Densification is central to climate action dogma but I wonder how necessary it really is.
Perhaps it is to low-energy urbanism what hub-and-spoke was assumed to be for airlines before Southwest showed a different way could work.
Conversation
Most of the benefits are block level not agglomeration level. In per capita energy density terms a few blocks of 4-5 story buildings around a Whole Foods and trader joe is probably as good as a metro area high-rise. Don’t need bloody symphonies and football teams everywhere.
7
1
13
Yeah, don't like them. I'm very suspicious of trad fetishism. If there's good in those chesterton fences, I'd rather recover them from first principles in a world where modern construction and architecture aren't dismissed out of hand as non-fractal profanity.
Sure, that would be great. But many things just can’t, or can’t practically, be derived from first principles- e.g. medicine, or many forms of art. Judging by modern building styles from the past few decades, good architecture could also be one.
1
Yep, that's the dogma in the christopher alexander world, and it's a good serious/strong case. It's just not the whole story. It's ludicrous to conclude that a society that can build the Burj Khalifa etc is somehow entirely impoverished of architectural imagination and knowledge
1
Show replies

