5 ms·

Try to compute how much energy you need to build and maintain a dense city than a sprawling suburb. Try to compute evolution possibilities of a dense area than

by xte 8y ago

Try to compute how much energy you need to build and maintain a dense city than a sprawling suburb. Try to compute evolution possibilities of a dense area than a sparse one. Try to compute the magnitude of any disaster from natural phenomenon to human-made ones on a dense area than the countryside. I have lived in a dense and modern big European city, now I'm living on mountains: cost, quality of life, energy efficiency etc are far superior here than in a city. No matter how developed is public transportation that's it's regularly inefficient because to handle peak time it work at a very bad efficiency for the rest of the year and you can't reduce it without hurting people freedom.

lesdeuxmagots 8y ago
Many people have done this math and have researched this extensively. Urban environments on average are significantly more ecological, more efficient, than sprawl, on a per person basis. The amount of energy required to build and maintain 500,000 people spread across suburbs is far more than 500,000 in a dense city. The amount of material needed for construction, especially cement goes up massively. Services are able to serve less people, so require more quantity of doctors, grocers, power stations, etc per capita, requiring more land and space and waste. The fact that individuals need to use cars in less dense environments vs many exclusively using shared services such as public transit in dense cities, which are ridiculously more ecological.
- xte 8y ago
  Many people have done it wrong, few start to acknowledge this these days. For instance many compute how much fuel consume a bus to transport maximum load of people vs that number of people in individual cars. They do, of course, a right computation, only they forget a thing: if bus goes only full nobody will use them (too uncomfortable), normally they goes with very few people inside for most of the time, so they consume more than individual cars during the day/year except at few peak times. Same for undergrounds: many compute how much electricity they consume, but omit to compute how much energy you need to create, maintain and evolve them. Same for buildings: many confront how much energy is needed to heat or cool a building instead of individual houses, but they omit a thing: individual houses can evolve, being demolish for instance by children when parent's dead, tall buildings are normally not demolished and rebuilt as a result their energy efficiency is far behind individual houses (I have proven myself switching from an apartment in a big city far less cold than my actual individual home), also type of material you need to build a tall (and safe) building is far less recyclable than many individual houses.
  - lolc 8y ago
    So are there studies that show where the others went wrong? Or do you argue based on a gut feeling?
    - xte 8y ago
      I can't link any right now, I've reading few on paper and deducted others from news: try only looking at actual mass of studies for "sustainable city", essentially NO ONE of them sustain that actual cities works/are sustainable, and substantially anyone try to find a "sustainable city" model with many different draconian changes to actual model. Same goes for many "green buildings" innovation that keeps popping around and generally result in failure from "communist buildings" to "integrated social buildings". Also simply look for and feel on your skin the quality of life in cities than in countyside/the riviera. And in dense countries vs far less dense one.
      - ginko 8y ago
        >Also simply look for and feel on your skin the quality of life in cities than in countyside/the riviera. And in dense countries vs far less dense one. Well yes, living on the countryside with a big house and car and all amenities may be nicer than living in an apartment in the city. But you should keep in mind that that's a luxury. And a rather wasteful one at that. It might end up not being that much more expensive for you, but that's because people living in the cities are subsidizing your lifestyle through their taxes.
        xte 8y ago
        I pay taxes as well... And not less than people in cities, like I was until few years ago... I do not consider it a luxury but a different development model that may led to a "luxury" life without the need of other's sacrifice. Consider a thing: we do not produce foods in towns, we (normally) do not have factories in towns so towns live of the shoulder of productive people outside, they can't live without them. In the countryside you suffer without a "countrywide development" but you still survive. In towns you generally have only tertiary sector's workers, no more.
scarejunba 8y ago
Have you run these numbers? I think you’re assuming the results because for most of your questions the answers are not what you seem to be implying .
lolc 8y ago
You can't beat the energy efficiency of dense urban housing with modern insulation. What are you comparing?
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Right? My parents home consumes an order of magnitude more electricity per month, despite only being 3x bigger. Turns out reducing exterior walls helps.
  - xte 8y ago
    Try looking around your country: how many modern, well isolated, airtight, tall buildings there are in percentage than modern, isolated etc single houses? In Sweden for instance most of the buildings are "ancient" enough to be far less efficient than newer one, most of individual houses (that are build generally with a very poor quality and little price) are newer and as a result far better isolated. Also they are easy to be recycled since have far less concrete and far more wood than tall buildings. In France situation is less different since houses tend to be kept for longer time and they are not build until few years with much energy efficiency attention, however they are still a bit more efficient than buildings since they tend to be a bit "newer" in medium.
    - village-idiot 8y ago
      My parents home was new too. So this wasn’t a “new apartment vs. half century old home” situation. I also lived in a more extreme climate too.
      - xte 8y ago
        Well my personal case is a mid-size apartment (130m², ~1399ft²) in a building built in the end of the sixties to a newly build home around 210m²/2260ft². Old apartment was heated by a central methane based burner, new house by a VMC with a heat pump and a two solar thermal vacuum panel + 800l heat cumulus (~28ft³/ 211 US gal / 176 UK gal), whole cost dropped around 80%, whole energy consumption drop from around 300-350w×m²/years to around 25w×m²/years... But in medium in the whole country individual homes are newer than tall buildings mostly because they tend to be poor quality to a point that's cheap demolish and rebuild than maintain and also tall buildings are normally property of many different subjects so reach agreements on any upgrade / maintenance is far complex than individual houses and physical space and usable ground for construction around the home is normally far more present than around a tall building... Keep attention that I always talk about mean values, not single buildings. Another thing, I do not know in the USA but in Italy and France construction norms are less tight for airtightness in collective buildings than individual houses, airtightness often play a more prominent role than insulation thickness in term of energy cost. I do not know in big buildings how for instance a VMC (mechanically controlled ventilation with heat exchanger) can possibly work...

