>>13488445there's currently a rise in urbanists, advocating for density and transit oriented development, they produce accessible and interesting content to provide an entry point into the topic.
You'll often find people shitting on american car-dependent suburbs for several reasons, but essentially it all comes down to density.
The road layout in suburbs is fucked and walking distances can be way longer than they'd have to be.
They often consist of single family homes, which are single story, with a front yard, a back yard, and a garage next to the house. Compared to a 2 story town house with the front door at the curb, they aren't only half the density (from having half as many stories), but even less than that.
Density is important, because the amount shopping areas is more or less proportional to the amount of people they serve, same goes for workplaces.
For example, imagine that per 100 residents you get 1 supermarket. In a single family residential neighborhood, to walk there, you'd have to walk past 100 houses on large plots.
In a town with 4 story residential buildings, you'd have to walk past 25 buildings, on slightly smaller plots even.
Public transit scales not only with the amount of residents, but also requires relatively short walking distances to become viable. Nobody but the poor and desperate would walk 3 miles to a bus stop every morning to get to work.
at certain density breakpoints, better options than buses become available too. trams are cool, so are metros.
Also just because gardens and lawns look green and there are flowers, doesn't mean that you're doing nature much of a favor with them. If your only objective is to leave nature in peace, then cramming all of mankind into a disgusting 9 billion people concrete commie block would be the most environmentally friendly. not that that would be a good idea.
tl;dr density good, walkability good, public transit good. car bad, suburbs bad.
