New Geography

> Having children is the best thing in the world. Stop spreading nonsense propaganda. Half the world is below replacement rate (2.1 tfr), and the other half will get there in due time, so perhaps not. Mapped: Every Country by Total Fertility Rate - https://www.visualcapitalist.com/cp/mapped-countries-by-fertility-rate… - December 22nd, 2025 Below Replacement Rate Fertility World-Wide Seems Imminent - https://www.newgeography.com/content/008650-below-replacement-rate-fer… - September 5th, 2025 (regretfulparents sub on reddit had ~110k subs last time I checked: https://subredditstats.com/r/regretfulparents ; help yourself to some ground truth)

No. Congestion, pollution, accident, and climate change externalities add up to about $0.10 per passenger mile: https://media.rff.org/archive/files/sharepoint/WorkImages/Download/RFF… (p. 14). That's vastly more than the $0.01-0.02 direct subsidy for cars from road construction/maintenance, but much lower than the $0.87-0.90 per mile subsidy for transit: https://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=15144; https://www.newgeography.com/content/005596-reason-1-end-transit-subsi… And of course--those pollution externalities can be greatly reduced by switching to electric cars.

I don't know where you're getting your information, but US real estate rents and prices are low by developed economy standards. Here is a link: http://www.newgeography.com/content/006201-15th-annual-demographia-int… "The most affordable major housing markets are in the United States, with a moderately unaffordable Median Multiple of 3.9, followed by Canada (4.3) and Singapore (4.6). Ireland and the United Kingdom both have Median Multiples of 4.8. The major markets of Australia (6.9), New Zealand (9.0) and China (20.9) are severely unaffordable (Table ES-2)."

I believe that comment is supposed to be an allusion to the following: A Scandinavian economist once stated to Milton Friedman: "In Scandinavia we have no poverty." Milton Friedman replied, "That's interesting, because in America among Scandinavians, we have no poverty either." Indeed, the poverty rate for Americans with Swedish ancestry is only 6.7%, half the U.S average. Economists Geranda Notten and Chris de Neubourg have calculated the poverty rate in Sweden using the American poverty threshold, finding it to be an identical 6.7%. (Quoting from http://www.newgeography.com/content/001543-is-sweden-a-false-utopia )

On one hand urban planners tells us density is the future and inevitable for American cities to not fall behind and . On the other hand the fastest growing cities in the US are the low density type: Houston, Raleigh, Phoenix, etc. Cheap housing and easy growth, and new vehicle technologies (hybrid, electric) are challenging the transit energy advantage. Most cities have a hard time building new housing and becoming more dense after a certain stage (SF) and a large proportion of the lower-class workers starts to commute as they are priced out of their workplace. http://www.newgeography.com/content/003629-houston-rising-why-next-gre… The author has his biases, but offers a different perspective from the mainstream.

What about mobility. If a person loses their job, in the U.S. it is easy to move. With the number of people that have left California to other states with lower costs of living, or going to counties with lower costs these things are not easily gathered. http://www.newgeography.com/content/001925-if-california-is-doing-so-g…

Yes, I was only stating facts, and I really want to point out that if we want to understand what the world will be like in the near future, we have to understand what rapid urbanization and "mega cities" will entail - massive urban populations living in slums (chabolas or favelas, there are several terms). Usually in these areas I just cite United Nations estimates - here are the facts from the UN: http://www.unfpa.org/pds/urbanization.htm If you want more info regarding "mega cities" and "mega slums", look here: http://www.itt.com/waterbook/page80.pdf For people who want to know the other "downside" of this massive urbanization, then here's a GREAT link to an article. This website also a ton of forward-thinking articles about economic trends with larger implications: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002170-the-problem-with-megacities

That's a fairly bold claim to say that I oppose making any change for the better lol... anyway.. Having grown up in both rural and urban areas, and having seen many articles like this one, they tend to (more often then not) read like this: "I know what's best for everyone, and if only these rural hicks would just let us do what's best for them everything would be perfect". That's mostly where my frustration lies - not with weather or not some town has a sidewalk or not. > Look around you at your cities. Is this the best it could possibly get? As someone who has spent significant time in parts of Minnesota very near to Northfield... yes. I genuinely think these places are as close to the "best it could possibly get" as is realistic to achieve. This is based on my experiences and my preferences having lived in these places. Your opinion seems to differ from that, which is why you seem to think that these places are in need of being changed - but do you even live in a place like the one in question? > Why, then, do you (and others) feel so ideologically opposed to making some amount of change? Because it is not at all obvious that these are actually improvements for the people who actually live there. As I tried (and maybe failed) to convey, places like Northfield, MN were designed for cars - nearly everyone (~98%) who lives in Minneapolis has a car [1] and would use their car to get to the Allina clinic in question. Even if this was an excessively pedestrian friendly…

