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Comment by Fezzik | Hacker News Reader

My dream for the United States is that we repopulate everyone to Texas* and let the rest of the country be wild, in varying degrees, and accessible by bullet train. That’s my stance as an avid outdoorsman. Then we could see all this natural majesty flourish.

* I have not looked up the numbers recently, but I recall that we could fit the entire population of the United States in to Texas with a resulting population density less than that of Manhattan. Obviously doing this is not feasible, for a number of reasons.

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it wasn't "wild" by the time european colonists arrived. native americans actively managed vast areas with e.g. controlled burning for thousands of years.

EDIT: "For 13,000 years, many Indigenous tribes, including the Hupa, Karuk, Miwok, and Yurok lit controlled fires across northern and central California. This created a mosaic of habitats with a high diversity of species that California is known for today. Through multiple progressions of these practices, many species, such as acorns and huckleberries became associated with these deliberate, low-intensity fires. Despite their fire resistance, they are ill-equipped to tolerate the high-intensity nature of modern wildfires in California."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/priyashukla/2019/10/28/what-cal...

Moving everyone in the US to Texas would only result in 0.2% of the population density of Manhattan (just checked with Wolfram alpha which is great for this kind of thing)

You might be thinking of moving the entire world's population to Texas, which would result in 56.7% of the Manhattan density (by 2017 estimates).

Of course we would still need to grow food in fields, which surely is the most space consumptious part of the population.

Apparently 41% of the land in the contiguous US is pasture or grazing land for livestock (548MM acre). Just staggering.

To compare, land we use to grow crops that we directly eat account for for ~77MM acres.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2018-us-land-use/]

It is staggering only until you realize that the majority of land in the US is too arid to grow crops and was once called the Great American Desert -- basically most of the land west of the Mississippi. Such land grows primarily scrub and is ideal for livestock such as Bison and Cattle that are able to eat the vegetation that grows there naturally as a result of the limited rainfall available. That we have water intensive agriculture west of the Mississippi is only because we are depleting aquifers. It's not sustainable, and using this land for livestock is about the best thing that can be done with it. It's also what this land was used for prior to being settled -- large open plains on which Bison roamed.

Yep. In Texas, we have both FM (farm to market) roads, but also, as you head further west, toward the Mexican border and the landscape turns a beige-tan hue of brown, we also have RM (ranch to market) roads

Introduction of horses changed the landscape. They damage the roots when grazing. Bison and cows don't. Many of these desert scrub areas may have had much more grass cover pre-columbus.

According to Allan Savory and some other respectable scientists the problem arose because the plants evolved to support huge buffalo populations and depended on them to clean and fertilize the ground. As their population declined, there was no more mega-herds migrating annually through the prairies and smaller groups of animals had different grazing patterns. Plants couldn't adapt to the new situation quick enough and the balance got broken. Less cover meant more evaporation, drier soil, erosion and rain washing off the soil rich in organic matter, and it all spiraled down to the land turning into semi-deserts. Allan Savory thinks (and he proved this method successful in practice) that the solution is to have large flocks of grazing animals moving around periodically, which stimulates grass growth and grass protects the soil and helps other plants to colonize the area.

Theory turning into practice here: https://amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/517779/

There is some evidence that the huge Buffalo herds did not exist until Indians died off after Columbus "discovered" America. Pre-Columbian indigenous societies hunted the Bison enough to keep their population in check.

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/12/american-buf...

Eastern Montana looks and feels like the surface of the moon, albeit with air to breathe. Hundreds of square miles of nothing.

The gist of your point is correct, but "West of the Mississippi" is the wrong dividing line. You have about a state and half of excellent land west of the Mississippi. It is all about the mountains - From when the mountains start just past the West coast, they cause clouds to dump their moisture on the west side. The east sides are arid, for a couple hundreds miles or more. And because we have multiples ranges of mountains, the western third of the nation is arid... with pockets of agriculture just west of each mountain range.

It's not just "a couple hundred miles past the mountains". It's basically even with the western edge of the Gulf of Mexico. East of there, there's enough rain. West of there, there's not.

You are right that "West of the Mississippi" is not the actual boundary, which is why I said "majority of the land". The actual boundary curves, being farther west in the Gulf and almost touching the Mississippi in the North, but "Western half of the US" is as good a description as any.

Point being, a lot of people who grow up in the Eastern Half of the US think the Western half has a similar climate, when it really doesn't. It really is an arid climate and the difference between East and West is rather stark.

Here you can take a look at a map of precipitation:

http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap17/rain_usa.ht...

Indeed, calling the Dakotas/montana as "desert" is... misleading.

