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Edit: I phrased something very very poorly in my comment: "But even somewhat small changes in density can open up massively more land for use.". This should instead say that small changes in density can allow less land accomplish far more use. The entire idea is to make sure that land is not wasted, which means that humans will use less land overall, and will let more of it stay as nature. No, the anti-pattern is sprawl and living far from other people, impacting huge amounts of land at low density. Look at any suburb in satellite view, and see how much area it takes to get to, say, 40 houses. Compare that to a standard apartment complex with park space. Now add in all the roads that are needed to service the suburban detached housing, which requires driving for every single trip be it kids going to school or picking up some groceries. Then all the extra insulation, building materials, roofing, needed to create housing that is still far less energy efficient to heat and cool than an apartment building. There are two efficient living forms: 1) urban life where needs are mostly within walking distance (be it a town of 5,000 or 500,000 or 5,000,000), and 2) isolated farm life where you only go into town infrequently because it takes too long, and you're kids take the bus. Suburban living promotes daily driving for every task. Check out this map of consumption-based carbon emissions, which roughly track with most other pollution: https://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/maps Georgist taxes greatly shrink those huge red belts that are in between cities and farmland. |