To the extend that people want to live where other people live it’s useful to have a high density.
Flat buildings aren’t optimal for cities even when they are cheap to build.
I wasn’t only referring to wanting to live where there are a lot of people. I was also referring to wanting to live near to very similar/nice people and far from very dissimilar/annoying people. I think the latter, together with the expected ability to scale things down, would make people want to live in smaller, more selected, communities. Even if they were in the middle of nowhere.
People basically want to live where they can find a well-paying job.
In the great leap forward Mao thought that the factories being in cities was simple a coordination problem. He then declared to move them outside of the cities where they were grown organically. It was a disaster.
A big company like Google could theoretically move it’s business headquarters to the middle of nowhere. On the other hand that would likely be a very bad business decision. It’s employees wouldn’t simply want to move to the middle of nowhere.
There are also good reasons why “where they can find a well-paying job” usually coincides with “where there are a lot of people.”
Generally speaking, a person’s salary corresponds to a pretty reasonable estimate of how much good they are doing for society. It’s easier to do more good for more people when more people are around, e.g. a restaurant does more benefit to more people by being close to a lot of people, instead of being in the middle of nowhere. So generally people will get paid more if they have jobs closer to a lot of people.
To the extend that people want to live where other people live it’s useful to have a high density. Flat buildings aren’t optimal for cities even when they are cheap to build.
I wasn’t only referring to wanting to live where there are a lot of people. I was also referring to wanting to live near to very similar/nice people and far from very dissimilar/annoying people. I think the latter, together with the expected ability to scale things down, would make people want to live in smaller, more selected, communities. Even if they were in the middle of nowhere.
People basically want to live where they can find a well-paying job.
In the great leap forward Mao thought that the factories being in cities was simple a coordination problem. He then declared to move them outside of the cities where they were grown organically. It was a disaster.
A big company like Google could theoretically move it’s business headquarters to the middle of nowhere. On the other hand that would likely be a very bad business decision. It’s employees wouldn’t simply want to move to the middle of nowhere.
There are also good reasons why “where they can find a well-paying job” usually coincides with “where there are a lot of people.”
Generally speaking, a person’s salary corresponds to a pretty reasonable estimate of how much good they are doing for society. It’s easier to do more good for more people when more people are around, e.g. a restaurant does more benefit to more people by being close to a lot of people, instead of being in the middle of nowhere. So generally people will get paid more if they have jobs closer to a lot of people.