[bluefirebrand]

More people in a smaller area?

Congestion doesn't just refer to car traffic

Edit: think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants. Think community spaces like parks and libraries being packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop and get a coffee without waiting in a long line. Congestion

[Jensson]

> Think community spaces like parks and libraries being packed all the time.

They aren't, with dense housing there is so much room for parks that they are everywhere. I live in such a place, you go out and you mostly hear birds chirping, not people, it is a cheap suburb with high rise apartments next to public transit and everything you need in walkable distance including hospital and government services and hardware stores.

Dense housing means there is more room for everything else, not less, so everything is less crowded. Birds singing outside of my windows is the main noise pollution where I live.

[kazinator]

That's only true if we hold the population constant, and get everyone to scrunch together onto smaller lots built taller.

The main aim of density is to turn cities of a million into cities of ten million, not to just stick with a million and have birds chirping in parks everywhere you go.

[not2b]

No, the aim is to have that one million people occupy a smaller area, so that there's more space for parks, open space, farms, etc.

[kazinator]

Sorry, which density advocacy groups have this nice idea as their literal goal?

Density is the population of a metropolitan area divided by its total area. Not population divided by the footprint area of residential lots. Density advocacy is all about accommodating population influx; it is really burgeoning population advocacy.

[jisaacstone]

Every group I know of that actually advocates for density does have this as their goal. It is a bit odd that the external reputation is that they do not, to the point that parallel orgs sometimes appear advocating for pretty much the same things but "with more emphasis on livability" or similar.

[kazinator]

Really? Is this documented somewhere? What is the typical proposal for how they plan to keep the population constant, after creating all that space? I've not heard of this. It's always about how many more millions of people could live here if we rearranged things.

I've never heard of a density advocacy group being opposed to population growth. Density advocacy is practically synonymous with at least acceptance (if not advocacy) of urban population growth. Population growth is in fact like a sacred cow. You must never blame any urban problems on population growth; the cause is always not enough vertical build.

Is there any example of a density anywhere going on record that the metropolis in this local neck of the woods should somehow say no to more people, rather than building more?

[stefs]

paris proper is already one of the densest areas in the world (and definitely in europe). when i lived there i wouldn't have noticed any problems with crowded grocery stores or community spaces compared to the comparatively low-density city i currently live in.

there definitely were a lot more people in the streets, other cities feel deserted in comparison.

[lostlogin]

> i wouldn't have noticed any problems with crowded grocery stores or community spaces

There are so many of them. Every block seemed to have grocers and a small park.

Where I am it’s a massive supermarket every 5km, not a small one every 200m. You can shop different when it’s less hassle to go.

[bombcar]

Delivery also lets you have more smaller stores carrying the 80% you need regularly, and the 20% that is less common can come via delivery in a day or two.

[brailsafe]

This seems like a fundamentally suburban perspective, and I don't mean that to be an insult, it's just what all of my small home town family members and friends think, and it overwhelmingly and ironically relates to the real traffic congestion they actually experience coupled with the hypothetical imagined congestion they pre-emptively avoid exposure to by driving instead of getting on the train.

Not that there's _no_ foot traffic congestion or lines, but it's the same thing that happens in a case where there's only one Starbucks in a sprawling suburb or business district at lunch time.

A high density area is likewise it's own complex economy and system that seeks balance, when there's too many people in one area, you just go somewhere else or enjoy or compete with it. That's partly why Tokyo is simultaneously the most populated city on earth and one of the most quiet, clean, and least congested places I've visited.

In my sparsely populated city that sprawls, it's extremely noisy, dusty, time consuming to get around, the infrastructure is failing, and I rarely bump into anyone I know, because people are only visible at the beginning and end of their journey. Meanwhile here in Vancouver I often run into people I know multiple times per day because we're in the same spaces, or I can go somewhere else and not see anyone just like any other place.

[mlrtime]

>Tokyo is simultaneously the most populated city on earth and one of the most quiet, clean, and least congested places I've visited.

Sorry, no this is culture. The same virtues exist in Japanese suburbs, nothing to do with a city.

[brailsafe]

"Partly why". It's just an example, I'm sure other cities are more hectic. I didn't get the impression that Japanese suburbs were particularly different than North American ones in terms of volume levels or how uninteresting they are.