shorter workweeks, while perfectly possible according to a classic https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/ are generally used to force people in cities with hybrid works model instead of full remote. So I claim arrogantly that such proposals and experiments are ultimately AGAINST the declaimed "green goals" IF such goals are green in the sense of spring grass, not in the sense of the dollars dominant color. Private jets since they are a little minority does not count except for PR/emotions (no, I do not have one). BTW I observe always in "spring grass" green sense that living in dense cities is the most polluting way to live we have. Oh, yes, formally a new high rise building need less energy to heat/cool than an equivalent number of single family homes and being "near" demand less energy for personal daily trips BUT that's not the big picture. Single family homes can be rebuilt "frequently", for instance at a generational change (inheritance, and so on, let's say after 50 years) and the ability to to far shorter personal trips means the need of a much big infra to supply dense zones in food and water. The "TCO" is far higher for high density than for moderate-low density. A classic (well, not ideal but...) study http://www.newgeography.com/content/006840-high-density-and-sustainabi… as a sample. Oh, and of course a single family home can have p.v. (it it's meaningful where it exists), charge a BEV at home and so on, I do have them now, I couldn't have…

There ARE some great suggestions in the article, namely underground parking, roundabouts instead of stop lights, and banning street parking. Now, to YOUR points: "Mass transit": Shared and claustrophobic space with other travelers. "Biking lanes": Requires exposure to the elements. Depending on where you live this is already a non-starter if you don't want to arrive at your destination drenched in sweat. "electro-scooters": I've been on one of these in Vietnam. Doesn't carry 2 adults well and has the same weather problems as the peddle-powered version. "Elevated footpaths": I live in an urban conglomerate in Asia with ~1.1 million people. A typical day of running errands can easily rack up ~50+km of driving because of the distances between either people I know or businesses carrying niche products. There's no way in Hell I'm covering that ground on foot, in 34deg C weather with 90% humidity. The city in the article is (1) miniscule at ~85,000 people and 15-20km across at its widest and (2) possesses a pretty mild climate. All of the transportation assets you propose as "solutions" are fine....if you live in California or a similar "Mediterranean climate". Most humans don't. "But privately owned gasoline-guzzlers are an archaic solution to the transportation problem, and they are not effective in today's society." Why so quick to jump to sweeping, society-altering prognostications based on conclusions which you yourself recognize as applicable to a small-scale and…

I don't think it's wild Silicon Valley chatter to say that public transportation along fixed routes WILL decline as a result of new technology, and this is a great thing. Fixed-route 19th-20th century public transportation networks are inefficient because most of the vehicles are pretty empty most of the time. This makes these systems expensive on a passenger-per-seat-mile basis. Not to mention the colossal waste of people's time spent trying to accommodate their journeys to those fixed routes (and schedules). Example: LA's Metro system is subsidized to the tune of about 50 cents per passenger seat/mile, or was as of 2009 (http://www.newgeography.com/content/002361-los-angeles-metro-bus-syste… In 10-15 years, transport companies like Lyft/Uber/Didi will be able to offer municipalities a much better deal than that. An electric car or van without a driver in it, with an operating lifetime of a million miles, will cost on the order of 20-40 cents a mile to run. Get 3-8 paying customers into the vehicle, and there is absolutely no need for a 50 cent per passenger seat mile subsidy.

The USA is not Japan. Others have already pointed out that our geography is different. But that might not even be the real problem. I am a fan of trains, but I live in Arlington, Massachusetts, which is not on Boston's rail-transit network, even though the Red Line subway terminates within half a mile of our town line, with a conspicuously available right-of-way leading straight from there to our town center. Isn't that odd? I was sad to learn that Arlington used to have streetcars. They went through town and extended at least three towns further out. They were torn out in 1955. I was even sadder to learn that a Red Line train station in Arlington was explicitly planned back in the 1980s, but... That plan had been supported by the Town of Lexington, but was scuttled by fierce anti-urban sentiment in parts of Arlington. This quote from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Line_(MBTA) ) matches what I've heard from local residents, though it's a bit more diplomatically phrased. So I've got a hypothesis: The USA's once-excellent rail network was deliberately taken apart in response to (ahem) "fierce anti-urban sentiment", a political force that remains strong. Consider this article from last week: http://www.newgeography.com/content/004788-voting-with-your-feet-aaron… The most recent “solution” was for the city of Lancaster to propose shutting down its MetroLink rail station in order to prevent lower income people from traveling in from other…

They don’t contribute, as they are all below replacement rate. https://www.newgeography.com/content/007550-total-fertility-rate-metro… Probably true worldwide except maybe Africa and Middle East.

The other way to look at subsidies for transport is per passenger mile : This has data for the US. https://www.newgeography.com/content/006415-transport-costs-subsidies-…

As I posted below, here are the natural growth rates: Look at the figures: https://www.newgeography.com/content/007550-total-fertility-.... SF: 1.49 SJ: 1.59 That's not growth, it's decline.

