I disagree. High density cities are more energy efficient and ecological than sprawling ones. The solution to this is public transport, not density restrictions. No one living in a city should have to own a car in the first place.
I have lived in a dense and modern big European city, now I'm living on mountains: cost, quality of life, energy efficiency etc are far superior here than in a city. No matter how developed is public transportation that's it's regularly inefficient because to handle peak time it work at a very bad efficiency for the rest of the year and you can't reduce it without hurting people freedom.
The amount of energy required to build and maintain 500,000 people spread across suburbs is far more than 500,000 in a dense city. The amount of material needed for construction, especially cement goes up massively. Services are able to serve less people, so require more quantity of doctors, grocers, power stations, etc per capita, requiring more land and space and waste. The fact that individuals need to use cars in less dense environments vs many exclusively using shared services such as public transit in dense cities, which are ridiculously more ecological.
Same for undergrounds: many compute how much electricity they consume, but omit to compute how much energy you need to create, maintain and evolve them.
Same for buildings: many confront how much energy is needed to heat or cool a building instead of individual houses, but they omit a thing: individual houses can evolve, being demolish for instance by children when parent's dead, tall buildings are normally not demolished and rebuilt as a result their energy efficiency is far behind individual houses (I have proven myself switching from an apartment in a big city far less cold than my actual individual home), also type of material you need to build a tall (and safe) building is far less recyclable than many individual houses.
Same goes for many "green buildings" innovation that keeps popping around and generally result in failure from "communist buildings" to "integrated social buildings".
Also simply look for and feel on your skin the quality of life in cities than in countyside/the riviera. And in dense countries vs far less dense one.
I can understand if you prefer the countryside: maybe you don't enjoy how people continuously try to correct you when you're wrong. Or these bike-riding eco-hippies just smell funny.
But then you should be glad that others enjoy cities (and logic): if we try to evenly disperse them among the liveable space of the earth, I guarantee you there will be some neighbours moving in far to close for your comfort.
What you do not understand is that we do not live since today for today, we do not build new cities and houses from ground to the ceiling today. We need to evolve and we can evolve far more in the countryside as a result while in theory tall buildings are more efficient than single houses, in practice we have more "newer" individual houses and less newer tall building so in the end the practice is the opposite.
Perhaps you do not even understand why speed trains does not gain traction in the USA but works well enough in French because of the urbanization level of certain area those density are so high that the cost of "pierce" the urbanized area is so high nobody try to sustain.
Essentially you study too much the details that you loss the sight of the big picture, a common mistake these days.
Arguing about the quality of life is something else with different trade offs. I'd say ban cars from city centers and then we start talking about quality of life.
- big buildings demand more resources to being built, in terms of concrete, steel etc and require deeper foundation that destroy ground humus far more than correspondent single houses;
- big buildings are in medium older than single family houses simply because demolish and rebuild them cost big money and it's practically impossible for many reasons (reach agreements between all involved landlords, not enough space around for work, new norms hard to respect in the available space/site etc) so they consume in medium more energy than single houses;
- cities was a need for various reasons in the past but they are not anymore and modernize them as much as we can with improved public transportation etc cost far more than private transportation in a distributed area.
For all the above I consider a bad idea living in a city, I consider in more and more unsustainable. And recently many people around the world start to know that hard on their skin...
If you do not want to understand I can't help, my mind works well and I was capable and lucky enough to switch from a big city to a wonderful mountain area without loosing anything I really consider valuable.
You forgot to mention how much ground all those residential roads will destroy. Those don't help your argument.
About roads: try to think how much material you need and regularly consume in a town vs countryside roads, also imaging not today but in an imaginary tomorrow world how much roads we will need in a really low dense country vs in "megacities".
Without counting what happen in case of floods or other problems in a town vs elsewhere and the relevant cost to repair. Only imaging september 11th in a country without dense urban agglomeration: how much victims, costs, effects it may have had in such scenario?
