7 ms·

A fiscal crisis is looming for many US cities

38 points by rntn 2y ago

apsec112 2y ago
San Francisco's budget is around $15 billion, which is larger than that of many states, for a population of around 800,000
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  800,000 is also larger than the population of several states, and local cost of labor is a lot higher in SF, driving the cost of pretty much everything other than buying commodity goods a government might do higher.
  - Analemma_ 2y ago
    Seattle has roughly the same population as San Francisco and roughly the same labor costs, and has an annual budget of $8.3 billion. At some point you have to just face facts that it's gross mismanagement and incompetence.
    - harmmonica 2y ago
      Can you provide some insight into the differences as you see them? And where, just in broad brushstrokes, the mismanagement and incompetence primarily manifests itself? At the high level you cite, assuming those are accurate numbers, my knee jerk is to agree with you, but if you have insight would love to know whether the difference is actually attributable to mismanagement/incompetence/corruption/other bad thing. P.s. Your "about" checks out!
    - matthewmacleod 2y ago
      I'm sorry for being unkind, but lazy comments like this really frustrate me. I can't imagine you've done any real research or thinking on this, but still think others have to "face facts" which are coincidentally just exactly whatever you've already decided they are. Now, I don't know if San Francisco has a bloated, runaway budget or not – it might! But I do at least know that it's both a city and a county; I expect that San Francisco's budget includes operating the ports and public hospitals – that could be $5bn in spending right there! Endless time is wasted by not even doing the most basic thinking before spouting off.
    - dragonwriter 2y ago
      Seattle is a city, San Francisco is a combined city and county; it literally has a lot of functions that Seattle doesn't. Add a population based pro-rata share of King County’s budget to Seattle’s budget and you get something not all that much less than the budget of the City and County of San Francisco. Also, California has realigned a number of what were previously (and are still in other states) state functions to counties, including some felony incarceration that would otherwise be in state prisons, so, even compared to out-of-state city and county combined functions, SF has more it is required to do.
      - lurk2 2y ago
        "King County provides local and regional services to nearly 2.4 million residents, with a 2025 Proposed Budget of $10.2 billion and nearly 17,700 employees."[1] Seattle's population is around 755,000. 755,000 / 2,400,000 ≈ 0.315. 10,200,000,000 * 0.315 = 3,213,000,000. 3.2 billion + 8.3 billion = 11.5 billion. 15 billion (San Francisco budget) - 11.5 billion (Seattle budget) = 3.5 billion. So San Francisco's budget is around 3.5 billion dollars higher. [1] - https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadership/performance-strategy-budget/budget/2025-budget https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadersh...
        apex3stoker 2y ago
        It is not that simple. San Francisco budget includes the SFO airport but Seattle budget doesn’t include that. That’s part of Port of Seattle, which is not part of city of Seattle. Also, sound transit provides much transportation services in Seattle, but it is not part of city of Seattle. On the other hand, SFMTA is a department of city and county of San Francisco.
        lurk2 2y ago
        Since their populations, economies, and geographies are comparable, it seems like the play is to compare cost-to-effect ratios between the two cities on a service-for-service basis. I've done this with my own city before and was surprised to find that there wasn't anything particularly egregious in the budget outside of some cultural events I wouldn't have chosen to support. I suspect you probably find comparable levels of bloat in comparable municipalities, though, so even two municipalities being similar wouldn't necessarily be a good indication that they were using resources effectively.
    - apex3stoker 2y ago
      I think you are probably not comparing apple to apple. I think San Francisco is both a city and a county, while Seattle is a city within a county. Also, the San Francisco International Airport is managed by the city & county of San Francisco, while Seattle Tacoma international airport is managed by Port of Seattle, which is also separate from city of Seattle. The budget if city of San Francisco also includes Municipal Transportation Agency but city of Seattle budget doesn’t include king county metro and sound transit which are separate entity.
    - mikeyouse 2y ago
      San Francisco is both a city and a county so the budgets aren’t actually comparable… SF owns the port and the Airport as well. “Facing facts” is great when you actually understand the basic facts before making proclamations.