It seems to me that it's mainly cars and a scarcity of places to be that make cities horrible and congested. More pollution, more noise, less space.

[rsynnott]

> Edit: think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants. Think community spaces like parks and libraries being packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop and get a coffee without waiting in a long line.

Have you lived (rather than just visited; extremely tourist-oriented areas can be broken in the way you describe, because all of the tourists stay there) in a large dense city? I'm sure there are exceptions (chiefly places with broken zoning/planning) but _in general_, if there's enough traffic for the cafe that people have to wait in long lines, _someone will open a cafe_. To the point where "there are a silly number of cafes" is a complaint people sometimes make about such cities.

Same goes for the rest of it, of course, but "dense cities have insufficient cafe provision" is a particularly bizarre take.

In Dublin (not a massively dense city; it's about a quarter the density of Paris, or a little less than San Francisco), we had an almost complete collapse of construction following the financial crisis, only really resuming around 2014. One interesting consequence of this was _fake cafes_. When you build an apartment block, you probably want to do _something_ with the ground floor, and in urban apartment blocks it'll rarely be used for housing; instead it'll be used for retail units. So if you build the apartment block, and then the next day the construction industry collapses and there's an unfinished site next door for five years, what do you do with the retail units? You don't want them to look derelict, so you put in fake cafes! (Via images on the windows).

Growth has since resumed, the unfinished sites are gone, and the fake cafes have become manifest, adding to the bafflingly large number of cafes in the city.

[wolverine876]

> think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants. Think community spaces like parks and libraries being packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop and get a coffee without waiting in a long line. Congestion

That depends on supply and demand, not simply demand. More people attract, open and staff more shops, etc. It's easier to find a restaurant in a major city than a quiet rural town.

[itronitron]

Mixed use zoning solves that as businesses (grocery stores, cafes, pharmacies, etc.) are able to locate closer to people.

[underlipton]

I would imagine that the answer would be to open more shops. Obviously, to avoid a NYC-like situation, you would have to bust the CRE cartels that keep retail square-footage absurdly expensive. Parks and libraries are harder... though building taller does tend to allow for more open land space.

[globular-toast]

I guess one person's congestion is another person's lively and bustling city?

[verisimi]

> think about crowded grocery stores and restaurants. Think community spaces like parks and libraries being packed all the time. Think about never being able to stop and get a coffee without waiting in a long line.

It also changes behaviour. People are under stress all the time. It's not a nice or natural way to live. But it is easier to govern people.

[rsynnott]

I really think people underestimate how much of this is down to _taste_. Personally I've lived in pretty sparse suburbs of Dublin (by European standards, anyway; think semi-detached houses, as far as the eye can see), in the city centre, and in dense inner suburbs (walking distance to the centre, generally terraced houses and apartment buildings). I wouldn't consider going back to an outer suburb, never mind a rural area. But I know some people who live in the middle of nowhere and love it! Couldn't do it, myself.

[digging]

...This is the state of people living under car-dependency, not dense urbanism supported by public transit and walkable areas. Car noises stress people out, make them irritable, impact their health. Driving in traffic makes people angry/furious/insane (literally - it is not sane to pull a gun on someone driving past you but it happens). Prioritizing parking and roads is a colossal misuse of land which causes crowded public spaces; imagine if every parking lot was an additional market or park.

[verisimi]

But, they are closing roads making them one way etc, that creates the traffic problem. It's bad governance - creating pain to allow government to administer the preordained 'solution' - no cars!

Moving to car less city is the goal, but, as others note, the infrastructure is not there. So you're just pushing cars out... with no real answers being provided.

How is that good government?

And the roads you call mismanagement are already there! Removing them, deteriorating their use is what's new...

[digging]

This has nothing to do with my comment or what I was replying to, which was a comment about crowded public spaces.

[triceratops]

> People are under stress all the time. It's not a nice or natural way to live

You might be thinking of packed slums in a developing country.

> But it is easier to govern people.

Ah yes, like the French, a famously docile people who never, ever rise up against their government.

[orwin]

We just like to be vocal and share our disagreements publicly. It used to force a bit of honesty (it's not working much right now)