- cities material costs (meaning raw materials, energy etc) is enormous compared to the same people of any city living a far less dense area with single families homes AND commerce around intermixed. In such scenario moving with light electrical vehicles, mostly recharged from local p.v. since it's effective in most of the inhabited word is FAR cheaper (again in resources) than collective transports in a dense city;
- WFH in a dense city is a nightmare, because you miss nature and social contacts together. I came from a large EU city, now living in the Alps, WFH. In the city I have had a FAR LESS social life, simply because it's limited to a small number of selected friends doing service-based activities, like eating together in a restaurant, going to some events etc. Here being less dense anyone (almost) interact with almost any other, normally, and that's completely change the social paradigm compensating the "alienation" of working at home, distant from your peers. As a result I can WFH and remain a social animal in a not so dense area, where I can goes around, find people etc WITHOUT services, and the anonymity of the crowd. I probably can't in cities. Doing so means also I travel LESS (no commute) and longer trips are almost meaningless since I mostly recharge from my p.v. I keep more stuff at home, so I have less "impromptu trip" to buy something and so on. I'm more in nature, more social, more resilient (for instance no long series of stairs if there is a blackout and still have my home powered).
About health:
> Is that after controlling for wealth?
I do not know if most studies have taken family economy into account BUT so far people in cities are normally a bit more wealthy than outside, and still, they tend to live less.
> [gut microbe] Is that good or bad?
Perhaps not definitively clear, but typically healthy people have a significant set of gut microbes...
> Pollution is important though. The more you can walk or cycle, and more generally the lower the per capita energy use, the less pollution and the better for human health.
In toxicology pollution is measured in density, too little oxygen and we die, too much and we die as well. Similarly a poison below a certain threshold it's harmless. Try looking at ANY city, there are some more polluted than some others, but all are more polluted than far enough surroundings. People activities do pollute. You can walk, but the truck bringing you food does not.
> cities material costs (meaning raw materials, energy etc) is enormous compared to the same people of any city living a far less dense area with single families homes AND commerce around intermixed.
How do you figure that? Single family homes are inherently enormously costly - more concrete, more energy to heat or cool, and more roads to access them. A couple of subways don't outweigh that.
> In such scenario moving with light electrical vehicles, mostly recharged from local p.v. since it's effective in most of the inhabited word is FAR cheaper (again in resources) than collective transports in a dense city
A dense city is the place where ebikes or golf carts are most practical - people are more able to live close to work (or leisure activities). Just look at the mode share numbers. Electrical transmission is extremely efficient, worrying about "local" electricity makes little sense. Metros in a city don't displace walking/cycling, they're displacing car use.
> In the city I have had a FAR LESS social life, simply because it's limited to a small number of selected friends doing service-based activities, like eating together in a restaurant, going to some events etc. Here being less dense anyone (almost) interact with almost any other, normally, and that's completely change the social paradigm compensating the "alienation" of working at home, distant from your peers.
Low density cities/suburbs are the worst of both worlds for social life, IME. The apartment complex I live in (in a dense megacity) has a similar population to the village I grew up in, and has the feel of a village too; I say hi to my neighbours and get some everyday social interaction despite WFH. But we're also close enough to meet and eat together without any fuss, whereas back in the village people would drive from one end to another. I don't think cities are inherently less social, they just enable people to be pickier about their socialisation - a village or small town is great if you fit in, but not so much if you don't ("the only gay in the village" may be a comedy sketch, but there's truth behind it).
> Doing so means also I travel LESS (no commute) and longer trips are almost meaningless since I mostly recharge from my p.v. I keep more stuff at home, so I have less "impromptu trip" to buy something and so on.
On average people in your position travel more, and in more environmentally damaging ways. And keeping a bunch of stuff ends up being pretty wasteful; I know I can walk to the shops to buy something whenever I want (hell, for basic stuff I only have to go downstairs), so I wait until I actually need the thing rather than pre-emptively stocking up on something that ends up going to waste.
> How do you figure that? Single family homes are inherently enormously costly - more concrete, more energy to heat or cool, and more roads to access them.
Single family homes can be wooden frame on light foundations, tall buildings can't. Single family homes can be demolished and rebuild every passage (meaning 50-80 years) so they can be as efficient as "relatively recent" tech allow, tall buildings are a nightmare to evolve. I'm Italian, having left years ago a typical large enough apartments in the north-west of the country for a home in Sweden of similar size. The some in Linköping use LESS energy than the old apartment. Now I'm living in the french Alps, a new wooden frame home, about twice the size of the old one and I consume FAR LESS. Evolvability matter, much.
Here I have an EV and domestic p.v. in an apartment I've had a garage, but no p.v. possible, also consuming space for a heat-pump water heater and for main heating is not that easy, in a home no issues.
Not only, in term of mere raw materials just grab a project of any high rise buildings and compare that with any single-family home project multiplied by the number of apartments: you'll easily see that the high rise building demand MUCH MORE materials than many homes.