by xte 8y ago

lesdeuxmagots 8y ago

Many people have done this math and have researched this extensively. Urban environments on average are significantly more ecological, more efficient, than sprawl, on a per person basis. The amount of energy required to build and maintain 500,000 people spread across suburbs is far more than 500,000 in a dense city. The amount of material needed for construction, especially cement goes up massively. Services are able to serve less people, so require more quantity of doctors, grocers, power stations, etc per capita, requiring more land and space and waste. The fact that individuals need to use cars in less dense environments vs many exclusively using shared services such as public transit in dense cities, which are ridiculously more ecological.

xte 8y ago
Many people have done it wrong, few start to acknowledge this these days. For instance many compute how much fuel consume a bus to transport maximum load of people vs that number of people in individual cars. They do, of course, a right computation, only they forget a thing: if bus goes only full nobody will use them (too uncomfortable), normally they goes with very few people inside for most of the time, so they consume more than individual cars during the day/year except at few peak times. Same for undergrounds: many compute how much electricity they consume, but omit to compute how much energy you need to create, maintain and evolve them. Same for buildings: many confront how much energy is needed to heat or cool a building instead of individual houses, but they omit a thing: individual houses can evolve, being demolish for instance by children when parent's dead, tall buildings are normally not demolished and rebuilt as a result their energy efficiency is far behind individual houses (I have proven myself switching from an apartment in a big city far less cold than my actual individual home), also type of material you need to build a tall (and safe) building is far less recyclable than many individual houses.
- lolc 8y ago
  So are there studies that show where the others went wrong? Or do you argue based on a gut feeling?
  - xte 8y ago
    I can't link any right now, I've reading few on paper and deducted others from news: try only looking at actual mass of studies for "sustainable city", essentially NO ONE of them sustain that actual cities works/are sustainable, and substantially anyone try to find a "sustainable city" model with many different draconian changes to actual model. Same goes for many "green buildings" innovation that keeps popping around and generally result in failure from "communist buildings" to "integrated social buildings". Also simply look for and feel on your skin the quality of life in cities than in countyside/the riviera. And in dense countries vs far less dense one.
    - ginko 8y ago
      >Also simply look for and feel on your skin the quality of life in cities than in countyside/the riviera. And in dense countries vs far less dense one. Well yes, living on the countryside with a big house and car and all amenities may be nicer than living in an apartment in the city. But you should keep in mind that that's a luxury. And a rather wasteful one at that. It might end up not being that much more expensive for you, but that's because people living in the cities are subsidizing your lifestyle through their taxes.
      - xte 8y ago
        I pay taxes as well... And not less than people in cities, like I was until few years ago... I do not consider it a luxury but a different development model that may led to a "luxury" life without the need of other's sacrifice. Consider a thing: we do not produce foods in towns, we (normally) do not have factories in towns so towns live of the shoulder of productive people outside, they can't live without them. In the countryside you suffer without a "countrywide development" but you still survive. In towns you generally have only tertiary sector's workers, no more.

scarejunba 8y ago

Have you run these numbers? I think you’re assuming the results because for most of your questions the answers are not what you seem to be implying .

lolc 8y ago

You can't beat the energy efficiency of dense urban housing with modern insulation. What are you comparing?

village-idiot 8y ago
Right? My parents home consumes an order of magnitude more electricity per month, despite only being 3x bigger. Turns out reducing exterior walls helps.
- xte 8y ago
  Try looking around your country: how many modern, well isolated, airtight, tall buildings there are in percentage than modern, isolated etc single houses? In Sweden for instance most of the buildings are "ancient" enough to be far less efficient than newer one, most of individual houses (that are build generally with a very poor quality and little price) are newer and as a result far better isolated. Also they are easy to be recycled since have far less concrete and far more wood than tall buildings. In France situation is less different since houses tend to be kept for longer time and they are not build until few years with much energy efficiency attention, however they are still a bit more efficient than buildings since they tend to be a bit "newer" in medium.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    My parents home was new too. So this wasn’t a “new apartment vs. half century old home” situation. I also lived in a more extreme climate too.
    - xte 8y ago
      Well my personal case is a mid-size apartment (130m², ~1399ft²) in a building built in the end of the sixties to a newly build home around 210m²/2260ft². Old apartment was heated by a central methane based burner, new house by a VMC with a heat pump and a two solar thermal vacuum panel + 800l heat cumulus (~28ft³/ 211 US gal / 176 UK gal), whole cost dropped around 80%, whole energy consumption drop from around 300-350w×m²/years to around 25w×m²/years... But in medium in the whole country individual homes are newer than tall buildings mostly because they tend to be poor quality to a point that's cheap demolish and rebuild than maintain and also tall buildings are normally property of many different subjects so reach agreements on any upgrade / maintenance is far complex than individual houses and physical space and usable ground for construction around the home is normally far more present than around a tall building... Keep attention that I always talk about mean values, not single buildings. Another thing, I do not know in the USA but in Italy and France construction norms are less tight for airtightness in collective buildings than individual houses, airtightness often play a more prominent role than insulation thickness in term of energy cost. I do not know in big buildings how for instance a VMC (mechanically controlled ventilation with heat exchanger) can possibly work...