  - lurk2 2y ago
    15 billion is more than the respective budgets of Alabama, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, Iowa, West Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. Of these, only North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont have populations lower than 800,000.
- ceejayoz 2y ago
  It also has 20x the GDP of Wyoming.
  - gabruoy 2y ago
    GDP is just more people spending more money for more expensive things. It's kind of a failed metric for economic productivity unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac.
    - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
      > GDP is just more people spending more money for more expensive things. It's kind of a failed metric for economic productivity It's a good metric for a tax base. > unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac Which is why we consider both nominal and real GDP. (In your example, the former represents 2x nominal GDP. They're equivalent in terms of real GDP.)
    - Analemma_ 2y ago
      > unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac. It literally straightforwardly is. It provides the same number of calories, to a worker who is twice as productive in the $8-per-big-Mac city as the $4-per-Big-Mac city. Differences in per-capita productivity between supercities and hinterlands are vast.
- matthewmacleod 2y ago
  What message are you trying to communicate? Are you implying that this is too high? Too low? Poorly spent?
- FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
  That's 10x the budget of Indianapolis which has a larger population (GDP is around $200B for ref).
kylehotchkiss 2y ago
I always see the words pensions in civic deficit news. I'm early 30s and pensions are a concept that nobody my age or younger will ever benefit from yet is footing the bill for.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  You’ve already benefited from them, by getting government services at a lower up front cost by acquiring labor with the promise of them on the backend. (And, barring those promises not being fulfilled, plenty of people your age and younger have already been working in jobs that qualify them for pensions when they reach a certain age, or have a relative with such a pension with survivorship benefits, and will benefit from them as beneficiaries.)
  - toomuchtodo 2y ago
    Most of today is the result of stealing from the future, and that strategy is running out of steam.
    - ok_dad 2y ago
      Now financial instruments like pensions are stealing? In what way? Those workers worked for that pension. It’s funny how the top wealth owners have vacuumed up more and more wealth and you’re mad at the regular Joe working a 9-5.
      - toomuchtodo 2y ago
        Let me expound so I can be exceptionally clear. I fall firmly in the "billionaires should not exist" bucket. They are a bug in the economic system. Bernie Sanders is my North Star from a policy and nation state social system perspective (its also more financially efficient, but I digress). I do not blame workers for our current fiscal crisis predicament. Pensions are not stealing from the future. When done properly, invested prudently, and managed to a fiduciary standard, they are an effective mechanism to invest those worker capital earned at that time into productive investments to provide returns in the future when those workers approach retirement. Through the 401k attempt, we have shown this policy to be a failure. The human cannot be relied on to financially prepare for retirement, this must be done with systems and at scale. When I say "stealing from the future," I mean where pensions were promised and now they're being marketed as "too expensive" when what would've gone into pensions over the last 40 years was vacuumed up by the very wealthy through management compensation and shareholder returns. I mean sovereign debt that has been issued, to be paid back by future workers who in no way consented to having to work to pay that debt back. I mean infrastructure and climate expenses that will rapidly approach $1T/year in costs, because we did not have the will to pay for these things today. Capitalism stole from the future, and it will never be enough. Someone is going to be left holding the bag, and everyone is going to be unhappy the future is not as bright as the past was. (i am once again asking you to think in systems) McKinsey: Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality - https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-depopulation-confronting-the-consequences-of-a-new-demographic-reality https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep... - January 15th, 2025 US Treasury Fiscal Data: What is the national debt? - https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... ($36.22T as of this comment) Climate change could erase $1.4 trillion in real estate value - https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/climate-change-insurance-costs-real-estate