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The cost per user to support 1,000 people/mi^2 vs. 4,000 people/mi^2 is not that dramatic. At first glance the distance between houses might seem to be the squ
by onemoreact 15y ago
The cost per user to support 1,000 people/mi^2 vs. 4,000 people/mi^2 is not that dramatic. At first glance the distance between houses might seem to be the square root of the population density, but people tend to group together. Picture 2 sets of row houses one of which has a back yard and the other does not. As the ISP's run their wires down roads it makes vary little difference how big those back yards are just how far down the road you need to travel from one house to the next, and how far from the road to each house.
PS: If you’re on city water chances are you’re fairly cheap to wire up to a modern network. Unfortunately the incumbent players tend to also be selling you service on the old network so they have vary little incentive to upgrade you especially if it might lead to you dropping some extras.
- pash 15y agoIt's been well established in the academic literature that infrastructure costs in America cities are related by a power law to population. Costs increase about 80% with a doubling of the size of a city. So we generally would expect infrastructure in a city four times the size of a typical 1000 people/mi^2 suburb to cost about 3.24 times as much, or about 81% as much on a per-capita basis. There are many well known economies of scale to denser urban agglomerations that suburbanization forfeits. That's not controversial. What is controversial is why suburban living, despite its much higher cost compared to city living, has nevertheless come to dominate post-war America.
- cornell532 15y agoIs the answer cars, cheap land, big houses?