A simple note: why people should want to live there? If there is no more work in cities except for city services, witch happen to be more and more bound to some bigger/external entities, so no real margins to evolve for any local company, why be there?
Yes, there are many desperate enough to flock anywhere if they see a possible accommodation, but how can they survive locally?
After the '80s logistic revolution and then TLC/IT progress finally making offices useless in cities there is no viable economy anymore. The new right density for the economy of scale are single-family homes and small buildings spread enough to have room to change but not too far, intermixed with homes enough to avoid the US suburbs error. We can't have a new deal in dense cities.
P.v. works best for self-consumption only and we heading toward cheap enough batteries to make almost-autonomous homes the norm in a large slice of the inhabited world (30kWh capacity per home at minimum), we can collect and store and clorate enough water to make semi-autonomous homes and various shops. It start to be cheaper than creating large aqueducts. We start to being able to treat sewers enough to been able to have local treatment instead of a sewerage network, we are not there, but near enough. The world change and we have to change accordingly meaning we can't keep up the immense infra we have made for cities while people move around to escape too frequently flooded areas, too hot areas and so on. We need infra for industries, and many industries need a certain size to be viable, but the trend it's clear we need to produce modern way to live less and less dependent on complex services existing on ground networks. We still need roads, personal air mobility and last-mile air mobility is still far despite certain claims https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... but we know where we should go. Smart cities can't work like the old Fordlandia can't. Classic cities already not work anymore, so we do not have other options so far and we need to evolve anyway.
Because cities are awesome: density gives you choice.
In a city, if I have a gifted child, I almost certainly have several options for what school to send them to, many probably within walking distance. In a sparse suburb, I have one, unless they want an hour-long bus ride.
Same goes for restaurants, and social activities -- and people! (i.e., potential friends)
Cities are drastically more efficient. PV does -not- work best for personal consumption, that's actually the hardest way to go because you're not sharing available resources. Same goes for almost everything else you listed.
What's not awesome are cities defined by gridlock and huge highways, something that is itself addressed by increasing the amount of residential space relative to office space.
> In a city, if I have a gifted child, I almost certainly have several options for what school to send them to, many probably within walking distance. In a sparse suburb, I have one, unless they want an hour-long bus ride.
I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. I live in about as suburban of a town as you could imagine and there are 2 public elementary schools, a charter school, and a private Christian school within about a 15 minute walk. Within a 5-10 minute drive there are probably 5 more high quality charter schools, a few more private schools and who knows how many more public schools.
hashtag not-all-suburbs. First of all, your description of a "suburban town" may be different from what I mean when I say "sparse suburb" (which is kind of the opposite of a town). Second, some suburbs immediately next to large cities have great schools because they're the place a lot of upper-middle class folks fled to 50 years ago. But there are also many like I describe. In the Pittsburgh area, if you're wealthy and move to the Fox Chapel suburban area, you'll have what you describe. If you move a bit farther out to Cranberry, you'll have what I described.
(Now, that said, from my spot in the city, there are about 10 different elementary schools within a 2 mile radius.)
Also, don't confuse my comment about choice with quality -- many US suburbs have higher quality schools than some of the cities they're adjacent to for reasons of historical racism and wealth inequality. A very separate issue from the benefits of density!
In my post I'm talking generically about "why cities in 2024" not counting actual cities. Where I live now, is a spread area of single family homes and around here I still have a supermarket (grocery store) a 1' car, elementary school a 5', a golf club and paragliding at 7', a canyoning school at 10' alongside a generic store for wood, steel, cements, painting etc, at 15' a kind of multipurpose center (used as seasonal cinema/theater, cultural center, ...) and a medical clinic, at the same time distance various other commerce, all immersed in the wood.
The point is not what is there now in a specific place of the Earth but what we could do in various places on Earth. The society and the economy I've found here, arranged as described, do works very well. In the region there are a significant variety of human settlements ranging from the ITER nuclear research center, the European Design Center of Toyota, to various sheep farms and tourism. All spread in few hours car range in an economy that's still flourishing and alive even in the current global state of things. There are many different people intermixed, only around my home there is a home an USA-French top manager working mostly in the middle east and aside his home one of a retired chef of a small restaurant in Monaco, in the neighborhood at a walking comfy distance we are no more than 30 people, with 7 different nationalities and a variety of expertise and wealth. Oh, it's a small place, but there are many small places like that and they can thrive as well. From where I'm from I barely know my neighbors in the same building. Oh sure, I've study at the uni just 1km away from my old home, nice, but for what? If I have a child till the high school anything is there, for high school there are still some local options (but I might not like their quality) and I can buy him/her an accommodation elsewhere where he/she can star experiencing an autonomous life because yes, teenagers nowadays need to be autonomous and most of them are totally unable to be due to their glued, iper-surveillant parents. After their studies, after having started a career and a family they can choose whatever they want to live, after parent's death they can choose to go back or sell the old settlements and the society keep turning.
