[morepork]

Having more things certainly is good for GDP. But I don't know about you, but I'm pretty saturated on things already, with a bunch of stuff that I've purchased and barely use.

Perhaps this comes down to a quality of life vs GDP per capita not being identical. While I could use more energy to consume more, I don't have a very strong desire to go much above my current level of consumption.

But outside of the wealthy there is still huge latent demand for energy and what comes with it.

[empiricus]

But does your city have beautiful things? Do people try to create new amazing places? Does your city have working underground transportation? High speed trains? Japanese gardens everywhere? You need an excess of energy for these to be possible.

[chgs]

You need an excess of energy to build a car centric city as it uses far more energy to shift a million people by car than by underground transport or high speed train

Not sure how much energy a garden can use, could you elaborate?