[yason]

I always wonder why our cities can't be "denser". Perhaps we are too used to our cars and driving everywhere?

It's cars. Designing for cars is mutually exclusive to designing for pedestrians. Cars require lots of space, wide roads, parking areas which immediately make it impossible to do quick, effective trips on foot. So, if you design for cars you have to use cars. And if you drive you want more of that space yourself while, if you design for walking, it's quite cumbersome to drive, even in small cars which Europeans like a lot.

There was something similar in the small town era of USA when cars weren't yet everywhere. And that is what people seem to instinctively long for: for example, in movies and TV series you see sets built to depict city squares, narrow streets, and people walking around. Of course, the more realistic picture would be a half-dead city centre while everyone keeps driving to that big box retail park around the nearest highway junction...

[nostrademons]

Ironically people seem to have a yearning for the time period two eras before where they are. Right as the suburbanized car era was getting started (1930s-1950s), there was a wave of nostalgia for the agrarian past, with homesteads on the prairie and wide open fields. Literature from that era: Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Little House on the Prairie, Gone with the Wind, Grapes of Wrath.

Now we seem to be nostalgic for the urbanized town square with walkable shops and residences above - basically the 1900-1930 time period. Maybe when we're old and feeble we'll get to see our kids pine for the suburbanized developments, green grass lawns, and big-box retailers as they live in their arcologies and have all consumer goods delivered to them through matter-compilers.

[Teever]

Why do you think the arcologies won't have some sort of town square in them just like they'll have some sort of farm on them too?