Rita Proves The Current Population Density Is Unsustainable & Unsafe

[KittyWampus]

The Current Population Density Of Our Cities Is Simply Unsustainable & Unsafe-

The past two major hurricanes demonstrate that cities have too many people in them.

The fire marshall dictates how many people my family's business can have in the dining room.

We are required to post a sign with the maximum capacity on it. The reason for this is only x amount of people can get out of a room safely in an emergency.

Why aren't cities held to the same standards?

Not only can over x amount of people not evacuate in an emergency... the city can't handle its own waste let alone feed itself.

American cities need to depopulate and the less populous states need to begin the process of expanding to accept a more diverse population.

[skooooo]

1. Uh..but it's only cities on the coast...

This isn't affecting Chicago or New York even.

[KittyWampus]

2. and if a dirty bomb goes of in Chicago?

[skooooo]

3. I think you have to have populated centers...

...just no way around it. A dirty bomb isn't going to affect that many people, chances are. It may cause a lot of panic, but from what I've heard, they wouldn't pose a health risk to large numbers of people.

[KittyWampus]

14. perhaps there's a happy medium we haven't attempted to find yet?

but you're right about the need for populated, urban centers. IMO, just not such crowded ones.

[xray s]

4. In the gulf coast at least.

If this hurricane season is the new definition of a "normal", with two or three Cat 4 to 5 storms a year, you will see the gulf coast depopulated in short order.

That would be a tremendous decrease in national real estate value, and greatly strain the economies of the regions that try to absorb these people who have had their homes, life savings and jobs wiped out.

Plus our energy production would be devestated.

We are in for a shit storm like no shit storm you have ever seen.

[Taxloss]

5. That would result in ecological catastrophe.

To maintain civilisation at the level America is used to at even lower densities - and your cities are among the lowest densities in the world - would require colossal expenditure of resources. Suburbia is already killing the planet.

[Lars39]

6. Actually it proves that our public transportation is not up to the task.

[DBoon]

7. and none of the rest of our public infrastructure

medical, communications, water and sewer, flood control, the whole list.

It's not the population density so much as the fact Americans think they can have cities without the community infrastructure that can make them resilient.

[Lars39]

11. Agreed.

[GreenPartyVoter]

8. Yes. Damn Raygun for ixnaying those highspeed trains

[htuttle]

9. We need higher density population centers

But we also need mass transit. With energy becoming more precious, we aren't going to be able to afford transporting humans 40 miles each way every day for work (plus another couple 20 mile round trips for shopping, etc...)

And it might be a bad idea to build anywhere on the coasts. Leave them as natural wetlands, and we'll have less flooding inland.

It's not the size of our cities that are the problem. It's the lack of mass transportation infrastructure that's the problem.

[KittyWampus]

16. the question isn't NO dense population centers... just LESS dense than

is currently the norm in many urban centers.

[Sanity Claws]

18. Still don't agree.

Galveston and Houston are not dense by east coast standards or European standards.

[enid602]

10. excellent topic

Many of our midwestern and interior states are suffering from population losses. Just as planting protective tree barriers became commonplace after the Dust Bowl, perhaps we should reconsider land use in the Gulf region as well.

[Sanity Claws]

12. You need density to have decent public transit

Decent public transit is how we can cut back on greenhouse emissions and stop global warming. Global warming appears to be the reason we are having these disastrous hurricanes.

[KittyWampus]

17. but wouldn't spreading out the density help more rural areas that don't

currently have the tax base to afford decent transit?

And it would ease congestion and traffic flow in very densely populated urban centers.

[Tace]

13. Here's A Good One -- Imagine A Category 5 Hits Long Island New York

And the millions of people who live on Long Island are trying to evacuate through New York City (the only way to drive off Long Island), at the same time everyone in New York City is trying to evacuate Upstate, to Jersey and Connecticut. It would be nuts.

On edit: NYC does have the best public transportation in the country. That could help. But most Long Islanders would be trying to drive out in their SUVs.

[hardrainfallin]

15. I don't think it's the people that are the problem--it's the cars!

If we had decent mass transit systems, this situation would be a lot more managable.

How many of those cars only have one person in them, anyone checked that stat?

Seems to me, all around, what these storms SHOULD be teaching us is that we need to get a serious grip on our addiction to oil, and part of that includes figuring out what more densely populated areas of the "industrialized" world has long since figured out: mass transit is a must.