I'm not sure I follow. Low density housing is much worse for the environment than high density housing. Lower density means more transportation burden, larger energy costs to deliver utilities, greater risk of those utilities breaking, and more wildernesses being paved for roads and housing.
There's nothing environmentalist about low density sprawl.
What do you consider low density? I really don't like the idea of stamping out all single family homes and nice green areas in proximity to cities. Mixing high density in with commercial areas seems fine though.
Agree, probably your "american style medium density" is what I would consider "low-ish density", healthy and pleasant too...
...but using the "depleting oil reserves" and other eco arguments to make people leave in what I see as much lower quality conditions is inhumane and cruel in my pov - just build good quality public transportation, make it electrical (even trains are efficient) and go all nuclear to power it all, putting up with all the eco-consequences of it ...or maybe Elon Musk's Hyperloop will redeem everything :)
Low density can be sustainable if we live in clusters that are self sustaining. Form 4-6 Dunbar number sized communities and another bunch of them forming a bigger cluster. Intra city transport to be separate from Inter city transport..maybe underground or mag lev along with surface transport.
The problem is not low density. The problem is sprawl.
The solution is not high density and shaming people NIMBY or coerced altruism but cooperation. Giving people incentive to cooperate and share in return for something of non material value would work better than worsening quality of life for the productive and working folks.
High density can also be sustainable. Paris is a good example but it has public transport and its shaped like a snail. It would also mean segregation of regions according to income and ameneties.
Also..I can’t give you any example because no system lasts for ‘thousands’ of years.
I am rejecting your high density sustainable cities list but when I get the time, I will do my own research and if I am wrong in my intuition that you are off mark, I will certainly come back to you with it.
Again. You are wrong about low density meaning less education dollars. In California, we have a funding formula by which all the money goes to a common pot and then redistributed. The formula ...to put it simplistically...assigns more money to school districts with kids who need free lunches, English as second language etc. so this means counties that contribute less tax dollars and less property tax dollars due to low house prices get more of the education dollars. Highly educated households and English speaking households and those are higher income where kids don’t rely on school lunches get less education dollars.
This leads to no money for infrastructure improvements or overcrowding in schools and budget cuts. And yet..it’s these high property priced areas that have a higher influx of school kids. It’s not working.
Per student expense allocation in affluent cities is less than in areas that have lower property values. No child is truly left behind in California when it comes to education at least as far as $ redistribution is concerned.
The problems we have cannot be resolved by high density building in Bay Area and LA.
Higher-density housing wouldn't be the worst idea, especially higher-density housing near light railway when combined with public parks. The suburban paradises are plainly incompatible with public transport.
It's not strictly a matter of protecting investments and real estate values. Many people simply don't enjoy living in dense areas. They prefer having a little space, privacy, and quiet. There's nothing wrong with wanting that, and the complaints by residents who have been there for years about the impacts of greater density are legitimate.
Even if they're all electric cars? This is why I live in the suburbs. You can't champion density as the solution on the one hand, and then say, "you have to drastically change your lifestyle to support density!".
Just let people who don't want to live in density pay for the externalities of low density living (require EVs, higher cost for infra, etc).
That's not low-density. Maybe not everywhere is as bad as Manhattan, but that is indeed very dense. Note that you twice described your ideal solution as dense:
"a dense mix of single family homes, shops and apartments"
"a healthy mix of uses and density centered around transit."
Not a big fan of that kind of density, nor are many others. I'd at least like to have my own backyard, and not have my neighbors peering in from a second story.
I feel this is a narrow perspective because it focuses on a subset of problems and doesn’t recognize all the other problems of benefits that are in the balance. Low density living is great for many of us - the open spaces and air gives the city a certain aesthetic, and it does create a certain culture and sense of community that has been disappearing as the city has changed in the last several years. I would like to see us retain those things.
Why is that? High density living is inherently FAR MORE environmentally friendly than low density suburban living.
No daily commuting. Small rooms, relatively efficient hvac. The only downsides are generating power/water locally (using diesels) and fuel for boats to/from (I really doubt they'll use helicopters much; they're really expensive, especially to operate over water). So probably somewhat more environmentally friendly than a similar number of people distributed across the Bay Area, but less efficient than everyone living in a Yscraper.
I'm not going to tell you what to do, but if you want to convince other people of your opinion I suggest writing up your argument into a well-cited article.
Personally, I'm skeptical, but I'm willing to consider what you have to say. Specifically, you have twice mentioned the environmental impact of low vs high density living and I'm curious to know more about that.
I don’t want high density housing. But I want things that require high density housing: the ability to walk to lots of places and good public transportation when I want to go farther.
I’ve compromised on an expensive lower density location which has a bit of that. I’m happy with it, but plenty of people will make those compromises differently.
It would be great if we could all live in big houses with big yards and have stores and restaurants down the street, but basic economics and geometry means you can’t.
There is plenty of demand for living in dense walkable places, which is why they're more expensive per square foot than houses in the burbs. You don't need to recharge your car if you don't have one at all, which is much more sustainable.
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