Christopher Alexander’s Distribution of Towns

2) Why would you want to live in an 100,000 population city that is 120 km apart from other major cities? Seriously - it's too big for small community feeling, and not nearly enough for vibrant cultural life (theatres, museums, live concerts). Also it's too much to just utilize the land around them, and not enough to be e.g. finance center. Such cities IMO are inherently not stable, they will gravitate towards either increasing their population to 300-600k (metropolitan area) or lose people until they shrink to 30-40k.

The whole grid thing is stupid. People want to either spread out or concentrate. They don't want to be stuck at an "average" density.

In a bureaucrat's ideal world, maybe, but not in Christopher Alexander's. There, small disconnected neighborhoods make locally optimal decisions, and you end up with structure without large-scale symmetry or repetition.

This article already goes wrong with "with capital city City1 in its center". That should be "roughly in the middle" (yes, I know that pattern is for making a good town square, but I think he would certainly like that better for placing the capital city than "exactly in the center")