Cities are much more energy efficient than anything else with the same standard of living.

Perhaps that we do not need the same standard of living

Sure, you give up your fridge and your washing machine first and I'll do it next.

What's that? Silence?

I do not use a washing machine, but that's not the point. Do I need to have some sort of primitive lifestyle to dare say a lot of what we have shouldn't be a guarantee? Don't understand why you need to get aggressive.

I didn't even mention these which are likely far from the priority or realistic, what about one day shipping?

Sorry cities are much more efficient than any other form of human living [0]. It is suburbs and rural sprawl that creates the energy waste. Population drift towards the latter may cause the hollowing of cities which lead to crime and transport inefficiency.

[0] https://theconversation.com/suburban-living-the-worst-for-ca...

"Cities are more efficient, suburbs and rural sprawl are inefficient and bad" depends on: A: the design of the suburb B: the underlying economy they're built in C: cultural factors.

When the US contained major manufacturing, it was efficient to have large suburban sprawl - you could build spread out industrial hubs on the outskirts of town.

When the cities were not safe, it did not matter what you said - people left.

"Efficiency" is not a magic word, it has to apply to a particular resource, and does have to consider all costs. Cities are in fact, more efficient in terms of transit costs (of all types).

It doesn't matter if you use half as much energy per capita if the thing you created results in 50x more people. When I say destroy the cities I mean to include the populations in them. Through policy you make their lives so miserable that they are not replaced generationally. A similar thing was done to rural areas, their people were systematically destroyed through policy.

Most of the people on HN seem to be city-dwelling pro centralization and centralized control. It seems to be jarring for them to see their own policies of openly promoting the destruction of others lives and way of living directed back at them.

> When I say destroy the cities I mean to include the populations in them

Pol pot? Is that you?

> It seems to be jarring for them to see their own policies of openly promoting the destruction of others lives

Says someone who just proposed mass extermination of billions of people?

I explicitly stated we'd create government policies which would result in cratering their population just like we did in rural areas. Are you imagining rural areas in the US were "mass exterminated?"

"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."

a.k.a. please don't feed the trolls

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't know what battle you're trying to fight but HN is not the place for it. The flamebait you repeatedly posted in this thread was beyond the pale. If you keep posting this sort of comment, we'll end up having to ban you. We've had to warn you about this kind of thing many times before:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27030092 (May 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27030081 (May 2021)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25573631 (Dec 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24145979 (Aug 2020)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17274402 (June 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16938001 (April 2018)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16737173 (April 2018)

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

Do you realize that the denser something is, the more efficient it is? Same is true of transistors and cities, and for the same reason: space unused is wasted.

Space unused by humans is not wasted. When I say destroy the cities I mean destroy the populations in them too, exactly the same way rural towns were destroyed. You just systematically dismantle them through policy and over time the people die off. There's a brief period of them living in miserable poverty, but I don't care any more about them than they cared about rural people they destroyed.

It may be true that city life is more efficient per capita, but the total population increase overcomes those efficiencies.

If you think their lives are resource and energy efficient now, wait until they don't even exist anymore.

Okay so you're just advocating for mass murder...

I don't think there's a productive conversation here anymore, clearly you have some personal vendetta against cities based on some rural experiences you've had.

Are you imagining rural towns were the victims of mass murder?

People talk about the goal of destroying rural and suburban life through policy all the time. If you found it jarring for someone to openly advocate for the destruction of your way of living, maybe take that into consideration.

What policies "destroy[ed] rural and suburban life?" Do you think people moved away from rural areas into cities because of some policy to destroy them, rather than wanting to find work through jobs located in cities? Without specific examples I really find it difficult to understand your philosophy.

> If you found it jarring for someone to openly promote the destruction of your way of living, maybe take that into consideration.

No because you are advocating for an equivalence which, to my knowledge, does not exist.

Dismantle public transportation, create trade policy which destroys their jobs, force their children into schools which promote lifestyles they abhor and promote childlessness, subsidize voluntary sterilization and market it to the kids in the schools, etc. These are all corollaries to what was done in rural areas.

How could you possibly imagine the average city resident uses more energy when dwellings are smaller, newer on average (more energy efficient), and residents are less likely to own a car?

Doesn't matter if they use half as much energy per capita if there's 50x as many of them.