> A dense city is the place where ebikes or golf carts are most practical
And they demand large supply chain as well, witch means highways, railways of a significant size, because people need to eat as well and they are many in a restricted area, enlarging even more the infra costs... Roads in a spread areas are lighter, do not demand much complex infra. Moving with light personal vehicles instead of moving heavy trucks, even if in smaller numbers, is FAR less consuming. The hard part is organize the logistics but with IT we can.
> Electrical transmission is extremely efficient, worrying about "local" electricity makes little sense. Metros in a city don't displace walking/cycling, they're displacing car use.
Electricity grids all over the world are LESS and LESS reliable due to growing demands, generation issues and climate change, there is NO WAY to keep them up reliably in a changing world, so the same for roads, rails, water supply and so on, that's why we talk about "resiliency", because modern countries, cities are damn fragile and inflexible.
> Low density cities/suburbs are the worst of both worlds for social life, IME.
beware US-style suburbs are horrific because they are residential only, you can't do anything else than stay at home or have a trip with a car. Mixed low density areas are another beast. Where I am now we are few homes spread in a dead-end road, but with a small park aside, few activities a 10' walking, a small lake a 12', a small river with enough water in the spring to canoe a bit on the north side and so on. It's far different than a big lot of homes and nothing else. So it's different the social life part: in large cities I normally not even know many if not most of my neighbors, here's families pass kids one to another normally, (almost) anyone cheers (almost) anyone else and casual parties in the garden are far common from spring to autumn. Something never seen in cities. At maximum there we go to a restaurant or a shopping center and so on.
> On average people in your position travel more, and in more environmentally damaging ways
In mere km-terms yes. In impacting terms no. I mean WFH I can recharge my EV almost on PV most of the time except winter. When I was in city I goes every weekends around, almost reaching the same kilometer range of now, but in more stressful way between traffic inside, highways and so on. Here I go calmly for beautiful roads. Roads that can be (some are, many are not) also full of small passages underneath to drain water and allow small animals to pass, having few small bridges to allow bigger animals to pass, cut the "forest" enough to obstacle eventual large fires to spread. No giant infra needed.
Keeping stuff to me means waste FAR LESS, well, because I'm attentive on what and how to keep. For instance means less packaging: I do not buy pre-cut cured meat under plastic, I buy entire hams, mortadella etc I cut in 2cm thick slices, freeze them, unfreeze one at a time, slicing them as thin as I wish. I do not buy bottles of wine but a couple of demijohns at a nearby producer, filling them with a pump, and i bottle them at home, with the same bottles every years. Similarly i buy olive oils in 10l batches filling the same bottles as needed. Of course I also eat salmon who happen to came from far away, so for shrimps, but some foods and beverage are local, and with far less packaging. Having more appliance if one breaks I'm not in a rush for another so potentially on scale the delivery of a new one and disposal of the old one can be scheduled for maximum efficiency. In case of a disaster the resulting emergency is far less "urgent" than in a city because most homes have a certain degree of autonomy and we are able to help ourselves and each others. So again, far less impacting.
It's not easy to dimension anything but try and i've no doubt you'll reach the same conclusions I've reached.
> Here I have an EV and domestic p.v. in an apartment I've had a garage, but no p.v. possible, also consuming space for a heat-pump water heater and for main heating is not that easy, in a home no issues.
That stuff is inherently a lot less efficient to do on individual scale. In a city you can have shared boilers, CHP plants piping steam to the neighbourhood and the like.
> Not only, in term of mere raw materials just grab a project of any high rise buildings and compare that with any single-family home project multiplied by the number of apartments: you'll easily see that the high rise building demand MUCH MORE materials than many homes.
I doubt that claim even for skyscrapers, and they're the exception rather than the rule even in a megacity. Terraces of 5 stories or thereabouts - the stereotypical Paris building or New York brownstone - very clearly use a whole lot less material per person than single family homes.
> And they demand large supply chain as well, witch means highways, railways of a significant size, because people need to eat as well and they are many in a restricted area, enlarging even more the infra costs... Roads in a spread areas are lighter, do not demand much complex infra.
You're forgetting to normalize by population! Low density areas need a lot more road per person and that all costs. If the same road is serving 1000x as many people, then even if they're getting their supplies from 100x as far (which is a pretty high estimate), that's still a huge reduction in infrastructure costs.
> Where I am now we are few homes spread in a dead-end road, but with a small park aside, few activities a 10' walking, a small lake a 12', a small river with enough water in the spring to canoe a bit on the north side and so on. It's far different than a big lot of homes and nothing else.
Yeah, people living in a place like that are consuming and polluting a whole lot more on average, as well as producing less. Producing all the good stuff we rely on - not least that EV and PV you're going on about - requires large numbers of people working in the same place. And people like to be able to choose what they buy and who they spend time with.
