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Leaving aside the terrible environmental consequences that lowering population density results in, there's two main reasons that keep people living in cities: w

Leaving aside the terrible environmental consequences that lowering population density results in, there's two main reasons that keep people living in cities: work and service availability. Tesla is doing impressive work, but they won't have an effect in how people cluster into cities.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
That's completely backward? Its centralized human settlement that's cause environmental collapse over history.
- ben_w 7y ago
  That’s a surprising thing to read, do you have any references? While I would accept that centralised human settlement has been a contributing factor to certain diseases, I had always been told that environmental collapses have generally been caused by either natural disasters or wide-scale rather than centralised overpopulation.
- vvillena 7y ago
  Collapse is usually caused by overpopulation and mismanagement of resources. Decentralize the people and the collapse just comes sooner. The total human impact is way way bigger when population is sparsely distributed. Cities enable people to live close together, ensuring more land is kept free of negative human influence. Think about it: if the population is the same, the needs are the same. Food, water, waste treatment, transport, luxuries. At the very least, you need the same of everything, but if the density isn't big enough there's no economy of scale that can kick in. I remember reading about how some US suburbs are effectively bankrupt, because they can't maintain their infrastructures due to not enough people living there. Imagine it, a high-class neighborhood that is forced to replace asphalt roads with gravel roads.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Ironically I live in a house on what seems to be a fairly affluent street [0] in Berlin, yet the road outside the house is unpaved gravel. [0] seems to be, but I don’t know if the appearance is deceptive as I’m a foreigner who only speaks the local language to the level of simple newspaper stories.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

That's completely backward? Its centralized human settlement that's cause environmental collapse over history.

ben_w 7y ago
That’s a surprising thing to read, do you have any references? While I would accept that centralised human settlement has been a contributing factor to certain diseases, I had always been told that environmental collapses have generally been caused by either natural disasters or wide-scale rather than centralised overpopulation.
vvillena 7y ago
Collapse is usually caused by overpopulation and mismanagement of resources. Decentralize the people and the collapse just comes sooner. The total human impact is way way bigger when population is sparsely distributed. Cities enable people to live close together, ensuring more land is kept free of negative human influence. Think about it: if the population is the same, the needs are the same. Food, water, waste treatment, transport, luxuries. At the very least, you need the same of everything, but if the density isn't big enough there's no economy of scale that can kick in. I remember reading about how some US suburbs are effectively bankrupt, because they can't maintain their infrastructures due to not enough people living there. Imagine it, a high-class neighborhood that is forced to replace asphalt roads with gravel roads.
- ben_w 7y ago
  Ironically I live in a house on what seems to be a fairly affluent street [0] in Berlin, yet the road outside the house is unpaved gravel. [0] seems to be, but I don’t know if the appearance is deceptive as I’m a foreigner who only speaks the local language to the level of simple newspaper stories.