[Retric]

That study doesn’t address your argument. The land use of a city isn’t simply the physical land taken up by that city. Per capita energy expenditures significantly drop as city density increases, even if we moved to solar power that would still represent land use.

The actual study is filled with it’s own problems such as ignoring land covered by water etc, but that’s largely irrelevant here. However the real issue is it’s looking at land use around cities which are rarely independent. The area around London for example isn’t a single city it’s a cluster of different cities of various densities that all bleed into each other. Is to use a US example is Patterson part of NYC? How about Stamford and or Newark? If not where exactly do you place the borders between each of them?

Looking at population in the heart of NYC vs the surrounding areas over time and they are fairly independent.

[TaylorAlexander]

That’s fair. I didn’t remember the study properly.