A day we will have flying cars? No issue, there is space for them. We have added p.v.? No issue again, there was already space for it. Geothermal heat pumps? No issues the tallest home is three story on it's own ground. The blacksmith shed 3km from here start to be used by the blacksmith and became something else? No issue is just a shed with a bit of space around, easy rebuilt and converted to something else. In a dense city NOTHING is possible or at least it's terribly costly and complicated. Just try to look why the USA can't build a high speed rail where they need it: it's simply too dense, in France was possible simply because a large slice of population leave spread in the country. A new airport? Good luck in a dense city that growing and growing have surrounded the once upon a time very on the outskirts. Good luck turning useless office towers in apartments. Good luck restoring a new working economy in a dense city. Just to get on-line retails delivery is a nightmare, while here switching from classic mailboxes meant for paper mail to huts-like ones for packages or adding remote opening to the entryphone was pretty simple and cheap.
That's why I'm saying the city do not work. I understand well that some want it, feel the need of it, feel depressed outside, I know personally a handful, personal or family friends, they have all the rights for their preferences but they also should acknowledge that such model can't stand anymore in the present changing world. It's not a matter of preference, it's a practical fact. Like those who love more and more frequently flooded zones, they love them, they have all the rights to love them, but they can't expect insurances pay an year after another big money for after-flood restoration.
Well, choice to consume, but nothing more. I was living in a big dense EU city, after others big&dense, now I'm living in the French Alps, at a short-range from the see, but high enough to have good climate, nature, still having services not like in a big city, but still enough, including good enough FTTH, roads, grocery with drive services and so on. Before?
Well, before I can choose restaurants from all over the world, some fitness centers, some events, always and only services to consume and no real personal activity. Traffic congestion, lack of space and so on complete the game. no, thanks.
In social terms my social life here with FAR LESS people around is IMPROVED because being less we are more social, we meet much more with different people instead of being in bubble if friends, very isolated from all others humans around. Surely mean cultural level is far lower, but due to the general cultural degradation these days to find interesting people for interesting dialogues internet is the sole means, we are too rarefied to meet IRL casually.
Schools? Here every school have large green space and plenty of outdoor activities, yes not at walking distance but who care? Primary schools are normally in 30km radius on good roads, high schools are more rare, but not that far away and if young start to going out of home to study is a good thing for them. Universities became a bit more costly since you must be around them but again it's not that special.
Cities IMO are SOLD to be efficient, and they are definitively not. Starting from the office model where you have a place to live, almost unused during the day, and a place to work almost only used during the day, and we build such mid/high rise buildings to use them only a bit less than half a day, wasting time for commuting, how efficient.... Oh, sure, to farm humans is efficient, to live farmed inside definitively not.
P.a. actually work ONLY for self-consumption because on scale sharing energy is a nightmare for the grid, we do not have superconductive links, sharing means sharing locally, so have a locally very unstable demand for big power plants, the worst scenario for network stability, they can't keep the frequency with significant p.v. on grid. Instead IF we focus on self-consumption p.v. offer options to heat large quantity of water to have them in the night, when needed, to have geothermic heat pumps, heating the ground in summer to balance the heat get in the winter and so on.
BTW cities can't exists without much highways: there anyone eat, and the food came from outside.
The urban-suburban sprawl situation in the US, which is the focus of this article, is far removed from the EU. Metropolitan areas in the US are characterized by having hundreds of kilometers of inefficient low density suburbia. In the US, the highways you mentioned are mostly utilized for inefficiently shuttling of people back and forth across the suburban sprawl. As mentioned in the below linked article, in the US metropolitan areas, urban city areas have 2x to 4x less carbon footprint per capita than the suburbs.
Can you accept that different people have different preferences? Yours are valid of course, why cant the city dwellers prefer what the city offers? You seem to understand the advantages the city has but just reject them as if everyone feels the same way as you do.
Of course, but preference and efficiency are different things: people who like living in cities have all the rights to clearly state that, as a personal preference, as I state mine, but they can't describe their life as efficient or ecological since that's definitively not the case.
We do many inefficient things just because we like them, just think how absurd is smoking tobacco. Smokers have all the right to state "it's a pleasure for me", but a pleasure does not means automatically a good, sustainable and efficient thing. Personally I really like smoked salmon, however I life far from salmons natural environment, I still buy it because I can, but of course I know it's a very inefficient and absurd practice (specially since I know a bit the supply chain).
Preferences are one thing, but you're factually wrong about the efficiency of cities vs suburbs.
"Cities generally have significantly lower emissions than
suburban areas, and the city-suburb gap is particularly large in older areas, like New York."