Tundra maybe, but its not really a desert. And the plains are a great spot for grazing critters like Bison. The land there is their old stomping grounds, they fit in there like jelly on peanut butter sandwiches.

One important point to keep in mind is that "land" varies a lot, and "pasture" can mean anything from dense grassy pasture with >1 cow per acre to arid pasture >100.

They aren't convertible to cropland in the same way. Even in terms of "rewinding," one acre doesn't equal another, for most interpretations of "wilderness value."

This is why the amazon-2-pastureland problem is so serious. Every acre of amazon rainforest reoresents a lot of habitat.

Are they counting BLM (federal) land where they allow cattle to graze? A lot of land is federally owned but the BLM allow ranchers to let cattle graze in the summer/warmer months.

That makes a lot more sense. It was late and I was tired when I initially commented, so that seemed too far-fetched without fact checking myself.

Could you share your queries

Arcologies.

City-sized sci-fi’ish pyramids, containing all the residential and non-polluting commercial and workspace needs of an average human’s entire lifetime.

Surrounded by natural wilderness that people can escape to at their leisure.

Food supply (that can’t be grown inside the arcology), energy generation (beyond the arcology’s own renewable capacity) and heavy manufacturing will still have to come from elsewhere though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

I keep expecting to hear about "Biosphere 3", funded by some billionaires wanting an arc to survive the climate collapse.

http://biosphere2.org

I did see the head line about Gates funding something like Argosanti.

https://arcosanti.org

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/11/13/bill-gates-plans-smart-cit...

Like in that episode of Black Mirror with the bikes and American Idol! Our entire existence can be ad supported with cameras making sure we’re watching.

How different is that from right now, except for multiple buildings instead of one?

In addition to all the other great points:

Where are the train stations? What services at are there? Who works there? Where do they live? Where do their kids go to school? How do they get their food? Who takes care of them for medical issues?

You can recurse a few times on all that, and then you’re just in a similar situation we’re in now, except we’ve got high speed trains going everywhere. That I can agree with, but then let’s save some time and just connect existing cities by bullet train and better preserve the existing nature.

Aren't most of the US already wild ? 50% of the population is on the coasts. Besides the east, as soon as you go inland it's quite literally a desert.

The midwest of the US is neither a desert nor wild. It's mostly farm land.

Also, "literally a desert" concerns rainfall, not population density.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_Desert

In the not-so-distant past, the term "desert" would have included what is now referred to as grasslands, savanna, or steppe environments.

Not a native english speaker, "desert" can be used to describe an empty patch of land in my language.

Anyway, there are 10 states in the US with a lower pop density than the least densely populated country in Europe (norway, which is already quite empty). Half of the US states have less than 40 inhab per square kilometer. Sure some are farm land but it's far from all of it https://map.onesoil.ai/2018#3.89/38.32/-98.67

I have a different, but related dream: for construction companies to be allowed to build anywhere they please, as long as they meet safety regulations. This way real estate prices in NYC, SF, etc, etc, will descend from the skies, and normal people from all over the country could move in. And move in they would, because that's where the jobs are. Only the damn high rent (and damn high cost of living) keeps them outside of the main metropolitan areas. And then we'd have exactly what you say, natural majesty flourish.

I am in favor of more density in San Francisco, but no matter how negatively we feel about nimbyism we must acknowledge that current blocks are tightly packed with single family homes or at best 2-3 unit buildings, and people live there. This creates an obstacle or delay if we think they should be demolished and replaced with denser housing.

(Not the least of which being how much of Texas is super inhospitable.)

Of course, places like Manhattan require a huge amount of supporting area. People just live there and work office jobs but everything they need is imported, and what they need to get rid of is exported.

But you could look at something like Bangladesh that's more of a real country rather than a city and see how they do the density. Extreme fertility for farming and high poverty helps.

And Texas happens to be a prime location for solar power.

Arcologies.

Think city-sized sci-fi’ish pyramids, containing all the residential and non-polluting commercial and workspace needs of an average human’s entire lifetime.

Surrounded by natural wilderness that people can escape to at their leisure.

Connected by hyperloops or airships.

Food supply (that can’t be grown inside the arcology), energy generation (beyond the arcology’s own renewable capacity) and heavy manufacturing will still have to come from elsewhere though.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

Because fuck anyone who doesn't want to live in the hot, shitty environment of the American south, right?

But see, when you live in Manhattan, as I did for many years, you’re in a dense place, but you’re in Manhattan. If we did it in Texas, we’d all be stuck in Texas.

Pass.

And the humidity and terrible water quality. Super pass.

Yeah, gotta love that New York winter.

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