According to a 1993 UN Food and Agriculture Organization report, it takes about 1.25 acres of agriculture land to feed one person. That value doesn't care about whether a person lives in a city or a suburb. The median suburban American lives in a 2.5 person household on 0.2 acres of land, which means about 0.08 acres per person. I'm not sure what the average urbanite lives on, but let's say it's a quarter of that: 0.02 acres per person. So we're talking about 1.33 vs 1.27--suburbanites require only about 4% more land than urbanites. Hardly a major threat to nature compared to excessive and unsustainable agricultural practices.
Yes, but agricultural footprint is the dominating factor.
> And what do you think was there before the farms?
Nature, to my point. Recall that you're the one arguing that suburbs rather than agriculture is threatening nature:
> The enemy of wilderness is not urbanists, it’s suburban sprawl.
Perhaps, but you also need to consider:
- transport to work / school / hospitals / entertainment
- food distribution
- sewage
- electricity
- emergency services coverage
- etc…
I don’t have any hard stats for you but my background reading has suggested these are significant.
> Nature, to my point. Recall that you're the one arguing that suburbs rather than agriculture is threatening nature
Yes, because we could be rewilding, creating new national parks etc. but instead are building suburbs. We can also replace existing suburbs on longer time-scales.