City lights from satellite

[Nowhereman1280]

Don't be ridiculous, the world can support massive amounts of people, our technology is rapidly outgrowing the population and the economy will always provide for us, if there is enough demand for food, people will simply find a way to desalinate enough sea water to farm the Sahara. Don't forget that for every bit of sprawl we are seeing there is twice as much urban contraction in industrializing areas of the world where people are doing just the opposite of suburbanites and moving from the country to the city, opening up more land for open space uses. Also, look at the US, we've been actually farming less and less land and producing more and more. The entire east half of the country was farmed at one point in time, before that everything was forest from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, now it is on its way to reverting to forest because we don't even need to farm that land to survive. The earth has plenty of resources, we just need to be smart about how we use them.

Anyhow, I was just going to point out that this map demonstrates that most of the US actually perfectly follows some of the most basic city-size distribution models that economists use to model city distribution. There are medium cities clearly placed almost exactly on a grid with a large city every nearly equal distance. I find that quite amazing.,.

[cwilson]

WOW!!! i never knew there were so many lights in the U.S.

[Spocket]

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280

Don't be ridiculous, the world can support massive amounts of people, our technology is rapidly outgrowing the population and the economy will always provide for us, if there is enough demand for food, people will simply find a way to desalinate enough sea water to farm the Sahara. Don't forget that for every bit of sprawl we are seeing there is twice as much urban contraction in industrializing areas of the world where people are doing just the opposite of suburbanites and moving from the country to the city, opening up more land for open space uses. Also, look at the US, we've been actually farming less and less land and producing more and more. The entire east half of the country was farmed at one point in time, before that everything was forest from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, now it is on its way to reverting to forest because we don't even need to farm that land to survive. The earth has plenty of resources, we just need to be smart about how we use them.

Anyhow, I was just going to point out that this map demonstrates that most of the US actually perfectly follows some of the most basic city-size distribution models that economists use to model city distribution. There are medium cities clearly placed almost exactly on a grid with a large city every nearly equal distance. I find that quite amazing.,.

Uh...how do you figure ? Better yet, just how many people can the Earth support ?

Most scientiest peg the total number of people the world can support comfortably at about 12 billion maximum. It's not just a matter of growing enough wheat or rice but of getting it to where it's needed. That costs money and unless we're planning to subvert the entire world economy we won't be just giving that food away. Also, sure, we could probably desalinate the oceans to provide us with enough water but that would cost more money than anybody is currently willing to spend. Apart from that , the technology , while extant, is hardly perfected.

People are starving to death. Does that constitute "demand for food" in your model ? For some reason though, in spite of their insatiable demand for food, they just aren't getting any. That's odd don't you think ?
And what are you talking about with 'urban contraction' ? Where ? Show this to me. Rising density hasn't been parlayed into the razing of suburban tracts already built anywhere that I'm aware of. In fact, cities are all still growing in land area all across the world. I think it's a safe bet that North America has seen its cities slow down their pace when it comes to gobbling up adjacent areas of otherwise vacant land but that's hardly the same thing as contraction of the urban area.
Don't forget as well that we're not all content to sacrifice every last acre of forest or swamp so it can be farmed. Never mind that it's not just a matter of 'add water - watch it grow'. You need topsoil, fertilizer, equipment, and a lot of hard work. None of this is free and it's not going to become that way in the foreseeable future.

You speak of the US eastern seaboard as a growing forestland reclamation. This may or may not be true but what's not mentioned is the fact that it's not reverting to forest because of some environmental movement. In fact, I'd like to see just what your sources are for this claim. I can believe that there is less land being farmed and there are more trees. I suspect however that it's because former farmland is now home to suburban development. In that case, what was once a wheat field is now somebody's back yard. They planted some trees to make it look pretty but that doesn't make it a forest.

Anyway , we could probably fit another couple billion people in but every person we add takes up just that much more space. Just because they end up living in a highrise doesn't mean that we don't have the same basic problem with their resource usage as we do if they live in a bungalow. I'm hardly an environmentalist (I live in a country with far more of the environment than people to abuse it) but like Chris Rock said "Just because we can do something don't make it a good fuckin' idea. I could probably drive a car with my feet but...."