3 ms·

I agree, this would be a fascinating experiment. 2m city on around 50 km2 is almost completely walkable, and certainly bicycleable. It would be just about big e

• ghaff 11y ago
  I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the fact that density is expensive in terms of building and infrastructure and also that many people don't especially want density as a matter of choice. As a result, most cities that have highly dense areas largely created those after they had already built out into surrounding areas. (The somewhat exceptions are geographically constrained areas. Even pre-skyscrapers there were very dense areas on Manhattan like the Lower East Side although presumably a return to tenement living conditions isn't a desirable future for cities.)
  • mafribe 11y ago
    I don't think density is expensive, on the contrary, density is cheap due to economies of scale. I think one reason might be food production and transport. Before the invention of refrigeration, fertiliser, mass transport, humans had to live rather close to food production, which stands in the way of density. Another reason might have been that really dense living required the ability to build high-rise houses, with concomitant requirements for being able to pump water high up, have elevators and so on. Reliable sewage systems and provision of fresh water was another problem. Some of the above became widely available only at the end of the 19th, beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the automobile encouraged sub-urbanisation. It may be only know that small, yet very dense cities are possible.