What help my arguments are tons of small things grouped together, the sole things it doesn't help is hospital/emergency service proximity in case of need, but that's compensated by a properly organized sanitary system and a strong public investments in that sector (a thing we desperately need also for many other reasons). Another is the problem of few residual but important labor-intensive activities that require many, many people in a concentrated place, but again this is less and less important thanks to automation.
A simple, yet stupid arguments, that my clearly demonstrate advantage of single can be: what if there was a strike, a big one, and you do not found anymore essence for your car? In a town substantially anything can't work anymore, electric public transportation may work but see Gilet Jaunes in France today and Paris status these days. In the countryside nearly anyone have a big tank (500/1000 liter) of reserve. There is place for that. There is place for keep large quantity of food (perhaps with dual-energy freezer electricity/butane gas with enough cylinders, around 20Kg/month to give a quantity) etc. Imaging only elevators out of services due to a short electricity outage.
And the horror scenarios? Please, people in the country will be hit just the same when they can't get gas anymore. Or when the food supply stops.
What you're saying is: "Wouldn't it be nice if we all lived in the countryside?" That idea has crashed decades ago. It's unrealistic. Please stop.
BTW try to determine cost per capita of countryside living and city living, also notice that foods normally came from country and sea, not from cities, oil&gas tend to be the same (how many oil/gas extraction are done inside NY?)...
This idea crashed only in few countries, mostly from the third world, in the developed world only USA, Russia and eastern Europe.
Only to have you telling me I'm doing it wrong based on personal anecdotes? No thanks. I have no trust it would lead to a useful discussion.
> also notice that foods normally came from country and sea, not from cities,
Food and gas don't come out of suburbia either. What's your point?
> This idea crashed only in few countries, mostly from the third world, in the developed world only USA, Russia and eastern Europe.
What third-world countries? It's not 1960 anymore. People all over the world are moving into large cities. They are not waiting for the cities to build the roads and pipes your idea requires.
Well yes, living on the countryside with a big house and car and all amenities may be nicer than living in an apartment in the city. But you should keep in mind that that's a luxury. And a rather wasteful one at that. It might end up not being that much more expensive for you, but that's because people living in the cities are subsidizing your lifestyle through their taxes.
I do not consider it a luxury but a different development model that may led to a "luxury" life without the need of other's sacrifice.
Consider a thing: we do not produce foods in towns, we (normally) do not have factories in towns so towns live of the shoulder of productive people outside, they can't live without them. In the countryside you suffer without a "countrywide development" but you still survive. In towns you generally have only tertiary sector's workers, no more.
How can it be full if nobody is using it!?
Evolvability matter and too many fail to take that into account. We do not live today, since and for today.
In Sweden for instance most of the buildings are "ancient" enough to be far less efficient than newer one, most of individual houses (that are build generally with a very poor quality and little price) are newer and as a result far better isolated. Also they are easy to be recycled since have far less concrete and far more wood than tall buildings.
In France situation is less different since houses tend to be kept for longer time and they are not build until few years with much energy efficiency attention, however they are still a bit more efficient than buildings since they tend to be a bit "newer" in medium.
Old apartment was heated by a central methane based burner, new house by a VMC with a heat pump and a two solar thermal vacuum panel + 800l heat cumulus (~28ft³/ 211 US gal / 176 UK gal), whole cost dropped around 80%, whole energy consumption drop from around 300-350w×m²/years to around 25w×m²/years...
But in medium in the whole country individual homes are newer than tall buildings mostly because they tend to be poor quality to a point that's cheap demolish and rebuild than maintain and also tall buildings are normally property of many different subjects so reach agreements on any upgrade / maintenance is far complex than individual houses and physical space and usable ground for construction around the home is normally far more present than around a tall building...
Keep attention that I always talk about mean values, not single buildings.
Another thing, I do not know in the USA but in Italy and France construction norms are less tight for airtightness in collective buildings than individual houses, airtightness often play a more prominent role than insulation thickness in term of energy cost. I do not know in big buildings how for instance a VMC (mechanically controlled ventilation with heat exchanger) can possibly work...