>> Can you even do that in the UK? France? Yes, totally. I live in a city of just shy of a million people in the UK, and I can see the countryside from my des

>> Can you even do that in the UK? France? Yes, totally. I live in a city of just shy of a million people in the UK, and I can see the countryside from my desk in the middle of it. It's a 15 minute walk out of town. A big advantage of population density is that transportation is cheaper and you have less distance to travel to get out of the city - conversely in the US you have to drive through mile upon mile of suburban sprawl. A further counter-argument is that there are plenty of countries far, far emptier than the US (Kaz, Ukraine, Belarus), which retain high-density minimal-sprawl cities due to having been built either before the advent of the car, or since, but with a view to retaining accessibility for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. Russia is sprawly, but they don't really do suburbs, they do massive industrial complexes on city outskirts, and have population centralised. Different strokes for different folks.