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this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Have you ever been to other major, population dense cities around the world? Like, Tokyo, Kolkata, Paris or, hell, even NYC? They all have dense housing areas and urban planning. It's very possible to create dense urban design without it becoming a shit hole.
Yeah I lived in NYC for years. It's a complete shithole urban nightmare with no space, no privacy, no quiet, and no way out. It's filthy, decaying, and it smells bad. Density is the problem, not the solution.
NYC has more resources to function than just about anywhere. High tax, both state and city, combined with a massive number of taxpayers. Extremely high road and bridge tolls. Best-case, near-universal ridership of the long-established public transit (and significant rider fees). Very small land area over which to spread its city income.
If they can't maintain a clean and tidy city with the resources they have, the taxation and manpower required is probably not achievable.
I think that unless you have a non-American (e.g. Japanese) community caretaking ethic that comes with other baggage (and can't easily be recreated in American culture), the residents will wear it down and trash it faster than it can be fixed. If you put 10m rats in a proportional land area, they'd kill each other - I don't know why we think it's healthy for human habitation to exist at that level
It's important to reconsider other aspects of urban design as well, though. "lol, just add more people" won't work any better than "lol, just add more cars" did if taken in isolation.
Walkability, public transit, green spaces, close-proximity shopping and services, and so on all need to be considered. Otherwise you end up with exactly what already doesn't work but now with more people.
That's implied when people are talking about proper urban design.
It's extremely dangerous to assume that.