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Comment by lesdeuxmagots | Hacker News Reader

Many people have done this math and have researched this extensively. Urban environments on average are significantly more ecological, more efficient, than sprawl, on a per person basis.

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.

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Many people have done it wrong, few start to acknowledge this these days. For instance many compute how much fuel consume a bus to transport maximum load of people vs that number of people in individual cars. They do, of course, a right computation, only they forget a thing: if bus goes only full nobody will use them (too uncomfortable), normally they goes with very few people inside for most of the time, so they consume more than individual cars during the day/year except at few peak times.

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.

So are there studies that show where the others went wrong? Or do you argue based on a gut feeling?

I can't link any right now, I've reading few on paper and deducted others from news: try only looking at actual mass of studies for "sustainable city", essentially NO ONE of them sustain that actual cities works/are sustainable, and substantially anyone try to find a "sustainable city" model with many different draconian changes to actual model.

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.

Stop digging your (energy-efficient, metaphorical) grave! You lost this argument five levels up when you started making assertions explicitly in conflict with the laws of physics.

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.

Ok, so I imaging that the fact I heat my home with far less bill that my ancient and smaller apartment was a figment of my imagination... Also I imaging that the total (semi-public) skyrocketing high cost of public transportation in my old city per capita are higher than the cost of private transportation in the countryside again per capita because of someone conspiracy...

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.

It is simply a physical fact that surface area goes down as building size goes up. (You have to build very tortured buildings for this to be untrue.) Consequently, dense settlements will be easier to insulate and will lose less energy per tenant. There are many other effects of scale kicking in too.

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.

Nope. Because the real world is complex, it doesn't only matter how much surface you occupy but also how much prime matters and energy you need to build a thing, tall buildings need far more powerful concrete foundation and steel than individual houses. Witch means more natural resource used to build them. Also steel and concrete are far less recyclable than wood. Also individual houses may occupy soil surface without destroying it too much, for instance, at least in most part of EU individual houses foundation are only underground horizontal beams with some poles that popup vertically (60-100cm high) from them leaving the rest of the soil natural ground. If tomorrow you destroy the house nature came back on the soil in an year. If you destroy a tall building nature came back (humus in soil) in more than ten year.

Your other inane comment argues single-family houses are so much more efficient because they regularly get torn down & replaced. Make up your disturbed mind!

My English is poor but I think I explain my point in a clear enough manner, in synthesis:

- 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.

Since we must assume that built-over land will remain built-over, it's irreleveant to what depth it's constructed. Fact is that dense settlements use an order of magnitude less ground.

You forgot to mention how much ground all those residential roads will destroy. Those don't help your argument.

Population is not constant and specially is not constant in any land, people tend to move following work opportunity, quality of life, to escape crisis etc. So no, while these change are slow in general they are and it's always a mess to handle "abandoned" towns than abandoned single homes...

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.

You're ignoring facts. Again. Building and maintaining roads and utilities into urban sprawl is very expensive. Public transport is less effective there. The bigger the area you need to protect against floods, the harder it becomes. Cities hardly ever move, they grow.

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.

So unrealistic that it's become a common practice in most developed countries... Try asking a Swedish or a French (with exception of few Parisian) what they think about cities.

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.

> try to determine cost per capita of countryside living and city living

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.

>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.

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 pay taxes as well... And not less than people in cities, like I was until few years ago...

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.

> if bus goes only full nobody will use them

How can it be full if nobody is using it!?

Sorry for my poor English, I meant if a bus is constantly full people start avoiding it simply because of discomfort, in few times request to bring more buses/more frequent lines start to rain to the transport company and as a result we get more buses used at a lower capacity or more private transport to avoid discomfort...

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