"In metropolitan regions, suburbs emit up to four times the household emissions of their urban cores. While households located in more densely populated neighborhoods have a carbon footprint 50% below the national average, those in the suburbs emit up to twice the average. In metro areas such as New York, GHG emissions in these outlying jurisdictions are readily apparent: Emissions in Manhattan average lower than 38 tons per household annually, but in exurban jurisdictions such as Sussex County, N.J., these emissions exceed 66 tons per household annually."
You're radically under-estimating the efficiency gains of sharing infrastructure. Consider a simple metric like paved road-miles per person, or electricity-line-miles, or distance to school, etc.
It's absolutely fine to have a preference for a rural environment - I grew up in the foothills of the mountains and I miss them terribly - but efficiency is a measurable metric, and cities win, for better or worse.
As answered below that's not what others have observed and more relevant is the capacity to evolve. A NEW mid-rise building and a NEW set of single family homes matching the number of apartment show that the mid-rise new building consume less in operational terms than the single family homes. Though it demand more raw materials to be built, and more infra around it to operate, and typically waterproofs the soil for a large area, killing soil humus, meaning consuming soil, while single family homes do not but the real difference arrive at the end of their useful life: rebuild single family homes it's a common task. Rebuild a mid-rise building it's another story. First of all you have to relocate not a single family for a little time but MANY families for a not so little time, secondly in most part of the world the building owner is not one, they are many and they have to agree rebuilt and how to do so, not counting the issue such large activity create in the surroundings. Long story short: multi story buildings tend to last in degrade for a long time, consuming than much more then newer homes. Homes can easily built in wood, well, it's not pure wood, but it's a self-renewing material in nature if we do not harvest too much. Bigger structures in wood can be made but they tend to be a nightmare. A tall building is not a set of piled containers that packed occupy less soil, it have to sustain it's own weight, have proper foundations, anti-seismic design, fire-safe design etc.
Long story short is like a train: formally is far cheaper than a plane, if you just observe a single fully-loaded trip. But you have to count all you need to build and maintain the train and the relevant infra, and here things start to change much, than you have to count the flexibility over time: a plane can go from any A to B in a certain distance range, a train need rails and build/change rails take an enormous amount of work.
Long story short again: yes FORMALLY under specific windows of observation the city is far more efficient, but in TCO terms is definitively not.
My understanding is that carbon output per capita is far lower in nyc than in american suburbia. American suburbia is a pretty unique place, hard to say how it compares to europe, but at least in the US city livers generally are more ecological at least by some definitions.
I dont think many people value efficiency as highly as you do. Tons of people are fine with being inefficient, they certainly wouldnt call their actions absurd. To me there's nothing wrong with transporting salmon, and Im honestly not really sure why you think there is. Most lox is factory farmed so not like its threatening the species.
Well, what's available in large parts of the world are unsustainable settlements, some due to their place, too prone to floods, wildfires, ... many with subsidence problems, many with aging and irreplaceable infra and so on. So what's available are raw materials, industries and knowledge to start building something new. On the table we have the smart cities, natural evolution of present dense cities and distopic nightmares like the original Fordlandia. You can read about Google Sidewalk labs or Arkadag, Innopolis, Prospera, ... to form an idea of the near future. I prefer something else.
Personally I left the big city for mountains in a not too far area, with enough services and there I see the green new deal working, in kWh terms I consume much less (considering I do not consume gas, diesel, petrol etc anymore), my life quality is improved much, local economy works better than many others so... I propose this as a model.
Yes, there are many desperate enough to flock anywhere if they see a possible accommodation, but how can they survive locally?
After the '80s logistic revolution and then TLC/IT progress finally making offices useless in cities there is no viable economy anymore. The new right density for the economy of scale are single-family homes and small buildings spread enough to have room to change but not too far, intermixed with homes enough to avoid the US suburbs error. We can't have a new deal in dense cities.
P.v. works best for self-consumption only and we heading toward cheap enough batteries to make almost-autonomous homes the norm in a large slice of the inhabited world (30kWh capacity per home at minimum), we can collect and store and clorate enough water to make semi-autonomous homes and various shops. It start to be cheaper than creating large aqueducts. We start to being able to treat sewers enough to been able to have local treatment instead of a sewerage network, we are not there, but near enough. The world change and we have to change accordingly meaning we can't keep up the immense infra we have made for cities while people move around to escape too frequently flooded areas, too hot areas and so on. We need infra for industries, and many industries need a certain size to be viable, but the trend it's clear we need to produce modern way to live less and less dependent on complex services existing on ground networks. We still need roads, personal air mobility and last-mile air mobility is still far despite certain claims https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... but we know where we should go. Smart cities can't work like the old Fordlandia can't. Classic cities already not work anymore, so we do not have other options so far and we need to evolve anyway.