undefined | Better HN

0 pointsTeMPOraL10y ago0 comments

I don't know why there's such "new-urbanist lobby" in the US, but in Europe you can't realize the dream of "open-road commuting" and low-density employment, not without turning the entire continent into one big suburbia. I don't think we have enough land for that.

I'm personally for public transit because of efficiency. Even if you could somehow get that "old low-density promise of commuting 20 or 30 minutes on open road", which would definitely be not a bad situation for commuting, it would still be an energy disaster. Mass transportation and high-density settlements are much more energy-efficient, and energy is one of the biggest problems we're facing as a civilization right now.

0 comments

2 comments · 1 top-level

dasmoth10y ago· 1 in thread

The UK has 26.7M households in 243,610km^2. That's nearly a hectare per household -- doesn't sound "suburban" to me (although maybe some parts of the US would disagree!).

Of course, the UK population is very unevenly distributed at the moment...

TeMPOraLOP10y ago

You still need land for agriculture, industry, forests, animal habitats, etc. Also, not all of the land in that 0.25M km^2 is habitable nor suitable for other uses mentioned above.

I've heard some calculations that in theory you could have all 7 billion people living comfortably on 50% of the land while the other 50% could go to agriculture, industry, forestation, etc. but that would require geoengineering on an unprecedented scale, not to mention being very energy inefficient.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse