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Comment by pishpash | Hacker News Reader

Why should we have density? The US is a huge country with vast empty lands. The new economy with air travel and internet means jobs require no specific geography like easy access to ports, waterways, or railroads. Why should people be packed into a few places living like rats? Keep the rent high and let economics take care of jobs going elsewhere to new, livable settlements and perhaps cities. Whatever happened to the pioneering spirit?

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How do I telecommute to a dinner date with friends? There's many, many benefits to living close to other people, most of them not work related.

By your logic people should never move and there should never be new cities.

Density provides many benefits. For example - how much is an hour worth to you? How many hours a day do you commute? How many hours are just sitting in a car watching traffic (or the countryside) driving back and forth to work? That certainly isn't a zero dollar impact.

It would be nice if telecommuting was an option, but even most computer-based programming positions don't have a lot of telecommuting flexibility.

Surely density has some benefits, but not unmitigated by detriments like crowding and lack of freedom. These things go in cycles. Plus, the opposite of "density" like NYC isn't suburban sprawl. There is some middle ground.

I'm responding to your question of "Why should we have density?" I do not care to quibble about the number of benefits, merely to state there are measurable ones.

Lol air travel is nowhere near being an economically efficient means of transporting workers on any other timescale than every few months at the shortest

dense housing is efficient in all manner of ways. American sprawl is one of the primary reasons we contribute so much greenhouse gas per capita

High density is the only environmentally friendly option. Moving goods and people around is incredibly wasteful.

The end goal is to have vertical farming inside cities as well.

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