[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?