https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/climate-change-insurance-co... - February 3rd, 2025 Climate crisis costs the world 12% in GDP for every 1°C temperature rise - https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/06/nature-climate-news-global-warming-hurricanes/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/06/nature-climate-news-... - September 10th, 2024 HN Search: climate change cost - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=climate+change+cost&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... The cost to fix America’s crumbling infrastructure? Nearly $2.6 trillion, engineers say - https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-investment-cost-engineers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-in... - March 30th, 2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42052544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42052544 (401k failure citations)
jmclnx 2y ago
Yes, and with the current admin. cutting everything, it will not be pretty. But except for Police and Fire, I thought pensions were gone for all other City Employees, replaced by a 401k.
Workaccount2 2y ago
Not all, and they are rarer today, pensions were totally insane back in the day. One of my mothers friends, who is now in her 80's, has been retired on a pension for over 40 years. She started working for her municipality right out of high school at 18, and worked 25 years as a clerk to get a full pension. Retired at 43(!) with 75% final pay (annually adjusted) and lifelong medical benefits. Its totally insane and completely unsustainable. Back in the day people usually keeled over at 65 and the US was viewed as having achieved infinite growth forever, so perhaps back then it was a reasonable but generous offer. Today however it's just straight up corruption and waste to offer benefits like that.
- ultrarunner 2y ago
  Not only that, but sometimes the municipality hires them back on a consulting basis to get them a paycheck and a pension for the same work.
- nextworddev 2y ago
  It’s not her fault that she lucked out
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Linjmeyer 2y ago
    Of course not, but that doesn't make it a sustainable practice long term.
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    It's not about fault, it's about providing better than you got for your children and grandchildren. If you - and the people compensated with the same equities that fund your pension - are putting substantial downward pressure on earnings for the current generation of laborers and it's having all sorts of knock-on effects, you're failing to provide better for those coming after you.
    - 2y ago
bloopernova 2y ago
In my opinion, climate change causing more and more overwhelming* weather events, this issue is going to get worse. *overwhelming in the sense of responders/budgets/planners unable to mitigate the effects of worse weather. It's partly why I'm so "doomer" about climate change. The secondary effects of these weather events are already difficult to manage. What happens when we experience mass migration of humanity, or even worse storms? For example, Kentucky USA has an average year-to-date precipitation of 6 inches. In 2025, that has increased to 12 inches. Yes that's one year, but it only takes one major event to wreak havoc on a poorer town or state.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  I just finished the book “On The Move” about the coming climate driven migration and yea, I don’t see any part of the US prepared for being either the source or destination in these problems. https://bookshop.org/p/books/unlivable-abrahm-lustgarten/19994768 https://bookshop.org/p/books/unlivable-abrahm-lustgarten/199...
  - throw8383848 2y ago
    US will need better wall. Something like Maginot Line should do.
    - lazyasciiart 2y ago
      No, but it is hilarious that you are proposing a famous failed attempt as the inspiration.
      - throw8383848 2y ago
        I just find it funny, US has biggest army in the world. "But there is nothing, they can do to stop migration". Ukraine is in bad shape, yet they still manage to keep their borders (even with EU) pretty tightly secured!
        2y ago
kkfx 2y ago
Ladies and Gentleman's: cities cost MORE than spread living despite the many PR who state the contrary with ONLY APPARENT logic. Under-utilize large buildings for less than 12h/day commuting between them was needed in the past but it's a nonsense today. Small buildings consume much less raw materials than bigger one for equivalent usable space for humans because we have to sustain the mere structure, with anti-seismic norms, fire safety norms, elevators, ... who cost MUCH. They are inefficient to heat and cool with modern heat-pumps as well. They pollute more. Cities are nowadays only needed to push 2030 Agenda where the inmates do not own nothing and live consuming anything, no matter how they earn, to be always at zero and such need is not practically sustainable. That's is. The rest is noise.

