My point is not that this is easy/hard, but rather: it's easier to
provide top notch infra structure for the worlds population if it is
concentrated in a few dense urban centres, rather than spread out. I
find this hard to contest. Just think about distance, bearing in mind
that the cost of sewage systems, rail (over- and underground),
fibre-optic cables and so on basically tracks distance.
if you split everyone into groups of 200k to 2m
This is an interesting point. B b b but ...
I cannot think of an existing city with 200k inhabitants and
great infrastructure. I can't even think of a city with 2m
inhabitants whose infrastructure can compete with world leaders such
as Tokio, Manhattan, Hong Kong and the like. And even in these places
the best infrastructure is found in the densest parts of the city, not
in the outskirts.
Note that the cities you have in mind, say European cities of
200k - 1m size, are rather spread out, and low density. I have lived in enough of those.
But it would be really interesting to have cities that have 200k - 1m
inhabitants and are extremely dense like central Hong Kong. Such small cities may
be big and dense enough to have the economies of scale of their larger
rivals. But, as pointed out by "vidarh", they would not
remotely match megacities in terms of interesting cultural life.
not a hypothetical,
I don't think it works that well. European cities of 200k - 2m are
car-centric in my experience. I supect China would run into major
problems if its population live in low-density European style cities
with 200k inhabitants each.
> But it would be really interesting to have cities with that have 200k - 1m inhabitants and are extremely dense like central Hong Kong. They may be big and dense enough to have the economies of scale of their larger rivals. But, as pointed out by "vidarh", they would not remotely match megacities in terms of interesting cultural life.
I think with that kind of density, if you go to 1m-2m size, you have a sufficient base for very regular high capacity public transport to other similar sized high density cities very near.
E.g. Macau fascinates me (though I've never visited). It's a fairly small city - roughly 643,100 people (2015 estimate) - , yet it's spread out over a positively tiny area - about 30km^2. Overall density of 18,568/km2. If you condensed London into smaller cities with that density, you could have e.g. split London into four cities of about 120km^2 each, and still free up more than 1000km^2 for green belts or low density zones around them, and yet they'd still be near enough to each other for it be pretty much as easy to travel between the areas as today, and the increased density in each city might even cut down total travel times in many cases.
The biggest challenge with something like that would be disciplined planning, beause obviously if you put big, dense cities like that near each other, the land in between would become immensely desirable.
I agree, this would be a fascinating experiment. 2m city on around 50 km2
is almost completely walkable, and certainly bicycleable. It would be
just about big enough to have an interesting cultural life. I wonder
why historically such a city has not evolved.
I suspect that a lot of it has to do with the fact that density is expensive in terms of building and infrastructure and also that many people don't especially want density as a matter of choice. As a result, most cities that have highly dense areas largely created those after they had already built out into surrounding areas. (The somewhat exceptions are geographically constrained areas. Even pre-skyscrapers there were very dense areas on Manhattan like the Lower East Side although presumably a return to tenement living conditions isn't a desirable future for cities.)
I don't think density is expensive, on the contrary, density is cheap due to economies
of scale.
I think one reason might be food production and transport. Before
the invention of refrigeration, fertiliser, mass transport, humans had
to live rather close to food production, which stands in the way of
density.
Another reason might have been that really dense living required the
ability to build high-rise houses, with concomitant requirements for
being able to pump water high up, have elevators and so on.
Reliable sewage systems and provision of fresh water was another
problem.
Some of the above became widely available only at the end of the 19th,
beginning of the 20th century. At that time, the automobile encouraged
sub-urbanisation.
It may be only know that small, yet very dense cities are possible.
I cannot think of an existing city with 200k inhabitants and great infrastructure. I can't even think of a city with 2m inhabitants whose infrastructure can compete with world leaders such as Tokio, Manhattan, Hong Kong and the like. And even in these places the best infrastructure is found in the densest parts of the city, not in the outskirts.
Note that the cities you have in mind, say European cities of 200k - 1m size, are rather spread out, and low density. I have lived in enough of those.
But it would be really interesting to have cities that have 200k - 1m inhabitants and are extremely dense like central Hong Kong. Such small cities may be big and dense enough to have the economies of scale of their larger rivals. But, as pointed out by "vidarh", they would not remotely match megacities in terms of interesting cultural life.
I don't think it works that well. European cities of 200k - 2m are car-centric in my experience. I supect China would run into major problems if its population live in low-density European style cities with 200k inhabitants each.