The solution to urban sprawl

[busker]

Apartment living isn’t popular in the US, but it’s common in many other countries
One of the benefits is that - and this is my rational dictator dream - you can live in tall buildings surrounded by hundreds of square kilometres of greenery. Basically, live in a forest - by cutting out all of that urban sprawl.

To the extent that seeing a tiger on a morning walk would become common

Genetically modified vegetarian who clean up after themselves and use the toilet 

Or a brachiosaurus 

Where would you rather live?

[rayheinrich]

In an apartment in Denmark.

Seeing a Tiger on a walk... probably better to see a vegetarian as Tigers aren't.

U.S. Population lives in: (2020 census):
Fully owned house ≈ 21%
Mortgaged house ≈ 32%
Rented house ≈ 12%
Apt./condos ≈ 23%
Mobile homes, other ≈ 10%

[busker]

In an apartment in Denmark.

Seeing a Tiger on a walk... probably better to see a vegetarian as Tigers aren't.

U.S. Population lives in: (2020 census):
Fully owned house ≈ 21%
Mortgaged house ≈ 32%
Rented house ≈ 12%
Apt./condos ≈ 23%
Mobile homes, other ≈ 10%

What’s the definition of apartment in that statistic? It’s quite a bit higher than I’d throughout
For me, an apartment / a flat is where you have people living above or below you on different floors
If it’s just one level per home, it’s a townhouse

[rayheinrich]

In an apartment in Denmark.

Seeing a Tiger on a walk... probably better to see a vegetarian as Tigers aren't.

U.S. Population lives in: (2020 census):
Fully owned house ≈ 21%
Mortgaged house ≈ 32%
Rented house ≈ 12%
Apt./condos ≈ 23%
Mobile homes, other ≈ 10%

What’s the definition of apartment in that statistic? It’s quite a bit higher than I’d throughout
For me, an apartment / a flat is where you have people living above or below you on different floors
If it’s just one level per home, it’s a townhouse

A U.S. apartment almost always meets your definition.
A U.S. condo meets it most of the time because most condos are apartments.
But strictly speaking a condo is a form of ownership and can be pretty much anything.

[milo]

Apartment living isn’t popular in the US, but it’s common in many other countries
One of the benefits is that - and this is my rational dictator dream - you can live in tall buildings surrounded by hundreds of square kilometres of greenery. Basically, live in a forest - by cutting out all of that urban sprawl.

To the extent that seeing a tiger on a morning walk would become common

Genetically modified vegetarian who clean up after themselves and use the toilet 

Or a brachiosaurus 

Where would you rather live?

The US is so big you can do that with houses

[brynmawr1]

I've never lived in a high-rise type setting.  I would need large windows with a good view of the greenery to make it work with a good sized patio with plants and other nature.  I also have a pretty significant height phobia so that might be a problem.

I do think urban sprawl is a problem that needs to be addressed. It leads to increased energy demands by increasing the distance needed to travel and makes public transportation less convenient.  It also contributes to more water runoff leading to flooding and erosion.  This is only going to worsen with increasing rain amounts as the climate warms.

Although, I am not sure that high-rise living is as cost effective.  Renting doesn't allow for increasing equity and even if the liviing space is purchased, such as in a condo, it is harder to contain costs as HOA fees are often not controlled by the residents of the building.

The US does have an abundance of land, which as kept the average price per square foot nearly constant for decades. something that we have taken for granted.  As usual, too often we've taken the easy path rather than making seemingly costly investments in the present and not having the imagination/foresight to see how these investments would reduce costs in the long run.

[busker]

I've never lived in a high-rise type setting.  I would need large windows with a good view of the greenery to make it work with a good sized patio with plants and other nature.  I also have a pretty significant height phobia so that might be a problem.

I do think urban sprawl is a problem that needs to be addressed. It leads to increased energy demands by increasing the distance needed to travel and makes public transportation less convenient.  It also contributes to more water runoff leading to flooding and erosion.  This is only going to worsen with increasing rain amounts as the climate warms.

Although, I am not sure that high-rise living is as cost effective.  Renting doesn't allow for increasing equity and even if the liviing space is purchased, such as in a condo, it is harder to contain costs as HOA fees are often not controlled by the residents of the building.

The US does have an abundance of land, which as kept the average price per square foot nearly constant for decades. something that we have taken for granted.  As usual, too often we've taken the easy path rather than making seemingly costly investments in the present and not having the imagination/foresight to see how these investments would reduce costs in the long run.

Australia and Canada also have abundant land, but prices have risen substantially faster than incomes
One of the advantages of the US is that there are not 1 or 2, but at least 30 cities where you can have a decently high paying white collar job. Most of the land is fertile, which is a huge advantage

[dukealien]

Speaking for myself, I've lived in government-furnished apartment (quarters), mortgaged mobile home on rented ground, mortgaged house, owned mobile home on rented ground, and (now) owned house.  There's something to be said for each, other than government-furnished quarters.  Mobile homes can be very dense, and very cheap compared to the same area with single-family houses.  Owned house sounds like it would be cheap after the initial investment, but property taxes and homeowner association (HOA) fees can be substantial.  On the other hand, ground rent for mobile homes can rise very rapidly if property taxes do - the landlord passes them through, and the land is assessed for its (high) value if it were built up with single-family houses instead of mobile homes.

Big however:  what, exactly, is wrong "sprawl?"  Traffic, mainly, since as single-family housing expands, the trunk highways will always become inadequate unless they were built crazy-wide at the very beginning... which early, low average population didn't provide the tax base to support.  What made that situation temporarily viable at the beginning in the US was construction of the Interstates (a military project, something we forget) and "urban renewal" which project-ized (or Pruitt-Igoed) near-downtown inexpensive apartments and small/multi-family houses into government-run high-rises so near-downtown beltways could connect up the Interstates.

The thing is, the late highly-lamented Pandemic gave a boot to one potential solution to sprawl:  telecommuting.   The trouble with that is, it only works for what can be phoned in and the AIs - crude as they are now - are going to handle a lot of that.  The Japanese have a system:  home or near-home light industry, where a family makes parts for assembly elsewhere in a shed or with a few others in a local small plant.  3d printing hadn't been invented yet when they came up with that system.  Unless you're building bridges, tanks, or jet planes it's not a bad way to go.

In my opinion (supported by some evidence) most of the arguments against dispersed housing (aka sprawl) are at least somewhat specious.  Plentiful energy from clean, reliable sources (nuclear - especially micro-nuclear - and natural gas) overcomes most of the objections if they were sincere.  I believe a lot of objections to "sprawl" are analogous to forceful anti-smoking partisans:  the worst of those were envious ex-smokers, just as "sprawl" haters envy their countrymen who can still live and work in the country, in affordable single-family houses.  The environmental and other collective objections can all be handled with a modicum of forethought and friendly negotiation (rather than anti-house negation as seen in California).  Sure, smokers endanger their own health, but "secondhand smoke" was always a stretch by people who just hated smokers; same with overpopulation haters who just don't like children around.

One answer to "sprawl" is to actually address its problems (car to outer-ring lots, then train to downtown if there's any reason to go downtown, for example).  The US (and, I think, Canada, Australia, even China) have adequate land for living - though not always enough for food production; in the Chinese "ghost cities" we have an experiment with "new cities" that really did arise, though the effort was nullified by corruption at all levels.  Also triggered by said corruption in the first place, but that's another matter.