I’m seeing a density of 2,419 per sq km for SF urban core at https://www.newgeography.com/content/007367-toronto-solidifies-highest… and that beats New York at 2,054 people per sq km. Probably has something to do with how the urban core is defined and NYC sprawl, but still interesting…

Tokyo: In 2007, _65_percent_ of trips within a 50 mile radius were by mass transit. Overall transit usage is [...] approximately double that of all combined usage in the United States and nearly 10 times that of Paris [http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urban-form-tok…

If it's at all useful, here are some charts from the census data. [1] No idea how accurate the census is. I would expect tax data to be more accurate. Probably more interesting would be 2020-2021. [1] - https://www.newgeography.com/content/006891-california-loses-70000-res…

The intention of the zoning reform linked to here is increasing density in existing low-density areas. Here's (only) one example of analysis of the density<->housing affordability relationship. Spoiler alert: density always increases housing costs in the long run. https://www.newgeography.com/content/005183-what-price-urban-density There has never been a city in the US that has made housing more affordable by increasing density or legislating affordable housing. The 'why' of that is complex.

Yeah that's a good way to make everyone just skip your whole province. Just like how all the big headquarter offices moved to Toronto from Montreal in the 1970s, Quebec keeps shooting themselves in the foot. This chart shows everything you need to know: http://www.newgeography.com/files/cox-toronto-evolve-1.png By all means they should be the dominant city in Canada instead of Toronto, or at least equal. But they are so obsessed with mirroring France's obsession with rules. Canada almost always ranks near the top of the Economic Freedom Indexes (higher than the US), while France is in the middle ranking below most post-soviet eastern European nation states. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom

The data you linked is for the entire Tokyo metropolitan area. The trend is that people are moving out of rural areas and into the urban core. It would be more appropriate to look at the central part of Tokyo, the 23 wards (former city of Tokyo): http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urban-form-tok… From 1990 to 2010 (latest year in data), the population grew 9.6%. In the same time period, SF's population grew 11.3%: http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-counties/ca/san-francisco-county-p… Not a big difference if you ask me. Yet SF prices have skyrocketed. Tokyo may require citizenship to buy, but that doesn't mean foreigners can't rent. Rent prices in central Tokyo often start at around $1500/month, which is a lot less than that of SF bay area suburbs.

I wouldn't bet against it, 50 billion in 1500 would be about 50% of the GDP of the largest economy of the time (China). It's Apollo program funding level. http://www.newgeography.com/content/005050-500-years-gdp-a-tale-two-co…

Tokyo’s population has grown in every census since 1955. http://www.newgeography.com/content/002923-the-evolving-urban-form-tok…

That first map is misleading because it tops out at 530/square mile, which on an absolute scale is not very dense at all. For comparison, Tokyo metro houses 37 million people at 11,300/square mile. NY/NJ/CT has 20 million people at 4,500/square mile. The nine Bay Area counties have a mean density of 1100/square mile. http://www.newgeography.com/content/002808-world-urban-areas-populatio… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Bay_Area

"purely" is pretty strong. I give you the population density of Earth per ㎢: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_density#/media/File:World_pop… (Or if you prefer something more recent, have a look at: http://www.newgeography.com/content/002808-world-urban-areas-populatio… Pretty obvious which areas are ripe for HSR. Except for the mid-Atlantic corridor and arguably coastal California, nothing in the US really is. It's the same thing when people go abroad then come back and complain how backwards cell phone service is here. People really don't appreciate how underpopulated the U.S. is relative to the rest of the world. (Conversely, it's also why we could accommodate practically an unlimited # of refugees compared to Europe, if we really cared to.)

> How do people who are not software engineers, manage? With great difficulty [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. [1] http://www.newgeography.com/content/005501-the-demographics-poverty-sa… [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/11/03/east-palo-alto-philanth… [3] http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valleys-prosperity-paradox-expl… [4] http://www.cnn.com/interactive/2015/03/opinion/ctl-child-poverty/#0 [5] https://newrepublic.com/article/124476/dispossessed-land-dreams [6] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/02/the-place-where-t… [7] https://www.thenation.com/article/bridging-silicon-valleys-wealth-gap/ [8] http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/25/news/economy/middle-class-silicon-vall…

Yes, and the suburbs are dying: https://www.amazon.com/End-Suburbs-Where-American-Moving/dp/1591846978… Except, of course, that they aren't: http://www.newgeography.com/content/005610-d-j-vu-and-dilemma-planners

"Figure 1 [0] shows California’s Department of Finance’s (DOF) estimate of domestic migration, migration between California and other states. According to the DOF, California’s domestic migration has been negative in 18 of the past 20 years." [0] http://www.newgeography.com/content/003584-california-a-world-hurt Also, see http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/article32679753.html

And this http://www.newgeography.com/content/004781-urbanists-need-face-full-im…

I don't know how you think that school systems, especially in the west, place more emphasis on "how" than "why". Western schools most definitely place their emphasis on "understanding" rather than "doing". I think that all this does it create a false sense of understanding. Students think they understand why something is done, then when they go to do an actual problem they are totally lost. I think this is a big reason why american students rate themselves as being very confident in their understanding, but performing rather poorly compared to other nations. I'll have to look for the citation to back that up. Just my 2cents. edit: http://www.newgeography.com/content/003840-high-confidence-not-transla… there were other more recent surveys on this topic, this is all i can find right now