city?

#58

Post by pchangr »

jskherman wrote: post #52
nerdbert wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better for the planet, better food and cultural options, shorter travel times for typical daily activities... in my book it definitely is.

Have you tried living in the dense cities like Mumbai, India or Manila, Philippines? It's quite clear that with population density, trash output also increases and is harder to manage. By experience, it's not a pleasant way to live or for the environment. It's a lot dirtier.

One thing doesn’t mean the other. See Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Re: How dense is your city?

#59

Post by RoyalHenOil »

delecti wrote: post #40
ars wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And worse for the people who live there. I get anxiety just thinking of living in a dense city. Everyone I know who left a dense city never wants to go back - they talk like people who suffered from Stockholm syndrome and were now freed. And that doesn't even touch the economics: For the most part cities make money by services and not by physical items. Services are very lucrative, so on paper cities make tons of mon…

My wife and I bought a house a in the suburbs and both of us badly want to move back. So now know someone who left a dense city and wants to go back. Being able to walk places is a luxury we won't overlook again.

Suburbs are the worst of both worlds. Urban areas are super convenient, rural areas are super private, and suburban areas are typically neither.

I grew up in a city, and I am not a city person. I love living in the boonies (I live on an 80-acre farm surrounded by farms and forests that are even larger), and even so, I would rather live in a dense urban area than in the 'burbs.

I currently have a shorter commute to the local shops and supermarket (8 minutes) than many people have in the suburbs. It's hard to imagine giving up privacy for an even worse commute.

Re: How dense is your city?

#60

Post by ajoseps »

ars wrote: post #43
ajoseps wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

man I’m curious what state or country this suburb is in? The suburb I grew up in was nothing like that. If anything you’re describing something more on the rural side of things.

Due to my privacy I'd rather not say the city name, but I will say it was the second largest city in a strongly Democratic coastal state. The largest city in that state was one of those large city hell-holes with too many people crowded in too small a space. But the second largest city was quite nice once you were not too near the downtown.

It’s interesting how much variation there are for suburbs. I’m mostly used to the types that exist in CA which are very different from what you describe and I am personally trying to avoid settling on. Also as someone who lives in a “large city hell-hole”, I personally greatly prefer it to the suburbs I grew up in. Fwiw a lot of the urbanism movement I’m familiar with prefer rural areas and cities over suburbs. You’re right that cities can’t exist without rural areas and the idea is to make more areas rural, not decrease it. The main issue that is brought up is suburban sprawl, which I think is different from what you’re describing. I think the main idea is to avoid cities like LA and prefer more density like Chicago or NYC.
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