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Carbon footprint depends on energy sources, not population density. 100,000 humans supplied with coal-fired electricity have a radically different carbon footp

• feoren 4y ago
  > Carbon footprint depends on energy sources, Obviously true. > Carbon footprint [does not depend on] population density. Patently false. Carbon footprint can depend on more than one variable, and indeed does. Transportation of goods and people is a huge source of carbon, all of which goes way down in cities. > it doesn't matter whether they live in isolated households or in one skyscraper. It's much easier to heat every room in a skyscraper than isolated households due to volume vs. surface-area scaling, even if you hold square footage equal. But square footage is not equal; people occupy less space in skyscrapers, because of redundancy in amenities (shared garages, laundry, recreational areas) and other reasons.
  • photochemsyn 4y ago
    Again 'transportation of goods and people' is only a huge source of carbon if your transportation system relies on fossil fuels. You're not grasping the argument, I don't know why.
• Schroedingersat 4y ago
  Isolated spaced out households need more roads, more travel for goods, more pipes, more stormwater treatment, more services (as each needs a larger buffer to smooth spikes in demand), use an order of magnitude more energy to heat/cool, take more materials to build, require more vehicles. You may only need to build up a little to fix most of it, but sprawl uses much much more of everything than building up.