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It’s not precedented, wise, or even realistic to expect all of civilization to live in cities surrounded by unspoiled wilderness. Highly efficient low density

It’s not precedented, wise, or even realistic to expect all of civilization to live in cities surrounded by unspoiled wilderness. Highly efficient low density housing has a place. So does high density housing. Everything you say about improving urban development practices is valid, but doesn’t mean that efforts to improve suburban/exurband/rural development are problematic. They’re all inextricably part of the future and they all have their own development needs.

kiba 4y ago
You can roughly double the volume of a single story building by adding a floor. Taken to extreme, we could make sure a square kilometer is at least two stories tall, but we don't do that. We live mostly a in 2.5d environment. The skyscrappers that we see in our skylines are not even the majority of what we see. A lot of place will benefit from being 3-4 stories tall. A lot of space that is developed is hugely wasted, devoted to storing cars, or roads to facilitate car movement. Meanwhile, a human being is very compact in comparison.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying, but those slightly denser and taller districts are historically called villages and they died, tragically, with the rise of national retail chains. Walmart and Kroger like having big operationally efficient stores that they can operate like all their other stores, and can’t scale their model well to oddball village locations. So they make or buy a big building with a giant parking lot and underprice all the local stores with their hyperoptimized business model until the village is dead. At that point, there’s nothing left to do in your dense housing district and everybody needs a car anyway, so you may as well have some breathing room and a garage. If people want suburban density, it won’t come from zoning changes (although that will help urban density) — it’ll come from somehow making village commerce more economical. But good luck getting that kind of effort past national-retail lobbyists! Ultimately, again, the fact is that urban development issues are different than the issues in other areas and the solutions don’t need to come at the expense of each other or in competition with each other.

kiba 4y ago

You can roughly double the volume of a single story building by adding a floor. Taken to extreme, we could make sure a square kilometer is at least two stories tall, but we don't do that. We live mostly a in 2.5d environment. The skyscrappers that we see in our skylines are not even the majority of what we see. A lot of place will benefit from being 3-4 stories tall. A lot of space that is developed is hugely wasted, devoted to storing cars, or roads to facilitate car movement. Meanwhile, a human being is very compact in comparison.

swatcoder 4y ago
I’m not sure I follow what you’re saying, but those slightly denser and taller districts are historically called villages and they died, tragically, with the rise of national retail chains. Walmart and Kroger like having big operationally efficient stores that they can operate like all their other stores, and can’t scale their model well to oddball village locations. So they make or buy a big building with a giant parking lot and underprice all the local stores with their hyperoptimized business model until the village is dead. At that point, there’s nothing left to do in your dense housing district and everybody needs a car anyway, so you may as well have some breathing room and a garage. If people want suburban density, it won’t come from zoning changes (although that will help urban density) — it’ll come from somehow making village commerce more economical. But good luck getting that kind of effort past national-retail lobbyists! Ultimately, again, the fact is that urban development issues are different than the issues in other areas and the solutions don’t need to come at the expense of each other or in competition with each other.