The Dense States of America (Map)

[Sindisil]

Not that anyone cares, but I don't want to live that way. I certainly understand how many love the urban life, I just prefer suburbia, thanks.

That being said, a more relevant question is what the societal effects would be. My first question is how this would affect crime rates. A quick search seems to indicate that crime rate may go up with population density, though other factors are, of course, more highly correlated (such as poverty).

Some of those other factors also correlate highly with high density areas. No clue what the causative links are ... could be that density has no effect, or even reduces crime rate, I suppose - I'm way to lazy to research it for ta quick hn comment!

I do know that being too close to too many other people makes me think about perpetrating violent crime, though! ;)

[sliverstorm]

Is that crime rate per capita?

[sp332]

To contrast with the current state of the, uh, State of New Hampshire, we are currently 83% covered in trees. And that's the way we like it :-)

[houseabsolute]

Let's just be sure to put the waste processing and power plants over in Maine, OK?

[DougWebb]

I live in a dense part of NJ, around 7000 inh/mi2. But I've got a single family home with a nice yard, and many of my neighbors have even more space than I do. We've got lots of trees and open spaces too. At this density we'd need 5 New Hampshires, but that's still not much and it would provide a much higher quality of life than packing in at 35000 inh/mi2.

[hernan7]

Reminded me of that article by P.J. O'Rourke where he compared Santa Clara County (I think) to Bangladesh. Both have the same population density...

[sophacles]

I'm sure this is doable. Better still would be to create a few population centers of this density but slightly smaller. say 9 of them, 33x33. This would allow for redundancy of civilization (in case of disaster and whatnot). It also would allow better access to the appropriate resources (which is frequently a major motivator in which cities are successful). It still reduces the number of transport corridors, so trains an such become viable.

The problem comes for people like me: I enjoy my small city experience. I live a short walk from downtown, but have a house w/ yard (and a big garden), and a garage/workshop (mostly workshop as I don't actually have a car). Such space uses are unrealistic as density goes up.

[adi92]

Somebody could nuke that small area and effectively kill of the entire country..

[lmkg]

Screw the man-made disasters, just think of how fast diseases would spread. IIRC, dense population centers were one of the contributing factors to the bubonic plague.

[DougWebb]

NH is pretty big compared to the effective range of a nuke. A typical nuke in the middle of NYC wouldn't even destroy all of Manhattan, let alone kill everyone in NY. It would take a lot of nukes to carpet-bomb all of NH.

[Groxx]

I don't want to live in Brooklyn, though.

This ignores that a larger area with similar population density would require much more robust transportation systems than currently exists in, oh, the world. Have a happy mental visualization:

Take every car in America on the road right now. Divide by, say, 100, assuming that most are driving ~ 1 hour, and the new density would make their trips within 6 minutes after such a change, and the transport system fits 10 people into the space of one car.

Now, cram them into New Hampshire. And imagine rush-hour traffic.

[enntwo]

I think you are missing the point. First, the article doesn't care what you want.

Second, it is using the current population density of Brooklyn, and that is with the current transportation infrastructure. If your foreseeable maximum travel distance was 100 miles, none of this would be necessary. It is very unlikely you or 99% of the people would need cars. Transportation would be optimized for mass transit/walking/biking. It would probably feel less crowded than current day brooklyn.

[metamemetics]

another fun fact, the entire world population fits in Texas with the same population density as paris

[javajones]

Ah, but not the same amount of water. That would be horrendous.

[blackguardx]

As a current resident of NYC looking to move away, I think this proposal would have a negative impact on the mental health and well-being of many US citizens.

[electromagnetic]

For comparison, if Canada had a similar population density to England, you would fit its entire population onto the island of Newfoundland (not the province of Newfoundland and Labrador). Interestingly, Newfoundland was intended to be an independent country. This would leave the whole mainland of Canada (the worlds 2nd largest country) devoid of habitation.

[scythe]

It'd be a lot of fun bringing in water, food, and oil, that's for sure.

[bh23ha]

Oil for sure indeed. It's not like you're getting it from your backyard now.

Pretty much the same goes for most of your food too.

Water is the only thing that would get tricky. But large chunks of the northern hemisphere have A LOT of water. Think Seatle, or for that matter, ALL of New England, especially northern New England.

[emarcotte]

Imagine trying to drive a truck load of food/supplies to the center of it. Driving a big rig (or would it be too small for the demand?) through 50 miles of Brooklyn sounds incredibly tedious.

[evgen]

With this sort of density you can use more efficient distribution systems than driving a truck down the street -- dedicated transport tunnels/tubes and a handful of distribution centers would eliminate most surface shipping.

[biotech]

If we filled the entire area of the United States with that population density, we could fit 132.8 billion people!

[jcdreads]

I call not having to live atop one of the mountains in the Presidential Range.

[johnnyg]

Remember in Civ 2 when you'd build two cities right next to each other?

[eru]

Not very advisable. Though a lot of Cities on a grid with one square between them horizontally and vertically was a viable strategy in Civilization (the first part, of course).

[sliverstorm]

This would be ruinous. Yes, it'd be great if we could compact and leave most of America pristine, but that's not what would happen. Leave all that open space and people will expand into it again, except likely as much more dense populations.

This would result in mind bogglingly large population growth, which Earth can't take right now. We need LESS dense populous, not more.

[pyre]

Are you saying that we would have increased population growth if the population was all packed together? By packing together we could do things such as use less electricity by being more efficient (less power loss due to transmission distances, less power used to pump water all over the place, less fuel spent moving all over the place, etc).

[eru]

Doesn't convince me. Any other legs to your argument?

[flogic]

Traditionally people have fewer children when they move into cities.