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Comment by prewett | Hacker News Reader

Have you been to Hong Kong? (Not trying to be snarky) It's a got a great transportation system, very walkable, and you're never more than 30 minutes (by public transport) from over 100 miles of lush mountain hiking through the interior or the seashore. The density means that it is profitable to have stores like bakeries that are cheap enough that you walk by and think, I'd love a danta for US$1, while in the US you might make a special trip and get one for $4 + tax but it's not going to be an impulse buy. It even has something like four major universities. It's a travesty that China flagrantly broke their treaty, Hong Kong is what I think of when I think of an amazing city.

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I have not and just used it as an example since it was one of the first places I thought of when I mentioned density (along with Mumbai). But I have been to Seoul and lived in South Korea for a year. I had Hong Kong on my list of places to go see... too bad what happened.

I absolutely agree with you that Hong Kong from an infrastructure perspective has a lot going for it, but I think that skyscrapers are an anti-pattern. You can't repair them yourself, they require specialized knowledge to create and support, extremely dense environments are breeding grounds for contagious disease (this is a general statement), and from a natural standpoint they're quite sterile (the parks, while great, are illusions of nature - a toy or a simulation). I think we'll also find that skyscrapers cause anxiety and depression here in the near future as/if research is conducted. You also require massive infrastructure for cities, again more specialization. They're very much reliant on cheap fossil fuels to create and support, even if they're per-capita lower on emissions. If we run out of oil and I live in a 30,000 person city in Europe, life goes on. I still walk like I was before and farmers still bring their goods to the local market. If we run out of oil and I live in Hong Kong the entire thing crumbles to bits.

You're describing a pleasant low population density situation which is a nice romantic fantasy a lot of people long for. I don't blame people for wanting that, but you must realize that it is the exact mentality that leads to suburban sprawl.

I think on aggregate, that is more expensive (financially and environmentally) than high density cities. Take all the infrastructure which needs to be built out for these small cities (roads, electric grid etc) which serve a very small number of people and now imagine if everyone lived like that and multiply that cost with building out this infrastructure for a many many small cities. Building 30 small idyllic villages instead of one hong Kong would end up having a larger environmental impact.

You’re thinking of something I’m not describing “idyllic villages”. Instead I’m describing modern towns and cities that exist all over the world and in Europe in particular where they were built before cars existed. They have low emissions, everyone walks or rides a bike, and they have regular train service.

> Building 30 small idyllic villages instead of one hong Kong would end up having a larger environmental impact.

Depends. If they’re American-style sure. If they are (again these are your words idyllic villages) then I don’t see much impact. You just walk around the small village. Maybe a farmer comes buy and sells apples or whatever. These scale and the evidence is in the city, where you can see companies will create multiple instances of their stores because there’s an upper limit on the number of people served. Also for a right sized city 50,000+ you don’t need massive infrastructure investments which require massive specialization, massive costs, and so forth. They only exist because there are too many people.

Also for items like roads those are fine. You can walk or ride your bike in them. Maybe they’re even multi-purpose. Most wouldn’t be driving cars on them for any reason though which is a big inefficiency.

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