Comment by cyberax
5 days ago
And all the large developed countries that keep concentrating people into dense cities are now suffering from it.
There's an almost perfect correlation in the Western world between density increases and the rise of inequality (Gini index).
This is a willful blind spot for urbanists. They just pretend to blame everything on "end-stage capitalism" or some such.
Countries don’t “concentrate people into cities”… the people create cities by choosing to live close to each other.
I would dispute that, people move to cities primarily to work and earn more money. Often with the goal of being able to later buy a house in a less dense area that they would struggle to buy otherwise.
That’s the proximal reason, sure, but the density is a big part of what causes cities to have high-paying jobs.
No. People are _forced_ to move into large cities. And people who refuse that are being subjected to ever-increasing economic pressure.
_Choice_ means that there is a viable option to _not_ do it.
And more and more people do not _have_ this option. They have to move into dense cities because it's the only location that has half-decent job options.
I don't have data for Europe, but in the US the gap is growing between people who _want_ to live outside the dense cities and people who do.