[pochekailov]

It is very good for productivity when many jobs are concentrated in one location.

This unlocks the possibility for serendipitous connections. It is awesome when you can meet a founder, a leading engineer, an investor, a designer and a PR person in a coffee line, forming a new company before finishing your morning coffee.

Talents concentrated in one place gives significant boost to their productivity. This is called a "proximity bonus" in video games; building dependent factories in the nearby slots gives them the productivity boost. This is what US is missing by being nimbyistic.

I think we should return to the 1950s ideas of a futuristic cities and invest in building giant arcologies, where entire Earth population can move if they want to, and where the least paid McFastFood worker would afford to buy a minimum apartment.

[Workaccount2]

China has this in spades, where you can build a (hardware) product and source everything needed from the same city. And not just distributors of those parts, the actual manufacturers are all right there building what you need.

Run out of anything and it's just a 20 minute drive to go grab more from the factory.

[mantas]

Can you really meet them if they're scattered over a multi-million city? I find the opposite. A digestible size (< 500k?) city where everyone-knows-everyone opens more opportunities. While in megapolis multiple bubbles may be doing same thing, but not aware about each other at all.

But even here in just-over-500k city people are already resorting to Zoom calls from one's office/home (or lake-side getaways) over meeting in coffeeshop.

[pochekailov]

I find it easier in the bigger city; but I might be biased as I lived in a big city most of my life.

What I meant is an ability to be within the reach of any other person within an hour.

Using zoom for 3 years now (for obvious reasons) - I find it inferior to the private in-person communication. Problem that you need to schedule a meeting, which adds some formality and is usually harder, while you can have a pleasant chat with even a rich and powerful person while accidentally meeting them in a hall. For scheduling a zoom call, you need to find an excuse. To chat in a hall with someone - you don't need and excuse.

[randomdata]

> What I meant is an ability to be within the reach of any other person within an hour.

Is that all that significant? I live rurally and can be within reach of any other person in two different large cities (along with some smaller ones) within an hour. Under some circumstances, I can be at a shared meeting place in one of those cities before a person who lives in said city can get there. The highway is incredibly efficient.

Moreover, such proximity to the city – but also off the beaten path – seems to make it an attractive place for the rich and famous to have homes. I run into household names at the small town coffeeshop quite regularly.

What is significant, however, is the the city is much more amenable to wealth concentration. That small town coffeeshop might see 100 customers in a day, while a coffeeshop in a dense city can draw on thousands of customers, allowing a coffeeshop empire to be established. The small town coffeeshop will never be able to grow the same way.

[trgn]

> I think we should return to the 1950s ideas of a futuristic cities and invest in building giant arcologies

Ugh, I hope not. The 50s was the most infantile era, completely preoccupied with convenience and efficiency and big things that go wrooar. The vision of the future in the 50s was so cringey.

[pochekailov]

I am proud to be an infantile person, I want a lot of convenience and efficiency, and I want a lot of big, shiny toys.

I think the modern doom and gloom era is very depressing. I am a technocrat and a futuristic optimist.

For me, the modern popular vision of future is not worth living for.

[trgn]

> the modern popular vision of future is not worth living for.

The popular vision for the future is _exactly_ technocratic.

> I am a [...] futuristic optimist

Me too. But 50s era techno-fetishization is not the lever to achieve a better future.

[strikelaserclaw]

I'm not so sure about this, i believe the optimal curve for city population looks like the optimal stress response, after a certain level having more is just detrimental. There should be enough people where opportunities arise but no so much that your mind is too influenced by noise where you can't accurately make good decisions.

[scatters]

If there is such a level, we haven't reached it yet. There are 40 million people in Tokyo; would that city be improved if people left?

[pochekailov]

I totally agree with you. I only think that you should be the one to decide how many is too many opportunities for you, not a bunch of NIMBYists.

[plankers]

Seems humanity is headed towards Asimov's Caves of Steel anyway due to climate collapse, so you'll get your wish.

[pochekailov]

Have more futuristic optimism. We are doing quite well on the climate. We will prevent it once we get fully to solar and then build CO2 scrubbers using solar energy. Energy percentage that come from renewables is more than 10x higher than anticipated 10 years ago.

And don't call it a "collapse": a change is not necessary to the worse, sometimes it is to the better.

[Workaccount2]

I'm a bit less optimistic than that. I think we will be forced to start atmospheric spraying, and hopefully use that bandaid to fix the underlying wound.

In theory it will stop warming, which may cause many people to take that as "Well, looks like we can go back to burning fossil fuels!".

[plankers]

i don't know what to call uncontrollable positive feedback loops in the global temperature if not a "collapse"

[namlem]

High modernist city planning from the 1950s and 60s was a disaster. No, we should go back to the organic cities of the 1910s and 20s, with their mixed-use, medium density streetcar suburbs.

[throwaway290]

You are conflating densely populated cities and areas with high concentration of jobs. They are not the same. And as an aside, SF/SV are not even dense by global standards. You can live in an actually dense city and enjoy your serendipity while working remotely.