All I know is I love my house, with all of its land, trees, and nice quality living.
I will protect this thing to my death, because it is so much better than living in an apartment. I don't care if it costs me $4,000 a month.
If it involves, for example, lobbying against high-density housing, that might be part of the problem.
My home in the suburbs with 1/2 acre lots is FAR FAR FAR too dense for me... I want less density than that, but newer subdivisions are dropping to 1/4 or 1/5 acre lots, it is terrible
The relationships are more than linear too because once individual vehicles are in the mix, the distances the masses above can travel can easily multiply.
On top of all that, the less efficient and higher emission energy sources will still be cheaper around the world, and there are plenty of billion people willing to up their consumption.
You do realize that densifying will not in fact, fix the problem either, it only buys you some time, at the cost of different resources.
I did not mean to imply that population can be allowed to grow uncontrollably and still be able to accomplish curtailing climate change. Both densifying and population control and specifically reducing consumption per person, which is part of densifying) are necessary.
Sure, you need to fix other things too, it's not a panacea, but what is?
This isn’t a knock on you personally so please don’t interpret it as one. But I find a lot of people are in favor of the idea of affordable housing in areas that also have, say, gainful employment but are not in favor of the policies that would actually produce that.
And so we get the equivalent of walled-off communities combined with empty words that just feeds ones identity/ego. At some point people need to live the values they espouse.
Those 10 families don’t pay nearly enough in taxes to cover the cost of infrastructure maintenance. It relies on grants from state and federal governments, paid for by taxes in dense cities, to cover the expense.
My point: sparse is not objectively better. I think the quality of life we have come to expect in suburbs and rural areas is not possible without the taxes gained from also having dense places.
More info, and a very interesting video series here: https://youtu.be/7IsMeKl-Sv0
I dont think you can objectively say that is true given that road maintenance is one of the least costly things a government does, and the less densely p;populated the less maintenance is done to that road sometimes none at all
That further assumes that the road in those areas is maintained by the government this is also not universally true, there are plenty of housing additions that have HOA's where the HOA is responsible for the road maintenance
Also in almost 100% of cases the developer creating the subdivision is responsible for the infrastructure costs to build said subdivision and also often has to pay to improve infrastructure leading into the new subdivision
Some people want what you want, others are fine with less space if it means less money. Upzoning means they get to choose what to do with what property they own.
> > land, trees, and nice quality living.
I have the feeling they're talking about land in their area that they don't own, that for whatever reason is prevented from being used for new homes, and their worry is that zoning changes allowing it would ruin the quality of life there by removing the greenery and open spaces.
I live in the woods in a rainy location. Everyone has 0.5 acres and lots of trees. The grocery store is 10 mins away and we only have one major road in and out.
For those who want to live a different style of life, please go live it.
But for us who are living here, it seems to me we want to preserve our way of life so that we don't have to deal with the pollution, noise, and safety issues that some larger cities are having trouble with.
- https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/4/the-question-ev...
- https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/11/11/poor-neighbor...
This series goes into more detail about the unsustainable aspect specifically: https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/the-charac...
https://www.oecd.org/env/rethinking-urban-sprawl-97892641898...