Dense urban life is far more environmentally friendly and efficient in terms of consumption than suburban life.
* Concrete and asphalt EVERYWHERE. Ask yourself about the carbon cost of all that concrete - which, in the northeast, requires constant repair.
* Street lighting - I mean, you can see dense, urban areas from freaking space - think about all the energy that takes. Is that environmentally friendly and efficient?
* Heat islands - Dense, urban areas concentrate so much heat they literally change local weather.
* I've got an entire ecosystem of nature right in my back yard. Trees, wildflowers, grass, an array of wildlife, even a small garden growing local food (that the deer and groundhogs are determined to eat). What do dense, urban environments have? A practical monoculture of pigeons and rats?
That's exactly the problem. Any asphalt and concrete you add is sustaining 1 person. Any asphalt and concrete in an urban place is sustaining 1000s of people.
You burn more fossil fuels in the winter to stay warm. You burn more fossil fuels to provide 1 source of light that only you use.
The multiplier you're missing is the number of people we service with the things we're doing in an urban environment.
Having a 1,000s crammed into small spaces is China and that populatin density caused covid, sars, etc to spread. It's not health physically or for your psychology to live in an endless noise, light polluting environment.
What non-US cities do most people like to visit?
You can look up suburban fossil fuel usage per capita vs urban fossil fuel usage per-capita just as well as I can.
I wonder why the USA, with all its fantastic green suburbs and private motor transport, had a much higher COVID case rate and death rate per capita than other countries that have denser urban living?
Concrete and asphalt: If you add up all the parking lots and roads in a suburb and divide it by the number of people, the area is much larger than the amount of concrete per apartment dweller.
Street lighting: Again, much higher in the suburbs due to the low density. An apartment building with 100 units might have 10 street lights. Each house could very well have 1 street light in front of it. Not to mention all the arterial stroads where no one lives.
Extra topic - heating: A house is surrounded on 5 sides by cold. An apartment is surrounded on 5 sides by apartment.