> Electricity grids all over the world are LESS and LESS reliable due to growing demands, generation issues and climate change, there is NO WAY to keep them up reliably in a changing world, so the same for roads, rails, water supply and so on, that's why we talk about "resiliency", because modern countries, cities are damn fragile and inflexible.
Keeping a grid reliable is a lot easier than keeping a bunch of complex technology working in a spread out area. Who repairs your PV when it breaks? Who replaces the battery in your EV when it wears out, which they do pretty quickly? Where and how do they get the parts (and what do they do with the one they're disposing of)?
> So it's different the social life part: in large cities I normally not even know many if not most of my neighbors, here's families pass kids one to another normally, (almost) anyone cheers (almost) anyone else and casual parties in the garden are far common from spring to autumn. Something never seen in cities.
Seen in my city all the time. With the difference that those in minority groups also get a chance to socialise with people like them from time to time.
> Keeping stuff to me means waste FAR LESS, well, because I'm attentive on what and how to keep. For instance means less packaging: I do not buy pre-cut cured meat under plastic, I buy entire hams, mortadella etc I cut in 2cm thick slices, freeze them, unfreeze one at a time, slicing them as thin as I wish. I do not buy bottles of wine but a couple of demijohns at a nearby producer, filling them with a pump, and i bottle them at home, with the same bottles every years. Similarly i buy olive oils in 10l batches filling the same bottles as needed.
Bet that stuff ends up more environmentally damaging to produce that way. Overly stringent food safety rules are a separate issue, but generally that disposable packaging has won out because it's efficient.
> Having more appliance if one breaks I'm not in a rush for another so potentially on scale the delivery of a new one and disposal of the old one can be scheduled for maximum efficiency.
So you use extra appliances the whole time just for the sake of the rare case when one breaks?
> In case of a disaster the resulting emergency is far less "urgent" than in a city because most homes have a certain degree of autonomy and we are able to help ourselves and each others.
Depends. There are a lot more people in the city to help each other out, and there's a better mesh of connections. If someone falls down or gets lost, someone will likely find them (unless they're the kind of person who chooses to live very privately). If the local doctor is injured, there's another not too far away. If one road or rail line is blocked, there's a route around.
> It's not easy to dimension anything but try and i've no doubt you'll reach the same conclusions I've reached.
Nope. Like, maybe your personal lifestyle is more efficient than a city dweller, but the way you're talking about living is something only a tiny minority would ever do. Most people don't WFH, most people don't and can't set up or fix their own electrics, most people buy the biggest house they can and then fill it up with crap they don't use, most people won't put much intentionality into their shopping, most people want to socialize with particular people or particular kinds of activities that just won't exist in a small town. If you advocate for low density living, what you're going to get is endless car commuters who sleep out there but work and shop in the cities, not only consuming a bunch themselves but also bringing noise and pollution and demands for car infrastructure that mess up the cities for those of us who live there.
The part you are right about is that living in a real community where you know your neighbours is important, both for good living and for resilience. But that's got nothing to do with density; the west may have destroyed the community of its cities, but it doesn't have to be that way.
- cities material costs (meaning raw materials, energy etc) is enormous compared to the same people of any city living a far less dense area with single families homes AND commerce around intermixed. In such scenario moving with light electrical vehicles, mostly recharged from local p.v. since it's effective in most of the inhabited word is FAR cheaper (again in resources) than collective transports in a dense city;
- WFH in a dense city is a nightmare, because you miss nature and social contacts together. I came from a large EU city, now living in the Alps, WFH. In the city I have had a FAR LESS social life, simply because it's limited to a small number of selected friends doing service-based activities, like eating together in a restaurant, going to some events etc. Here being less dense anyone (almost) interact with almost any other, normally, and that's completely change the social paradigm compensating the "alienation" of working at home, distant from your peers. As a result I can WFH and remain a social animal in a not so dense area, where I can goes around, find people etc WITHOUT services, and the anonymity of the crowd. I probably can't in cities. Doing so means also I travel LESS (no commute) and longer trips are almost meaningless since I mostly recharge from my p.v. I keep more stuff at home, so I have less "impromptu trip" to buy something and so on. I'm more in nature, more social, more resilient (for instance no long series of stairs if there is a blackout and still have my home powered).
About health:
> Is that after controlling for wealth?
I do not know if most studies have taken family economy into account BUT so far people in cities are normally a bit more wealthy than outside, and still, they tend to live less.
> [gut microbe] Is that good or bad?
Perhaps not definitively clear, but typically healthy people have a significant set of gut microbes...
> Pollution is important though. The more you can walk or cycle, and more generally the lower the per capita energy use, the less pollution and the better for human health.
In toxicology pollution is measured in density, too little oxygen and we die, too much and we die as well. Similarly a poison below a certain threshold it's harmless. Try looking at ANY city, there are some more polluted than some others, but all are more polluted than far enough surroundings. People activities do pollute. You can walk, but the truck bringing you food does not.