5 ms·

Urban residential areas with houses with few people are the worst imo. They require a huge amount of infrastructure like paved roads. It might be ok to live lik

Urban residential areas with houses with few people are the worst imo. They require a huge amount of infrastructure like paved roads. It might be ok to live like that if you have young kids. If you don't, while living like that, you are an environmental burden period. Also, please don't think that driving electric and feeding some birds and eating green etc can redeem living like that

majormajor 5y ago
In terms of land usage, I find it hard to believe that the type of house someone has won't be dominated by the supply chains that feed them and equip them with clothing and tools. How much do you think a yuppie city-dweller's medium-density apartment and train usage offsets the rest of their consumption?
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Why would the supply chains that feed and equip them dominate? Food, clothes, and tools all benefit from high per unit efficiency and this reflects real efficiency in less expensive inputs. Even if you mean the transit the huge barges have very good kg per mile (even if filthy bunker oil is the current norm). For a simple example of this sort of scale efficiency just take a vat of molten steel for one - a larger vat has more volume with less surface area. For a contrasting illustration of an extreme in the other direction, many thimble sized steel vats would be extremely inefficient as they cool off quicker and either need more of them or give it far more time to cool off. Housing is linked to transit needs as an inevitable knock on effect. The lack of scale is what makes individual cars less efficient than loaded buses. I would be perfectly willing to consider hard numbers - there are all sorts of counterintuitive truths.
  - hansvm 5y ago
    Farming takes up a lot of land. Even the most land-efficient diets in this analysis [0,1] required 0.3+ acres per person -- a larger land area than most suburban houses sit on, even when including the marginal cost of the extra road they require. [0] (clickbaitish summary) https://ensia.com/notable/which-diet-makes-best-use-of-farmland-you-might-be-surprised/ https://ensia.com/notable/which-diet-makes-best-use-of-farml... [1] (original) https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000116/112904/Carrying-capacity-of-U-S-agricultural-land-Ten https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/doi/10.12952/jou...
    - google234123 5y ago
      0.3+ acres per person times a billion people is about the size of europe.
      - hansvm 5y ago
        Depending on how you count it, it's definitely within a small constant multiple. A ton of global land goes toward food production. In somewhat more detail: It's about 27% of the way there (assuming europe == EU). Multiply by 7.8B people and you get 2.1B acres, compared with the 2.3B acres actually used worldwide. Those numbers might look a little fishy (2.1B should be a hard lower bound, and the upper bounds were >2 acres per person), but the low figure of 2.3B acres in actual use is roughly explained by: - 9% of the world is malnourished - Meat and other high-land-use foods make up well under 20% of the global diet (on average more concentrated in wealthier, lower population nations). - Not all of that meat comes from the land, skewing the exact metrics being used a bit. I'm sure the 0.3+ acre estimate isn't perfect (back of the envelope calculations suggest soybeans can supply the requisite calories in 0.15 acres, and your other nutrients can be furnished in 0.05 acres), but it definitely appears to be in the right ballpark.
lcam84 5y ago
They are huge so even with good isolation they spend too much energy in acclimatization. That kind of urbanization is made for cars so the streets are empty and you need to travel by car everytime to some mall to buy things.

majormajor 5y ago

In terms of land usage, I find it hard to believe that the type of house someone has won't be dominated by the supply chains that feed them and equip them with clothing and tools. How much do you think a yuppie city-dweller's medium-density apartment and train usage offsets the rest of their consumption?

Nasrudith 5y ago
Why would the supply chains that feed and equip them dominate? Food, clothes, and tools all benefit from high per unit efficiency and this reflects real efficiency in less expensive inputs. Even if you mean the transit the huge barges have very good kg per mile (even if filthy bunker oil is the current norm). For a simple example of this sort of scale efficiency just take a vat of molten steel for one - a larger vat has more volume with less surface area. For a contrasting illustration of an extreme in the other direction, many thimble sized steel vats would be extremely inefficient as they cool off quicker and either need more of them or give it far more time to cool off. Housing is linked to transit needs as an inevitable knock on effect. The lack of scale is what makes individual cars less efficient than loaded buses. I would be perfectly willing to consider hard numbers - there are all sorts of counterintuitive truths.
- hansvm 5y ago
  Farming takes up a lot of land. Even the most land-efficient diets in this analysis [0,1] required 0.3+ acres per person -- a larger land area than most suburban houses sit on, even when including the marginal cost of the extra road they require. [0] (clickbaitish summary) https://ensia.com/notable/which-diet-makes-best-use-of-farmland-you-might-be-surprised/ https://ensia.com/notable/which-diet-makes-best-use-of-farml... [1] (original) https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/doi/10.12952/journal.elementa.000116/112904/Carrying-capacity-of-U-S-agricultural-land-Ten https://online.ucpress.edu/elementa/article/doi/10.12952/jou...
  - google234123 5y ago
    0.3+ acres per person times a billion people is about the size of europe.
    - hansvm 5y ago
      Depending on how you count it, it's definitely within a small constant multiple. A ton of global land goes toward food production. In somewhat more detail: It's about 27% of the way there (assuming europe == EU). Multiply by 7.8B people and you get 2.1B acres, compared with the 2.3B acres actually used worldwide. Those numbers might look a little fishy (2.1B should be a hard lower bound, and the upper bounds were >2 acres per person), but the low figure of 2.3B acres in actual use is roughly explained by: - 9% of the world is malnourished - Meat and other high-land-use foods make up well under 20% of the global diet (on average more concentrated in wealthier, lower population nations). - Not all of that meat comes from the land, skewing the exact metrics being used a bit. I'm sure the 0.3+ acre estimate isn't perfect (back of the envelope calculations suggest soybeans can supply the requisite calories in 0.15 acres, and your other nutrients can be furnished in 0.05 acres), but it definitely appears to be in the right ballpark.

lcam84 5y ago

They are huge so even with good isolation they spend too much energy in acclimatization. That kind of urbanization is made for cars so the streets are empty and you need to travel by car everytime to some mall to buy things.