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I don't really see a decrease in population density and the corresponding increase in cars on the road as "progress", otherwise you're about to tell me that Ame

I don't really see a decrease in population density and the corresponding increase in cars on the road as "progress", otherwise you're about to tell me that American-style giga suburbs are the answer to our problems. Densification is actually the answer as it's a far more efficient use of resources.

mschuster91 2y ago
Densification only works when designing an area from scratch (like China), when you spend many many billions on retrofits or when it was built with sufficient sprawl to accommodate expansions in infrastructure. You can't just go and tear down other peoples' houses here, it's not the Soviet Union.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  Densification works organically when you don't ban it. That's the way cities have always grown. You plan for the future, upzone areas when appropriate, let the property owners determine what's in their best interests, and collaborate with them to ensure that the necessary infrastructure gets built.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > You plan for the future, upzone areas when appropriate That is a luxury Americans and Asians have, simply because there is/has been just so much unsettled land available. Here in Europe, our cities are quite literally millennia old, some such as Rome dating back to the earliest days of recorded human civilization. It is incredibly difficult to retrofit anything there, and that's before you take archaeological and landmark protection demands into account.
    - twixfel 2y ago
      It's not a luxury only they have, and Asia has lots of ancient cities too, sorry to disappoint you but urbanisation did not begin in Europe. Just down the road from me in the middle of the city we have a huge Kleingartenverein. That area could be flats, boom—city's denser. Your take that it's impossible to make European cities denser just doesn't make any sense at all.
      - mschuster91 2y ago
        Yeah, and yet another piece of valuable biodiversity, yet another green zone down the drain. "Kleingärten" serve a vital and valuable role in a city's ecology.
        twixfel 2y ago
        Why only reply to the comment about Kleingärten, is it because you realise you're wrong about what you said about only Europe having old cities? Which is actually a fairly comically cringe and ignorant comment to make? I live in Hamburg and it's relatively young at 1200 years old. There are lots of far older cities than that in Asia which apparently somehow have the luxury of space and being built from scratch (lol). Cities are dense and cities are good for the environment. Your dream of everyone living in the middle of nowhere and driving everywhere in cars would be an ecological disaster, far worse than these shitty Kleingärten that should generally be got rid of anyway, since, there's nothing biodiverse about Kleingärten, they're just monocultures that are privately owned. If we careed about biodiversity then we would rewild them.
- twixfel 2y ago
  It's not densification if it's "from scratch", that's just building something dense. So in short it's apparently impossible to make a city denser than it already is. But this is trivially false. Each city's density varies with time. I live in Hamburg, it could certainly be denser.

mschuster91 2y ago

Densification only works when designing an area from scratch (like China), when you spend many many billions on retrofits or when it was built with sufficient sprawl to accommodate expansions in infrastructure. You can't just go and tear down other peoples' houses here, it's not the Soviet Union.

jltsiren 2y ago
Densification works organically when you don't ban it. That's the way cities have always grown. You plan for the future, upzone areas when appropriate, let the property owners determine what's in their best interests, and collaborate with them to ensure that the necessary infrastructure gets built.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > You plan for the future, upzone areas when appropriate That is a luxury Americans and Asians have, simply because there is/has been just so much unsettled land available. Here in Europe, our cities are quite literally millennia old, some such as Rome dating back to the earliest days of recorded human civilization. It is incredibly difficult to retrofit anything there, and that's before you take archaeological and landmark protection demands into account.
  - twixfel 2y ago
    It's not a luxury only they have, and Asia has lots of ancient cities too, sorry to disappoint you but urbanisation did not begin in Europe. Just down the road from me in the middle of the city we have a huge Kleingartenverein. That area could be flats, boom—city's denser. Your take that it's impossible to make European cities denser just doesn't make any sense at all.
    - mschuster91 2y ago
      Yeah, and yet another piece of valuable biodiversity, yet another green zone down the drain. "Kleingärten" serve a vital and valuable role in a city's ecology.
      - twixfel 2y ago
        Why only reply to the comment about Kleingärten, is it because you realise you're wrong about what you said about only Europe having old cities? Which is actually a fairly comically cringe and ignorant comment to make? I live in Hamburg and it's relatively young at 1200 years old. There are lots of far older cities than that in Asia which apparently somehow have the luxury of space and being built from scratch (lol). Cities are dense and cities are good for the environment. Your dream of everyone living in the middle of nowhere and driving everywhere in cars would be an ecological disaster, far worse than these shitty Kleingärten that should generally be got rid of anyway, since, there's nothing biodiverse about Kleingärten, they're just monocultures that are privately owned. If we careed about biodiversity then we would rewild them.
twixfel 2y ago
It's not densification if it's "from scratch", that's just building something dense. So in short it's apparently impossible to make a city denser than it already is. But this is trivially false. Each city's density varies with time. I live in Hamburg, it could certainly be denser.