38 points by rntn 2y ago

San Francisco's budget is around $15 billion, which is larger than that of many states, for a population of around 800,000

dragonwriter 2y ago
800,000 is also larger than the population of several states, and local cost of labor is a lot higher in SF, driving the cost of pretty much everything other than buying commodity goods a government might do higher.
- Analemma_ 2y ago
  Seattle has roughly the same population as San Francisco and roughly the same labor costs, and has an annual budget of $8.3 billion. At some point you have to just face facts that it's gross mismanagement and incompetence.
  - harmmonica 2y ago
    Can you provide some insight into the differences as you see them? And where, just in broad brushstrokes, the mismanagement and incompetence primarily manifests itself? At the high level you cite, assuming those are accurate numbers, my knee jerk is to agree with you, but if you have insight would love to know whether the difference is actually attributable to mismanagement/incompetence/corruption/other bad thing. P.s. Your "about" checks out!
  - matthewmacleod 2y ago
    I'm sorry for being unkind, but lazy comments like this really frustrate me. I can't imagine you've done any real research or thinking on this, but still think others have to "face facts" which are coincidentally just exactly whatever you've already decided they are. Now, I don't know if San Francisco has a bloated, runaway budget or not – it might! But I do at least know that it's both a city and a county; I expect that San Francisco's budget includes operating the ports and public hospitals – that could be $5bn in spending right there! Endless time is wasted by not even doing the most basic thinking before spouting off.
  - dragonwriter 2y ago
    Seattle is a city, San Francisco is a combined city and county; it literally has a lot of functions that Seattle doesn't. Add a population based pro-rata share of King County’s budget to Seattle’s budget and you get something not all that much less than the budget of the City and County of San Francisco. Also, California has realigned a number of what were previously (and are still in other states) state functions to counties, including some felony incarceration that would otherwise be in state prisons, so, even compared to out-of-state city and county combined functions, SF has more it is required to do.
    - lurk2 2y ago
      "King County provides local and regional services to nearly 2.4 million residents, with a 2025 Proposed Budget of $10.2 billion and nearly 17,700 employees."[1] Seattle's population is around 755,000. 755,000 / 2,400,000 ≈ 0.315. 10,200,000,000 * 0.315 = 3,213,000,000. 3.2 billion + 8.3 billion = 11.5 billion. 15 billion (San Francisco budget) - 11.5 billion (Seattle budget) = 3.5 billion. So San Francisco's budget is around 3.5 billion dollars higher. [1] - https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadership/performance-strategy-budget/budget/2025-budget https://kingcounty.gov/en/dept/executive/governance-leadersh...
      - apex3stoker 2y ago
        It is not that simple. San Francisco budget includes the SFO airport but Seattle budget doesn’t include that. That’s part of Port of Seattle, which is not part of city of Seattle. Also, sound transit provides much transportation services in Seattle, but it is not part of city of Seattle. On the other hand, SFMTA is a department of city and county of San Francisco.
        lurk2 2y ago
        Since their populations, economies, and geographies are comparable, it seems like the play is to compare cost-to-effect ratios between the two cities on a service-for-service basis. I've done this with my own city before and was surprised to find that there wasn't anything particularly egregious in the budget outside of some cultural events I wouldn't have chosen to support. I suspect you probably find comparable levels of bloat in comparable municipalities, though, so even two municipalities being similar wouldn't necessarily be a good indication that they were using resources effectively.
  - apex3stoker 2y ago
    I think you are probably not comparing apple to apple. I think San Francisco is both a city and a county, while Seattle is a city within a county. Also, the San Francisco International Airport is managed by the city & county of San Francisco, while Seattle Tacoma international airport is managed by Port of Seattle, which is also separate from city of Seattle. The budget if city of San Francisco also includes Municipal Transportation Agency but city of Seattle budget doesn’t include king county metro and sound transit which are separate entity.
  - mikeyouse 2y ago
    San Francisco is both a city and a county so the budgets aren’t actually comparable… SF owns the port and the Airport as well. “Facing facts” is great when you actually understand the basic facts before making proclamations.
- lurk2 2y ago
  15 billion is more than the respective budgets of Alabama, Oklahoma, New Mexico, North Dakota, Iowa, West Virginia, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Mississippi, Rhode Island, Arkansas, Delaware, Idaho, Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota. Of these, only North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont have populations lower than 800,000.
ceejayoz 2y ago
It also has 20x the GDP of Wyoming.
- gabruoy 2y ago
  GDP is just more people spending more money for more expensive things. It's kind of a failed metric for economic productivity unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > GDP is just more people spending more money for more expensive things. It's kind of a failed metric for economic productivity It's a good metric for a tax base. > unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac Which is why we consider both nominal and real GDP. (In your example, the former represents 2x nominal GDP. They're equivalent in terms of real GDP.)
  - Analemma_ 2y ago
    > unless you think an $8 Big Mac is twice as productive to the economy than a $4 Big Mac. It literally straightforwardly is. It provides the same number of calories, to a worker who is twice as productive in the $8-per-big-Mac city as the $4-per-Big-Mac city. Differences in per-capita productivity between supercities and hinterlands are vast.
matthewmacleod 2y ago
What message are you trying to communicate? Are you implying that this is too high? Too low? Poorly spent?
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
That's 10x the budget of Indianapolis which has a larger population (GDP is around $200B for ref).

