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Many people have done this math and have researched this extensively. Urban environments on average are significantly more ecological, more efficient, than spra

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.
    - lolc 8y ago
      It is simply a physical fact that surface area goes down as building size goes up. (You have to build very tortured buildings for this to be untrue.) Consequently, dense settlements will be easier to insulate and will lose less energy per tenant. There are many other effects of scale kicking in too. Arguing about the quality of life is something else with different trade offs. I'd say ban cars from city centers and then we start talking about quality of life.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  > if bus goes only full nobody will use them How can it be full if nobody is using it!?
  - xte 8y ago
    Sorry for my poor English, I meant if a bus is constantly full people start avoiding it simply because of discomfort, in few times request to bring more buses/more frequent lines start to rain to the transport company and as a result we get more buses used at a lower capacity or more private transport to avoid discomfort...

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.
  - lolc 8y ago
    It is simply a physical fact that surface area goes down as building size goes up. (You have to build very tortured buildings for this to be untrue.) Consequently, dense settlements will be easier to insulate and will lose less energy per tenant. There are many other effects of scale kicking in too. Arguing about the quality of life is something else with different trade offs. I'd say ban cars from city centers and then we start talking about quality of life.
nicoburns 8y ago
> if bus goes only full nobody will use them How can it be full if nobody is using it!?
- xte 8y ago
  Sorry for my poor English, I meant if a bus is constantly full people start avoiding it simply because of discomfort, in few times request to bring more buses/more frequent lines start to rain to the transport company and as a result we get more buses used at a lower capacity or more private transport to avoid discomfort...