Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Probably Los Angeles is the big one that comes to mind. It is a sprawling Goliath, reaching out its urban sprawling tentacles 60 miles or more in all directions from its core (obviously including all adjacent municipalities). That is a span of 120 miles or more in some cases, of continued, contiguous development. Could LA densify this land is the big question? I think the living standards would have to change first. Water use per capita would have to be cut drastically. Maybe if the city had more desalination plants.
Phoenix, Las Vegas, and maybe Dallas-Ft. Worth probably have too many people based on their resource requirements too.
From what my sister says Honolulu is another one (Oahu is a small island and accounts for nearly all of Hawaii’s 1.4 million population). Housing is extremely expensive and the island is far too busy all the time (add in tourists too).
Not necessary imo. It's just gonna go from 5-15 million to 10-30 million people.. way too many.
Zero mention of SF Bay Area, where there are literally not enough space no matter how vertical they goes?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prickly Pear
Agree that it’s poor use of infrastructure. Single use zoning in large swathes of land (note how I’m not saying individual parcels) is the fault of this entirely. The I-75 near me has a portion where one direction 8 lanes wide. Outside of the afternoon rush hour a lot of those lanes are crickets. The problem is single-use office zoning in the core and single-use residential in the outskirts. This land or traffic can be freed up or mitigated by putting in transit service or creating mixed use areas throughout and then putting in a counterweight to Downtown and Midtown Atlanta in what would be the Acworth area to distribute commuter traffic flows in both directions making 8 lanes of costly road infrastructure worth their taxpayer salt.
Since trying to duplicate core Atlanta’s influence is wildly unpopular in the exurbs for a variety of reasons from both sides, implementing better transit service that is actually efficient would resolve the issue.
People here are not complaining about other people they are complaining about efficiency. People can live in an area of 20 million and wouldn’t care if A) they can still escape from time to time B) water exits the faucet alright C) commute if they have one is mostly headache free D) can afford where they live and get goods and services they want. The problem with A C D is that good city planning is needed for streamline logistics and efficiency. B is more of an ecological issue. But ACD needs someone central, independent from any particular business sector, to say how can my residents best get groceries, postal service, gas, school, without inducing unnecessary stressors (traffic, sound pollution, etc). The problem is is we have private businesses trying to sway ACD in their favor to earn profit when that’s not the best for people. There has to be a firm line in the sand that says no to that. And the US is too greedy, so no one says no, and we get what we have. Is a lot of unnecessary environmental stressors.
From Acworth it's not really just Atlanta, though. Even heading to Marietta you're going 75S. Sandy Springs / Perimeter Mall Area? 75S (to 285, and that northern arc is congested for a reason). Maybe going to Alpharetta / North Fulton area...but GA-92 gets congested also.
Cobb County does need a transit line, but won't happen as they don't want those certain people "out there".
===============================
As for the original question - SF Bay Area, LA, NYC, and of course Phoenix.
The land area of Phoenix is massive like Houston. That’s the only reason why the city’s population is 1.6 million people. On foot Phoenix doesn’t feel crowded in my opinion. Yes it’s a big city but it doesn’t feel crowded as say Atlanta. In Atlanta you definitely feel like you’re in a larger and more crowded city. For a desert city and for the sake of water resources, then yes Phoenix and its metro area (The Valley if the Sun) is too crowded. Water isn’t an issue in Atlanta. Atlanta is too crowded for the infrastructure which is terrible.
Zero mention of SF Bay Area, where there are literally not enough space no matter how vertical they goes?
Well the Bay Area is extremely NIMBY, we could accommodate a ton more people if there were the political will to make it happen. Homeowners who are looking to sell like it when their house is worth $2 million and anyone who wants to buy just has to deal with it because every other house is also $2 million.
We could upzone the hell out of the Bay Area and double the population while leaving the historic stuff like the Painted Ladies intact, just bulldozing mass-produced early-20th-century crap like this.
Atlanta has way too many people. I can attest to that. The infrastructure is insufficient and overwhelmed on a daily basis. There are many beautiful things about the metro, but it’s difficult to enjoy them when transportation is such a nightmare. I’d rather stay home most days, sad to say. There seems to be no solution either. Just more sprawl.
But maybe I’m part of the problem because I moved here about 2 years ago.
We could upzone the hell out of the Bay Area and double the population while leaving the historic stuff like the Painted Ladies intact, just bulldozing mass-produced early-20th-century crap likethis.
Gawd. Where are the trees or flora? Coming from Seattle, this is just unnatural lol. If you can afford a $1M+ townhouse, you should be able to afford some decent landscaping.
I'll go against the grain on this one, LA isn't full. Sure we need to get people out of the exurbs (Lancaster, Victorville, most of the valley, Inland Empire), but if we did that LA could easily have 15-20 million people. It's quite large with that whole basin. So I would say the main basin is underpopulated (especially OC) while there are too many people on the periphery.
I have to wonder if this thread shouldn't be called "which metro areas do you think have enough cars?"
Do our problems arise from the number of people or the number of cars? If we are able to reduce the number of miles driven per person, then increased population becomes less of a problem.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
