4 ms·

"Good for health?" Manhattan has some of the lowest obesity rates in the country due to inhabitants reliance on walking/public transit over driving. There are

by nsp 13y ago

"Good for health?" Manhattan has some of the lowest obesity rates in the country due to inhabitants reliance on walking/public transit over driving. There are few studies that show a 2 year life expectancy vs rural areas in the UK, but it's not a totally clear cut win for rural areas overall. "Good for the environment? No." Yes, actually - it's a lot more efficient to deliver services to people in densely populated areas than when they're spread thinly across the country side. "Per capita emissions in New York, Toronto and Barcelona are only a third of their national average, and the emissions of Tokyo, London and Seoul come in at about half of their countries' level." - http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-harm-climate-less.html http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16819-city-dwellers-ha... - http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/the-comparatively-green-urban-jungle/ http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/the-comparatively-... has a ton of other sources, including a brookings institute study and some others No disagreement on corporate profits. Cities are also great as birthplaces of movements, musical genres, schools of art, and political theories. Think the east village during punk, detroit in the 50s for rock, the salons of paris around the French Revolution, etc etc. There are definitely great reasons to live in rural areas, but being a city dweller is far from inherently worse.

contingencies 13y ago
Health: Correlation is not causation. Those people also have cash, access to the best care, preventative care, etc. Environment: What services are you talking about? Remember that to squeeze people together in the first place you have to import and maintain costly networks for moving food, water and energy. So dealing with decentralization from an efficiency standpoint should take this tradeoff in to account. As for the emissions references, I suppose they don't take in to account the ridiculous amount of pollution that goes on overseas or in other areas for products shipped in to cities (or the overheads of shipping itself). I agree that historically there's great social and intellectual wealth in cities, but I personally believe that's now being eclipsed by non-geographic movements, many of which are largely fostered through the internet.
- vidarh 13y ago
  You seem to assume that you don't need to create and maintain costly networks for moving food, water and energy for people to live in rural areas. Not many people in rural areas farm their own food and sort out their own local water and energy supply. Cities benefit because you can bring in resources using more efficient means in larger quantities.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    The availability of water varies regionally, but in many areas it is not a big deal to drill a well and have clean water (and septic is usually just a matter of meeting building codes). Energy and food are still a big deal, but the mix today is that shipping fuel has less impact on food prices than real estate value (that is, the food at rural stores isn't particularly expensive and they usually aren't that far away). They may be less economical than city stores, but they seem tenable. I sort of think the trick is to figure out a set of policies that lead to healthy medium-high density areas, as it is most 'great cities' seem to be at least partly accidental.
    - vidarh 13y ago
      > but in many areas it is not a big deal to drill a well and have clean water Yet that is not how more than a miniscule fraction of houses in less densely built areas gets their water. > Energy and food are still a big deal, but the mix today is that shipping fuel has less impact on food prices than real estate value (that is, the food at rural stores isn't particularly expensive and they usually aren't that far away). They may be less economical than city stores, but they seem tenable. The real estate cost is irrelevant to the discussion of the efficiency of urban vs. rural energy and food delivery.
      - maxerickson 13y ago
        I was responding to you calling the distribution networks costly. If rural distribution ends up costing less, the efficiency isn't something you are going to get people to give much consideration. This is why I then start talking about making more good cities, because that should presumably remove some of the costs that are more or less associated with lack of supply.

by nsp 13y ago

contingencies 13y ago

Health: Correlation is not causation. Those people also have cash, access to the best care, preventative care, etc. Environment: What services are you talking about? Remember that to squeeze people together in the first place you have to import and maintain costly networks for moving food, water and energy. So dealing with decentralization from an efficiency standpoint should take this tradeoff in to account. As for the emissions references, I suppose they don't take in to account the ridiculous amount of pollution that goes on overseas or in other areas for products shipped in to cities (or the overheads of shipping itself). I agree that historically there's great social and intellectual wealth in cities, but I personally believe that's now being eclipsed by non-geographic movements, many of which are largely fostered through the internet.

vidarh 13y ago
You seem to assume that you don't need to create and maintain costly networks for moving food, water and energy for people to live in rural areas. Not many people in rural areas farm their own food and sort out their own local water and energy supply. Cities benefit because you can bring in resources using more efficient means in larger quantities.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  The availability of water varies regionally, but in many areas it is not a big deal to drill a well and have clean water (and septic is usually just a matter of meeting building codes). Energy and food are still a big deal, but the mix today is that shipping fuel has less impact on food prices than real estate value (that is, the food at rural stores isn't particularly expensive and they usually aren't that far away). They may be less economical than city stores, but they seem tenable. I sort of think the trick is to figure out a set of policies that lead to healthy medium-high density areas, as it is most 'great cities' seem to be at least partly accidental.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    > but in many areas it is not a big deal to drill a well and have clean water Yet that is not how more than a miniscule fraction of houses in less densely built areas gets their water. > Energy and food are still a big deal, but the mix today is that shipping fuel has less impact on food prices than real estate value (that is, the food at rural stores isn't particularly expensive and they usually aren't that far away). They may be less economical than city stores, but they seem tenable. The real estate cost is irrelevant to the discussion of the efficiency of urban vs. rural energy and food delivery.
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      I was responding to you calling the distribution networks costly. If rural distribution ends up costing less, the efficiency isn't something you are going to get people to give much consideration. This is why I then start talking about making more good cities, because that should presumably remove some of the costs that are more or less associated with lack of supply.