>>2550274This is actually true. As cities get denser, people become more isolated, depressed, unmotivated, etc. Humans just don't do well in very dense cities.
However, the OP is 100% correct. Literally every study on the subject confers the same result: Low-density residential and industrial, and agricultural zones, like that typical of the countryside, are exponentially worse for environmental conservation than high-density cities. It's just a fact.
All of the literature on this topic says "you can't develop the countryside, you are going to kill the planet," and "you can't intensify the cities, you are going to drive people to suicide."
Tbh, the "solution" is to stop growing and to strategically redistribute populations in order to strike a balance between preserving what's left of the environment and keeping the citizens of Detroit (or whatever other shithole you can name) from going completely batshit crazy.
But, that strategic solution will never be adopted. Not only are people retardedly attached to their shithole neighbourhoods, but the concept is at odds with a third outside truism in government and planning: "You can't not grow the economy by 2-5% per annum; you must grow and must do so by increasing the population and by importing labour from elsewhere." And that's the only argument that wins anything in governmental policy and municipal planning. You will never convince your corporate owners to forgo growth that favours their bank accounts.
And for that matter, the real reason cities will get denser is not because it's the environmental thing to do. It was the environmental thing to do 100 years ago and all that happened was some parkland got made because nobody wanted it and there'd be hell to pay if we gave it back to the natives. The winning argument, surprise, was the economic argument. It's cheaper to intensify a city than it is to sprawl it. Cities are getting denser not because the environmentalists won, but because the economists won.
