3 ms·

Sparsely inhabited compared to what? 100 years ago? Australia? China? Sweden? Rwanda? You say that as if it's a bad thing, but perhaps it's the goal? Some of t

• pas 6y ago
  > Some of the most densely populated countries are the poorest and unhappiest. Sure, there's a golden mean between slums and unwalkable suburbs/exurbs. Interestingly the urbanization percentage for the US is basically the same as for Norway 82.5%. And interestingly Oslo about tenth of the size of LA has comparable density: https://www.ssb.no/a/english/kortnavn/beftett_en/fig-2011-06-17-01-en.gif https://www.ssb.no/a/english/kortnavn/beftett_en/fig-2011-06... (per km^2) https://i.redd.it/v84al8v4ymp11.png https://i.redd.it/v84al8v4ymp11.png (per mi^2) "About 14% Americans live in the nation's rural counties, 54% in its suburbs and small metros and about 30% in its urban core counties" (data from 2016) and in Europe "In 2018, 39.3% of the population lived in the cities, 31.6% lived in towns and suburbs, and 29.1% lived in rural areas" > Regardless, we're at the point where we need to seriously consider the long-term sustainability of the current global population level. Well, this sounds like the good old Malthus argument, but we're nowhere near carrying capacity of Earth. ... the problem is that the cost and environmental impact of certain lifestyles are unsustainable.