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While it's nice to be around idyllic nature, it comes at the cost of being further away from other humans. There's a reason economic productivity rises by rough

While it's nice to be around idyllic nature, it comes at the cost of being further away from other humans. There's a reason economic productivity rises by roughly 10% every time a city doubles in size. More people, means more innovations. Higher density leads to a more rapid spread of new ideas and best practices. Workers, entrepreneurs and investors can rapidly reconfigure to seize opportunities. Less density means you're more likely to fall into stagnation, as the one local employer in commute distance slowly circles the drains. City life comes with significantly better living standards. What you lose in yard space you make up with much higher salaries, better healthcare and education, and more varied cultural options. To a large extent country living is only idyllic because of the technological exports made by high productivity city-dwellers. I agree that there's a deep human need to connect with nature. But the solution isn't to try to give every man is his own personal Nottingham forest on his property. It's to build high-quality parks and nature reserves, and good transit so people can easily access these amenities.

_bxg1 7y ago
Not to mention community. If you're lived in a city all your life and have roots, it's hard to just pick up and move. Not that it can't be done, but this often gets left out of the "why don't people just move if they can't afford to live there?" conversation.
finder83 7y ago
I can see your point and agree this is probably true for the large majority of people. And most people don't want to live close to nature; it seems the large majority like being near cities and people, I'm just not one of them. :-D I'm not entirely sure that the dichotomy of high productivity city-dwellers/lower productivity country dwellers is true any longer though. I'm a dev manager/programmer working remotely, many of my neighbors are also in IT or construction and either work remotely or commute, and many programmers in our company also live in "fly-over" states in rural areas. Most also own chickens, have small farms, or raise competition animals. But I still understand and see your point, and I see the value in this for suburban areas. I suppose my mind went to areas more rural than the article is talking about.
DeathArrow 7y ago
There are some downsides: Overcrowding, traffic jams, very high housing prices, high prices for food and everything else. Yes, you earn more, but you pay more for living in smaller apartments, so the standard of live isn't guaranteed to be improved. Here's a comparison from Numbeo: You would need around 3,630.58$ in Austin, TX to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 8,100.00$ in New York, NY. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=New+York%2C+NY&city2=Austin%2C+TX https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... I think that moderation is best, and there probably are ranges of population density which are the best. Urban sprawl is bad, as is overcrowding in the city center. In some parts of the world, you can live in a rural area and travel to work by fast trains, so you can have your cake and eat it, too.
- dcolkitt 7y ago
  I mostly agree with what you're saying. But high housing costs are largely a result of policies designed to intentionally restrict supply. Not necessarily density itself. As a counterfactual to the NIMBY West, Tokyo has very high density but surprisingly affordable housing because it places few restrictions on building and land use.

_bxg1 7y ago

Not to mention community. If you're lived in a city all your life and have roots, it's hard to just pick up and move. Not that it can't be done, but this often gets left out of the "why don't people just move if they can't afford to live there?" conversation.

finder83 7y ago

I can see your point and agree this is probably true for the large majority of people. And most people don't want to live close to nature; it seems the large majority like being near cities and people, I'm just not one of them. :-D I'm not entirely sure that the dichotomy of high productivity city-dwellers/lower productivity country dwellers is true any longer though. I'm a dev manager/programmer working remotely, many of my neighbors are also in IT or construction and either work remotely or commute, and many programmers in our company also live in "fly-over" states in rural areas. Most also own chickens, have small farms, or raise competition animals. But I still understand and see your point, and I see the value in this for suburban areas. I suppose my mind went to areas more rural than the article is talking about.

DeathArrow 7y ago

There are some downsides: Overcrowding, traffic jams, very high housing prices, high prices for food and everything else. Yes, you earn more, but you pay more for living in smaller apartments, so the standard of live isn't guaranteed to be improved. Here's a comparison from Numbeo: You would need around 3,630.58$ in Austin, TX to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 8,100.00$ in New York, NY. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=United+States&city1=New+York%2C+NY&city2=Austin%2C+TX https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... I think that moderation is best, and there probably are ranges of population density which are the best. Urban sprawl is bad, as is overcrowding in the city center. In some parts of the world, you can live in a rural area and travel to work by fast trains, so you can have your cake and eat it, too.

dcolkitt 7y ago
I mostly agree with what you're saying. But high housing costs are largely a result of policies designed to intentionally restrict supply. Not necessarily density itself. As a counterfactual to the NIMBY West, Tokyo has very high density but surprisingly affordable housing because it places few restrictions on building and land use.