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I live in a 1600 sqft house on a 5600 sqft lot. If everyone in the US lived in that area, we would take up ~51,423,324 acres (assuming population of 400 million
by xracy 4y ago
I live in a 1600 sqft house on a 5600 sqft lot. If everyone in the US lived in that area, we would take up ~51,423,324 acres (assuming population of 400 million). (~2.7% of the Continental US)
If instead, every person took up 800 sqft in an apartment building, and assuming absolutely no vertical building, we would take up ~1/7th of that space (7,346,189 acres, 0.38% of the Continental US). That would free up ~44 Million acres of open space. Every level up you build, you get to increase the amount of open space by
A further 6/7ths of the previous value.
Now, Admittedly, this is back-of-the-envelope math that doesn't work for all scenarios (farms and whatnot are a separate thing). But pretending that suburbanism is better for "open space" is a load of BS. Urbanism provides more open space.
- ipaddr 4y agoWhat's wrong with using 2.7% for housing? That seems low compared to many countries. Isn't that the American dream?
- cycomanic 4y agoAs the article established you then need to take up a similar amount of space for parking, then add the roads so suddenly you're at 10%. I thought you want open spaces?
- ipaddr 4y agoI want less density which makes neighbourhoods have more open spaces. Stacking everyone together in a small postal stamp area creates more overall land that may be open but it creates less open areas where people live.
- goosedragons 4y agoI dunno about you but I'd rather have one or two parks in an area than a sea of parking lots.
- lotsoweiners 4y agoIn the suburbs we have both.
- xracy 4y agoOpen areas where people live (people's yards) are famously open to the public. There's certainly not a common acronym for what people don't want happening in their yards...
- xracy 4y agoWhat's wrong is that I don't live on what is even the smallest per-state average of sqft for a single family home. average yard size is ~4x that. So that's 4x less open space. You're also assuming that all parts of the US are equally habitable. We're doing a lot of work to try and let people live in increasingly inhospitable deserts. https://housemethod.com/lawn/average-yard-size/ https://housemethod.com/lawn/average-yard-size/