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

I always see the words pensions in civic deficit news. I'm early 30s and pensions are a concept that nobody my age or younger will ever benefit from yet is footing the bill for.

dragonwriter 2y ago
You’ve already benefited from them, by getting government services at a lower up front cost by acquiring labor with the promise of them on the backend. (And, barring those promises not being fulfilled, plenty of people your age and younger have already been working in jobs that qualify them for pensions when they reach a certain age, or have a relative with such a pension with survivorship benefits, and will benefit from them as beneficiaries.)
- toomuchtodo 2y ago
  Most of today is the result of stealing from the future, and that strategy is running out of steam.
  - ok_dad 2y ago
    Now financial instruments like pensions are stealing? In what way? Those workers worked for that pension. It’s funny how the top wealth owners have vacuumed up more and more wealth and you’re mad at the regular Joe working a 9-5.
    - toomuchtodo 2y ago
      Let me expound so I can be exceptionally clear. I fall firmly in the "billionaires should not exist" bucket. They are a bug in the economic system. Bernie Sanders is my North Star from a policy and nation state social system perspective (its also more financially efficient, but I digress). I do not blame workers for our current fiscal crisis predicament. Pensions are not stealing from the future. When done properly, invested prudently, and managed to a fiduciary standard, they are an effective mechanism to invest those worker capital earned at that time into productive investments to provide returns in the future when those workers approach retirement. Through the 401k attempt, we have shown this policy to be a failure. The human cannot be relied on to financially prepare for retirement, this must be done with systems and at scale. When I say "stealing from the future," I mean where pensions were promised and now they're being marketed as "too expensive" when what would've gone into pensions over the last 40 years was vacuumed up by the very wealthy through management compensation and shareholder returns. I mean sovereign debt that has been issued, to be paid back by future workers who in no way consented to having to work to pay that debt back. I mean infrastructure and climate expenses that will rapidly approach $1T/year in costs, because we did not have the will to pay for these things today. Capitalism stole from the future, and it will never be enough. Someone is going to be left holding the bag, and everyone is going to be unhappy the future is not as bright as the past was. (i am once again asking you to think in systems) McKinsey: Dependency and depopulation? Confronting the consequences of a new demographic reality - https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-depopulation-confronting-the-consequences-of-a-new-demographic-reality https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/our-research/dependency-and-dep... - January 15th, 2025 US Treasury Fiscal Data: What is the national debt? - https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-debt/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... ($36.22T as of this comment) Climate change could erase $1.4 trillion in real estate value - https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/climate-change-insurance-costs-real-estate https://www.axios.com/2025/02/03/climate-change-insurance-co... - February 3rd, 2025 Climate crisis costs the world 12% in GDP for every 1°C temperature rise - https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/06/nature-climate-news-global-warming-hurricanes/ https://www.weforum.org/stories/2024/06/nature-climate-news-... - September 10th, 2024 HN Search: climate change cost - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=climate+change+cost&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... The cost to fix America’s crumbling infrastructure? Nearly $2.6 trillion, engineers say - https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-investment-cost-engineers/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/30/politics/infrastructure-us-in... - March 30th, 2021 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42052544 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42052544 (401k failure citations)

