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Has anyone been to Tokyo Japan? Or how about Hong Kong? That is how I see many American Cities in the very near future. Hardly a tree to be seen, basically very little open space. Everyone will live in high rise apartments and few people will be able to live with a lawn or even have a car.
In the very near future small towns will be dead as their manufacturing base has died and moved to the Third World. Everyone will be moved into the giant mega Cities. It will be urban from Richmond to Boston. Southern CA will have 40 million people and will look like San Palo Brazil.
Due to the cost of oil, steel and other metals the cost of living will have skyrocketed. Homes will take 65% of people's incomes and all the extra's we are enjoying today will not be affordable.
One of the reasons I do not plan to have children. Our Cities will be a mess.
no way. the trend has been very much in the opposite direction, with large cities accomodating cars by putting garages even in skyscraper condos, and housing space getting bigger in new buildings (in chicago, some buildings of a size that used to be divided as three+ apartments are now sold as single-family homes; otherwise, multiunit buildings are often these fake lofts with lots of useless vertical space that needs to be heated in the winter). and with very few exceptions such as nyc, dense cities have been losing population for some time now (i think even nyc isn't at its pre-ww2 size yet).
the bottom line is that the majority of americans love their cars and space, and our national policies support that. the costs associated with the environmental degradation that comes with such inefficient ways of living accrue to all and not just those who choose to drive the hummer (the costs are an externality, as well as the costs of gas). much of the costs are also basically a lagged effect wherein the consequences of that damage have been happening slowly and will mostly be felt by future generations (global warming). in the meantime, we don't mind being wasteful with this huge resource-rich country and once we (or rather, future generations) have to face the full costs it will be too late.
hong kong and tokyo are both on islands of high population countries. hong kong has mountains to contend with. their verticality is more a product of geographic constraint and being first developed before cars, as in nyc or sf. america is huge. the future is the subdivision, and then extinction.
in short, humans are stupid, short-sighted things that screw everybody by looking out for themselves.
Has anyone been to Tokyo Japan? Or how about Hong Kong? That is how I see many American Cities in the very near future. Hardly a tree to be seen, basically very little open space. Everyone will live in high rise apartments and few people will be able to live with a lawn or even have a car.
In the very near future small towns will be dead as their manufacturing base has died and moved to the Third World. Everyone will be moved into the giant mega Cities. It will be urban from Richmond to Boston. Southern CA will have 40 million people and will look like San Palo Brazil.
Due to the cost of oil, steel and other metals the cost of living will have skyrocketed. Homes will take 65% of people's incomes and all the extra's we are enjoying today will not be affordable.
One of the reasons I do not plan to have children. Our Cities will be a mess.
I think we are about 10 years ahead of a lot of the united states here in Broward County, Fla. We are built out (look it up on a map, you can only build 15 or so miles inland max), and the only way to build is up. They just started building twin-tower 26 story condos across the street from upscale suburban neighborhoods where people live on 1 acre lots. The contrast is stark, but the only way to go is up. Single family America is something of the past, except perhaps in smaller cities. This is why after about another 25 years,I predict a mass migration into Midwestern states like Ohio. In many ways, South Florida can represent a microcosm of three scenerios of the U.S in 10 years, Miami-Dade somewhat represents what will happen if uncontrolled immigration, government corruption, and failing education systems continue to occur over the next 10 years. Its essentially a giant ghetto with a couple of nice neighborhoods. Palm Beach County brings a scenario of just how extreme the gap can get; nearly third world poverty surrounding neighborhoods that are guarded, gated, and full of extreme wealth. My county is like an extra dense and ethnically diverse microcosm of the modern United States, but the future brings many questions, since like many American cities, we face issues involving our economy, affordable housing,public education, and a lack of land to build outward. I think the American city is savable, but I think the extreme gap that will continue to widen between the rich and the poor will bring a Sao Paulo type situation in the American city.
I think we are about 10 years ahead of a lot of the united states here in Broward County, Fla. We are built out (look it up on a map, you can only build 15 or so miles inland max), and the only way to build is up. They just started building twin-tower 26 story condos across the street from upscale suburban neighborhoods where people live on 1 acre lots. The contrast is stark, but the only way to go is up. Single family America is something of the past, except perhaps in smaller cities. This is why after about another 25 years,I predict a mass migration into Midwestern states like Ohio. In many ways, South Florida can represent a microcosm of three scenerios of the U.S in 10 years, Miami-Dade somewhat represents what will happen if uncontrolled immigration, government corruption, and failing education systems continue to occur over the next 10 years. Its essentially a giant ghetto with a couple of nice neighborhoods. Palm Beach County brings a scenario of just how extreme the gap can get; nearly third world poverty surrounding neighborhoods that are guarded, gated, and full of extreme wealth. My county is like an extra dense and ethnically diverse microcosm of the modern United States, but the future brings many questions, since like many American cities, we face issues involving our economy, affordable housing, and a lack of land to build outward.
i think the environment will have its way with us before will fill up the u.s. but i do agree southern states like florida will fill up first. my grandparents settled in s. florida around 1920, and it's simply amazing to compare their old photos of houses on swamp and marsh land with what you see there now.
