Will large cities become obsolete?

[Barrister]

MIM, I think you are speaking from wishful thinking, not reality.

I wish I could easily escape back to the country / north.  But all of human history seems like a rush to live in ever-increasing cities.

[frunk]

I'll see if I can find the article, but there was a guy who did research on population centers and all sorts of inputs and outputs.  Energy, material consumption.  Economic, technological, creative production.  Many other things I'm forgetting, but the upshot was that for each doubling of the size of a city there was around a 15% increase in the optimization of all of those factors.  So given everything else being the same a city twice the size of another one used 15% less per capita energy and material but was 15% more per capita economically and creatively active.


Ah, here is the TED talk.

[Iormlund]

Cities have tremendous advantages. They make it easier or cheaper to find a job, talent for your business and access to raw materials, manufactured goods, culture and services.

[Admiral Yi]

And fewer fat chicks.

[Eddie Teach]

And fewer fat chicks.

Not in absolute numbers.

[Admiral Yi]

Not in absolute numbers.

I'd be willing to bet there are fewer fat chicks in absolute numbers in cities than elsewhere.

[CountDeMoney]

Face of US poverty: These days, more poor live in suburbs than in cities
The rise in suburban poverty reflects long-term demographic shifts – America is more than ever a suburban nation – as well as economic changes.
By Richard Mertens, Correspondent / September 11, 2013

Suburbs are increasingly becoming the address of America's poor. Suburban poverty across the country grew 53 percent between 2000 and 2010, more than twice the rate of urban poverty, according to a recent report by the Brookings Institution. For the first time, more poor people live in the suburbs than in cities.

"I think suburban poverty is here to stay," says Alan Berube, one of the authors. "It's not going to revert back to the cities."

Much of the rise in suburban poverty is due to the impoverishment of working families already living there. The decline in manufacturing, the Great Recession, and widespread foreclosures have left many longtime suburban families reeling.

At the same time, the suburbs have become a destination for poor and low-income people arriving from somewhere else. Some, like Thomas, have abandoned poor urban neighborhoods in hopes of living somewhere better – with safer streets, better schools, and housing that's cheaper than in gentrifying urban areas. And new immigrants, many of them poor, are bypassing the urban neighborhoods where they once settled and heading straight to the suburbs.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2013/0911/Face-of-US-poverty-These-days-more-poor-live-in-suburbs-than-in-cities

Cities are seeing a reversal of their losses over the last several decades.  Between the suburbs getting hit by the recession, people getting sick and tired of spending countless hours in traffic, the attraction of city life and cities as financial centers as the last real source of urban employment, you're starting to see White Flight reversing itself in a lot of cities.

Hell, Baltimore saw its population increase last year for the first time in God knows how many decades;  some of it was due to increased immigration, but it's a lot of trendy hipster neighborhoods seeing growth by trendy hipster white people moving in that like the city life and see no reason to sit on the beltway for 45 minutes every day to get to work.

[Syt]

Just looking at Vienna - the city population has grown by ca. 10% in the last 10 years (ca. +150,000), twice as fast as the rest of Austria. So in Austria, at least, the large city is nowhere near dying yet (even though the estate sales prices in Vienna have risen by 20% in the same period).

[jimmy olsen]

And fewer fat chicks.

I would have guessed the opposite. The urban poor is renowned for being fat in America.

[DGuller]

And fewer fat chicks.

I would have guessed the opposite. The urban poor is renowned for being fat in America.

I'm with Yi.  Maybe urban poor are fat in America, but rural everyone is fat in America.

[Ideologue]

Not in absolute numbers.

I'd be willing to bet there are fewer fat chicks in absolute numbers in cities than elsewhere.

Tempted, but my gut tells me not to put money on this one.

[Ideologue]

And fewer fat chicks.

I would have guessed the opposite. The urban poor is renowned for being fat in America.

I'm with Yi.  Maybe urban poor are fat in America, but rural everyone is fat in America.

Meth keeps them svelte.

[Razgovory]

It seems like the trend of going in the other direction.  Urbanization is accelerating again, or so is my impression.  I do agree that the basic determinant of the importance of cities is transportation.  If you can be teleported anywhere in the country at any time at no cost of any kind, then I imagine that the population would be almost evenly spread out along all habitable land.

I would also disagree about the social aspects of living in a city.  IMO, big cities are a perfect example of a crowd being the loneliest place.  I imagine that in fact small towns are the more sociable places, precisely because everyone knows everyone, and thus you have to support the human connections with strangers you run into every day.

I get lonely.

[Eddie Teach]

I get lonely.

Stop lighting your friends on fire.

[Brazen]

Speaking from inside a megacity, you don't see the urban sprawl, you just see your own self-contained little village that happens to be conveniently located to travel to the other villages where you work, your friends live etc.