jmclnx 2y ago

Yes, and with the current admin. cutting everything, it will not be pretty. But except for Police and Fire, I thought pensions were gone for all other City Employees, replaced by a 401k.

Workaccount2 2y ago

Not all, and they are rarer today, pensions were totally insane back in the day. One of my mothers friends, who is now in her 80's, has been retired on a pension for over 40 years. She started working for her municipality right out of high school at 18, and worked 25 years as a clerk to get a full pension. Retired at 43(!) with 75% final pay (annually adjusted) and lifelong medical benefits. Its totally insane and completely unsustainable. Back in the day people usually keeled over at 65 and the US was viewed as having achieved infinite growth forever, so perhaps back then it was a reasonable but generous offer. Today however it's just straight up corruption and waste to offer benefits like that.

ultrarunner 2y ago
Not only that, but sometimes the municipality hires them back on a consulting basis to get them a paycheck and a pension for the same work.
nextworddev 2y ago
It’s not her fault that she lucked out
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- Linjmeyer 2y ago
  Of course not, but that doesn't make it a sustainable practice long term.
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  It's not about fault, it's about providing better than you got for your children and grandchildren. If you - and the people compensated with the same equities that fund your pension - are putting substantial downward pressure on earnings for the current generation of laborers and it's having all sorts of knock-on effects, you're failing to provide better for those coming after you.
  - 2y ago

bloopernova 2y ago

In my opinion, climate change causing more and more overwhelming* weather events, this issue is going to get worse. *overwhelming in the sense of responders/budgets/planners unable to mitigate the effects of worse weather. It's partly why I'm so "doomer" about climate change. The secondary effects of these weather events are already difficult to manage. What happens when we experience mass migration of humanity, or even worse storms? For example, Kentucky USA has an average year-to-date precipitation of 6 inches. In 2025, that has increased to 12 inches. Yes that's one year, but it only takes one major event to wreak havoc on a poorer town or state.

lazyasciiart 2y ago
I just finished the book “On The Move” about the coming climate driven migration and yea, I don’t see any part of the US prepared for being either the source or destination in these problems. https://bookshop.org/p/books/unlivable-abrahm-lustgarten/19994768 https://bookshop.org/p/books/unlivable-abrahm-lustgarten/199...
- throw8383848 2y ago
  US will need better wall. Something like Maginot Line should do.
  - lazyasciiart 2y ago
    No, but it is hilarious that you are proposing a famous failed attempt as the inspiration.
    - throw8383848 2y ago
      I just find it funny, US has biggest army in the world. "But there is nothing, they can do to stop migration". Ukraine is in bad shape, yet they still manage to keep their borders (even with EU) pretty tightly secured!
      - 2y ago

kkfx 2y ago

Ladies and Gentleman's: cities cost MORE than spread living despite the many PR who state the contrary with ONLY APPARENT logic. Under-utilize large buildings for less than 12h/day commuting between them was needed in the past but it's a nonsense today. Small buildings consume much less raw materials than bigger one for equivalent usable space for humans because we have to sustain the mere structure, with anti-seismic norms, fire safety norms, elevators, ... who cost MUCH. They are inefficient to heat and cool with modern heat-pumps as well. They pollute more. Cities are nowadays only needed to push 2030 Agenda where the inmates do not own nothing and live consuming anything, no matter how they earn, to be always at zero and such need is not practically sustainable. That's is. The rest is noise.