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Then don't live in a city that reeks of urine and has garbage all over the place. Cities are ancient relics of a time when human beings had to have their atoms

Then don't live in a city that reeks of urine and has garbage all over the place. Cities are ancient relics of a time when human beings had to have their atoms in the presence of each other to communicate rapidly. Don't live in one unless it has the quality of life you can accept. If you keep supporting sub-par cities, they'll never improve.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> Cities are ancient relics of a time when human beings had to have their atoms in the presence of each other to communicate rapidly. You're forgetting the transfer of material possessions and wealth, safety, and employment. It's great that you've found a way to work remote, but that's the not the reality for the majority of people. I also wonder whether 5 million people living in less than a thousand square kilometers is more or less wasteful than 5 million spread out over a billion square kilometers. You'd have to spend a lot more to transfer all the goods everywhere, as well as moving people around.
- jakeinspace 8y ago
  Earth's surface area is half a billion square kilometers.
  - SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
    Sorry, I was wrong in my orders of magnitude. 100,000 square km then?
pault 8y ago
I believe I once read that at the population density of Tokyo, every human on Earth could fit into the state of Texas. Whether that would be desirable is another question, but I imagine that a lot of our current environmental problems would go away with increased density.
- rootusrootus 8y ago
  In the right ballpark but it would be about 4 billion people in Texas, which is roughly half the world's population. On the other hand, at the density of Manila, you could fit the entire population of the planet into Ohio.
Nasrudith 8y ago
You forget another important factor - infastructure scaling. If communication alone was adequate we would see companies going to disporia models or setting up in unincorporated areas- instead they are paying premiums to concentrate in /expensive/ cities.

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

> Cities are ancient relics of a time when human beings had to have their atoms in the presence of each other to communicate rapidly. You're forgetting the transfer of material possessions and wealth, safety, and employment. It's great that you've found a way to work remote, but that's the not the reality for the majority of people. I also wonder whether 5 million people living in less than a thousand square kilometers is more or less wasteful than 5 million spread out over a billion square kilometers. You'd have to spend a lot more to transfer all the goods everywhere, as well as moving people around.

jakeinspace 8y ago
Earth's surface area is half a billion square kilometers.
- SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  Sorry, I was wrong in my orders of magnitude. 100,000 square km then?

pault 8y ago

I believe I once read that at the population density of Tokyo, every human on Earth could fit into the state of Texas. Whether that would be desirable is another question, but I imagine that a lot of our current environmental problems would go away with increased density.

rootusrootus 8y ago
In the right ballpark but it would be about 4 billion people in Texas, which is roughly half the world's population. On the other hand, at the density of Manila, you could fit the entire population of the planet into Ohio.

Nasrudith 8y ago

You forget another important factor - infastructure scaling. If communication alone was adequate we would see companies going to disporia models or setting up in unincorporated areas- instead they are paying premiums to concentrate in /expensive/ cities.