Andrew D Atkin:
You believe that sprawl is bad. You believe that cars are bad. You believe that public transport is good, or better. You believe that urban rail is efficient. You believe that compact cities are good, or better. You believe there's not enough land. You believe it's natural for house prices to just keep going up, and UP. And you believe that people who wear the environmental badge are, surely, always the good guys?
Well reader, it is and long has been all bullshit. Please read on.
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The only images we ever seem to get presented to the general public of the dreaded SPRAAAAAWL are the ones designed to make sprawl look like an environmental apocalypse, whereby sprawl is supposed to seem like something engineered by the devil himself. But what we are never told by the modern planning saints (who are here to do God's work and force us all into high-density apartments - er, excluding themselves) is that urbanisation in New Zealand is a mere 1 part in 150 of the land area. And globally, maybe less than 1 part in 100.
But the truth is sprawl is not only environmentally benign, it can be environmentally beneficial. The following image gives a simple way of demonstrating my point. We can call it "Green Sprawl". It's drawn (barbarically) to make the point of how green-sprawl property development could work. There is of course no end to the different possible styles of development, but the image gives you the core theme anyway.
Imagine housing development that sprawls out more like a spider-web than a concentrated cluster; covering huge areas, if you like. Everyone's back yard extends out to a forest (well it would certainly look and feel that way), with all kinds of plants and trees all around you. Yet strategically planted so residence can still have the sun on their porches. Imagine all you can hear is the wind and natural sounds, because the transport system supporting your development is near-silent and electric. And your privacy, as you might want it, is almost total.
Efficiency:
The transport system can be exceptionally efficient because there's no stop-and-go operation from using largely one-way flow-off/on infrastructure, and it can use fully automated cars. Most of the cars can be for single occupancy only (if it's network-based - it would be). Also, it can be mostly run on solar to keep people happy who believe in problematic AGW.
If power-supply for houses is a little more costly because the development's are so spread out, then all you have to do is fairly step-up the price. In response to this, people can (and will) do things like install good insulation, use pressure-cookers for food, employ ground-based heat-pumps, LED lighting, and a bit of clever technology with showering systems etc. All these things can more than eliminate this concern.
Worried about pipelines? People can turn their human waste into fertiliser if need be, and catch their water off the roof. Especially in water-rich countries like New Zealand.
So no problem. Rational price pressures will naturally drive housing and lifestyle design, and with good environmental effect. Great, super ecologically-sound resort-style living.
Distance efficiency:
Imagine I got a typical city, say Christchurch, New Zealand, and stretched it out like a piece of chewing gum to cover 4x the area (and filled in the difference with plants)...
The effect of this would be that you double the distances between the stops, because area increases by the square of the distance. So how would that affect the fuel bill and travel time? Maybe an increase of just ~20% because cruising a little longer between the stops means little in a typical urban environment, in terms of transport costs. Most of the time and energy revolves around having to constantly re-accelerate your vehicle - stop-and-go is the curse of transport inefficiency in an urban environment. This is part of the reason why low-density cities are typically just as -and if not more- efficient in terms of transport costs than typical high-density cities.
Another factor comes from the fact that when cities sprawl out, key services follow them. So new transport demand becomes largely localised to the fringes, likewise resisting the development of severe congestion in a growing city so typical of high-density cities.
The "tyranny of distance" is further numbed with the potentials of telecommuting, and full-automation transport technology (as previously commented on). In particular, with full-automation there is the opportunity for unmanned 'micro-cars' than can conveniently post any given item to your door, from the moment you make your order. This is coming. So how much of a problem will travel be when you don't have to travel at all?
As you can see, reader, we can well afford to spread out - even dramatically.
What if?
Now imagine if the entire world embraced Green Sprawl, similar to how I have described it, and eventually covered not 1% but more like 10% of the entire earths surface with spider-web style property development*. Would this be the end of the world?...you know, the hideous blight of the evil homo sapien who, unlike all other animals, has no business living with nature and should just damn well get back in his zoo? Nope. The opposite. In fact from an environmental outlook I would say that the more we spread out the better.
The environment enjoyed and loved by people, directly, is the environment that will surely be most well defended. And especially with respect to the people who are lucky enough to grow up in it. Indeed, look at how people so consistently say "Not in my back yard!" when someone tries to build a home in their leafy view.
Conclusion:
So why not? I mean how on earth can we justify forcing people out of nature and into a "human zoo" against their will? Is it not so wrong that only the rich should be able to do what humans have done since the beginning of time, and live amongst the greenery? And to say - did you know that astronauts in space stations begin to suffer from serious depression when they don't get to work on the plant experiments? The need for greenery is in our genes!
One rationalisation I have come across, to justify killing the sprawl option, is the [erroneous] claim that humans are more productive when forced to live like battery chickens. Shall I decode the reasoning for you? "We planners hereby declare that we have the right to relate to the people's of our city as though they are our personal resource, and we therefore choose to force-create the conditions that will drive OUR people to work harder and likewise produce more".
This kind of reasoning literally moves in the direction of slavery. This is the sort of thing that happens when people get lost in their political positions, and begin to interpret their power as entitlement rather than responsibility.
To take a more detailed look at the twisted reasoning behind forcing people out of the greenery, and into the concrete, see here.
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*Massive green cities, from green sprawl, would actually be the among the most biodiverse and life-dense places on earth, second only to the coral reefs and rain forests. True environmentalists (not people-hating communists dressed in green drag) should love it.