First of all, I hate these threads that are titled with statements, rather than questions! Ask an open ended question if you want real discussion, instead of just venting your daily soapbox. Now, what "fort lauderdale" and "Dingler" are saying is true only for certain geographical areas that are still rapidly growing, but risk becoming built out and running out of land. This will actually happen relatively soon in Las Vegas, of all places-- the Las Vegas Valley is hemmed in by mountains on all sides, and the remaining surrounding flat land is either owned by Indian reservations, air force bases, nuclear test sites, Lake Mead, or other federally owned land. They are building high rise million dollar condos not only on the strip, but even in Summerlin-- the suburbs of Las Vegas. But to think the whole country will be one non stop series of skyscrapers is complete B.S.
Why? This is a country that values private property ownership, and owning a home on a piece of land, no matter how small. Even with high rise construction in the suburbs, the vast majority of the land area of US metropolitan areas will always be low rise. Property values will simply continue to escalate as land becomes more and more scarce. When the middle class can no longer afford to buy a home, as in California, they will simply move to a new location. Or, with the case of Vegas, sprawl will leapfrog beyond the core metropolitan area and growth will occur in satelite cities such as Mesquite and Pahrump. Light rail and commuter trains will probably become more important as time goes on, but the general idea of suburban single-family development will continue, as it has in America for well over 100 years! Smaller metro areas will continue to grow, and new metropolitan areas might exist where none had before. Phoenix and Vegas 100 years ago were barely on the map-- Actually Las Vegas wasn't even founded until 1905-- and look how big it is today! Even if the western US were to completely max out its water use, a conceivable scenario, there is still GOBS of water-rich land in the south and midwest to build on! This is one of the most land rich countries in the world. The US is not even remotely close to the situation of the Asian countries.
No way. We are a suburban nation. Like others have mentioned, we love our cars and yards. I think you've got it wrong. We aren't going to become super dense like Tokyo and Hong Kong. We are just going to continue to sprawl out. I think we are going to have problems because of the continued sprawl, but not the problems you mentioned.
Dingler believes that the economy will collapse if he believes that suburbanization and exurbanization will end ... in which case, urbanization will decline as migrants from other countries cross the US off their destination list. I am sure it was Professor Dingler was writing about the 2019 Soviet Five-Year Plan in 1989.
Tokyo and Hong Kong cannot physically 'sprawl' any further, unless somehow transportation and sanitation can be extended into the bays and mountains.
Yeah you're comparing apples and oranges here. Tokyo and Hong Kong are as dense as they are for reasons that don't exist in most of the USA
Also this pattern of car-dependent low-density development is particular to only a few countries in the entire world, and the USA is one of them (the others are Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). All other countries in the world generally adhere to a traditional higher-density city format which is very unlike what we have in a lot of the USA.
First off most Asian cities are more dense than American cities, so that needs to be gotten out of the way. Hong Kong is very dense because it lacks good land to build anything on, compounded by the fact that they can't build out because mainland China is across the border. Most of Hong Kong's land is very hilly or mountainous and is not a proper place to build a house or apartment building. Hong Kong throughout its history has had large numbers of migrants coming in from mainland China looking for good paying jobs and this has caused the population to boom. You have to remember that Hong Kong prior to the British arrival in the mid-19th century was only a backwater fishing village.
Tokyo is very built up for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that Japan on the whole is a very dense country because they have a large population and not a lot of land. Japan is about the size of the state of California, and while California has about 30 million people living there, Japan has 130 million people. Thats an extra 100 million people, on about the same land. I hope that gives you an idea of how crowded Japan is. Tokyo is also builtup a lot because most of the good jobs in Japan are located there, and as a result lots of young people flock there after college. Tokyo is like our version of NYC in terms of attracting people looking for jobs, but on steroids.
I really don't see America becoming dense like the rest of the world. In many ways I wish our country would become more dense and less dependent upon the automobile, but I honestly don't see that happening. If anything the pattern of our country becoming suburbanized and subdivided will probably continue long into the future.
I really don't see America becoming dense like the rest of the world. In many ways I wish our country would become more dense and less dependent upon the automobile, but I honestly don't see that happening. If anything the pattern of our country becoming suburbanized and subdivided will probably continue long into the future.
That's right. One other thing I want to point out-- the idea of people living in a suburb in single family houses lining a quiet street, with yards, trees, and a park-like atmosphere was not invented in the post WWII area, as many anachronistically want to believe-- or even in the twentieth century. Our cities have been like this even before the automobile was invented, in the era of streetcar suburbs in the nineteenth century. And its roots go back long before that, to the American tradition of pioneering and homesteading. Our use of land, our practice of subdividing vast expanses of land into square shaped checkerboard parcels, reflects a society that places individual property ownership as a value ahead of living in a tightly confined village. Asian countries have a radically different culture and ideas of public vs. privacy. As someone mentioned above, not even New York City is as dense as Tokyo!
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