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Population density, when done right, is a great tool to make people happier, give them more opportunities (social, economic, cultural, etc) and reduce their environmental footprint. A big part of it is that you can reduce the amount of pollution caused by transportation and housing, the two biggest resource sinks, with walkable neighborhoods and mass transit, as well as smaller dwellings (but the city becomes your living room and playground, so the actual "living area" can be much larger than for those living in some exurb in a McMansion...).
Design makes all the difference. Central Park is designed such that tens of thousands of people can be in it at once, but you never see more than a score. Nanjing Road in Shanghai is, however, Blade Runner. Or are there only two kinds, Country Mouse and City Mouse?
Original Submission
(Score: 1) by KBentley57 on Friday July 10 2015, @06:46PM
I was mulling over a few thoughts on this topic this morning, and I wanted some opinions. *All thoughts coming from the perspective of someone living in the middle of the USA, having an agriculture background*
When we say "most of the population will live in urban areas", how long has it been, in the frame of modern humans, since we've had a "rural" concept?
The reason I wonder, is that before the times of any modern transportation (rail, auto, plane), I suspect that most communities were fairly close. Even close enough to be considered urban with respect to the population densities that live in a radius R, as compared to the density that lives outside R. I don't think it would have been beneficial to have a population where the majority was not concentrated about some center.
Another thought is that since modern transport, although slow, enabled people to live far from urban areas, we "invented" the rural concept by allowing people to live within a comfortable driving distance to the nearest urban center. Farmers / workers / people in general *could* live outside urban areas, and maintain a lifestyle that wasn't hampered by the distance. It's only by transport that people can live away from medicine, an avenue of sales, ect.. before it becomes discouraged.
All in all, I have thoughts that populations will always follow a Gaussian / Lorentzian distribution about some area. It just seems to be the way nature works.