> Is it safe to say that, in US cities, quality of life generally gets worse with increases in population density? I'd have a hard time saying that. First, yo

> Is it safe to say that, in US cities, quality of life generally gets worse with increases in population density? I'd have a hard time saying that. First, you have "in US cities", so you've already stepped up your density from a non-city situation. Moving to Seattle from smaller East Coast towns and cities was a notable increase in quality of life for me. (more to do, more people that share my interests, less effort/travel involved in doing things, more medical/food resources of various types, better public transit, etc). Historically, urban centers (more dense) have always represented more opportunities than rural areas (less dense). Without a doubt, some people in these dense areas have lower quality of life. But enough have the opposite that it keeps happening. Second, you'll have lots of individual variation. I've seen HN posters that LOVE their small-town areas, and others that love having everything needed in a high density 10 block areas. Very hard to make a generalization. All anecdotal, but there it is. > If so, is it because US local and state governments are pretty bad at managing population increase, in general? That's a statement I'd generally back. Govts represent the current populace, and the smaller the govt body, the more short-term the vision usually is. Whether it's putting in building height restrictions, avoiding loud construction, or losing a ton of money on stadium construction, there are a lot of examples of poor management. (I suspect there are examples of GOOD management, but that's much harder to _notice_.) I recall reading a condemnation of cul-de-sacs (they promote heavy car use and tend to create unwalkable neighborhoods, and thus drive away small shops and stores towards stripmalls at best). Despite this, they were (are?) heavily promoted by the federal govt, and you can see from aerial views of areas when they were built. (some areas have cul-de-sacs off the roads. 10 years later you see a fern-like structure of roads having roads off of them that have cul-de-sacs off of them. 10 years after that you gets these fractalish spiraling structures of roads of roads of roads of cul-de-sacs). In my view, poor management repeated over and over again.