If you spread into suburbs and single-family housing, you need more area per person, motorized individual transport (because walking becomes impractical), more spread out roads and utility lines, and so on.
Cities are not divorced from nature, they allow us to preserve it more easily.
Theres a paradox where city living is a more efficient way of living a first world lifestyle, but doing so divorces you from what you're trying to protect.
With that said, I think people who live in cities tend to feel plants, animals and ecosystems that are not ours less, and therefore we may be quite ignorant to the destruction we are causing.
It's one thing to know in the mind that we are destroying other life forms and it's another to live in that destruction.
Sure, depending on the measuring stick cities are more efficient. But I think most importantly, they likely aren't conducive to creating the sorts of empathy required for us to make decisions that are more in line with preserving other forms of life.
I don't quite know the answer, like many things existential...it's complex, confusing, nuanced and hard to grasp. I hope that we figure it out and I hope that I answer the call within me to join in that figuring out.
I see more wild animals than they do. There’s a breeding pair of some bird of prey in the park next door, there’s falcons and skylarks on the Tempelhofer Feld, I regularly see foxes in the greener parts of town. It’s not like in a nature park, but suburbs are a desert compared to what I have.
Efficient, yes, but quality of life is unacceptably low.
About pollution, where I am is not particularly bad, but if it were, I'd use a heat recovery ventilator and filters.
As for noise, it can be a problem. My most trouble has been with cars. Move away from large roads.
But some cities started addressing it as well:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/15/noise-radar-in...