Responding to a column on the diminished utility of small cities, a front-pager wrote that there wqas no longer a use for large cities, either..
This is a response to that question.
1) Carbon efficency. It had been pointed out that New York States rank as the state with the lowest carbon footprint per capita among the states is due entirly to New Yourk City's remrkable energy efficiency.
The last time I posted this, a commenter pointed out that there is an influx of more than a million people who work, but do not sleep in New York City. He cliamed that their energy consumpption at home should be added to the energy consumption in NYC. (He didn't suggest adding that population to the population considered in the per capita calculation.)
In reality, though, that only shows the remarkably energy efficiency of NYC. The energy used by X people doing their leisure hours and X+Y people working divided by X is significantly less than the ratio of the energy consumed by the American people both working and not divided by the total American population.
The author of the diary I’m responding to says that you can get products delivered anywhere, and you they may not charge you personlly more for delivery in Podunk than they do in Chicago, but the social cost of an individualized delivery where the truck must drive for blocks between deljeries is much greater than the cost of per delivery in a place where the truck delivers to three recipeients at the same stop. (Sorry. I tried, inefficiently, to search for the diary. I couldn’t find it.)
2) Public transit / walking. This is part of the same issue, though public transit also helps those unable to drive. You may think that pedestrians are not worth consideration, but -- unless you die young -- you will be among our number some day. (Then too, plenty of people who should give up their driver's license because their skills have waned do not do so because they live where doing so will confine them to their homes.)
Every once in a while, someone looks at the savings in fuel in places rich in public transit and suggest that public transit be extended to more places. What they don't understand is that many low-density places have public transit today which saves no fuel over people using cars there. High-density areas provide convenient schedules of public transit with reasonably-full buses. If you have half the people, then either you have the same bus -- with a driver and nearly the same fuel expenditure -- carrying half the number of passengers, or you have the bus less often.
And, if you have the bus half as often, many people who need greater convenience, can't use it. So, you have the bus half as often, but you don't have as many people per bus.
If you have twice the density of people, you have twice the density of supermarkets. Then -- assuming that the supermarkets are still far enough apart -- you have twice the density, and therefore twice as many people within walking distance of each supermarket, or four times as many people within walking distance of some supermarket.
3) Ethnic variety. It is notorious that large cities attract a greater variety of people. If you're from some different culture, you want a decent number of people like you and stores that provide the goods that you're used to. Prima facie, that could mean a suburb exclusively of your ethnic sort. Seldom does this happen.
(When it does happen, as the Amish communitiess have shown, the culture rather than enriching the American stew, tends to remain seperate.)
More often, the groupe settle in an urban center, where they contribute to the diversity of experiences of everybody else.
I can walk to Ethiopian, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Indian, Latino, and Korean restaurants from my apartment. Okay, I live in a more-diverse-than-most-Chicago neighborhood, but still the diversity has been a Chicqgo hallmark since it became a major city.
4) Other variety. There is also a Vegan restaurant close. There are only a small fraction of the US population which practices this; there are enough in densely-settled areas to support restaurants to cater to them. How many vegan restaurants are scattered about the hinterlands?
You need not stick to eating. The city contains many highly specialized stores. You possibly could support yourself selling to rural peoples online where 1% of people desire your goods. How many people do?
In my neighborhood, there is a store specialized for knitters, and a store selling frames for art. If you don't find what you want in the neighborhood, then you can hop on the L and find it in some other neighborhood of Chicago.
There are not only chess clubs, but clubs for playing almost anything. Whatever your game, their are enough people in Chicago to give you competition.
5) Services. Services depend on the population requiring those services. You have neonatal departments in large urban hospitals supported by the urban community. When the woman in Podunk delivers prematurely, she is rushed to the large urban hospital. What would support the neonatal department if there were only many podunks?
6) Land. Farmland is a valuable asset, although farm production right now is more than the USA needs. Urban sprawl eats up farm land. (And wetlands, too.)
7) Innovation. Innovation has come out of the cities for as long as we have records. Now, what constituted a large city has changed over time, but the pace of innovation has, as well.
Evidence implies that agriculure, itself, now considered the epitome of non-urban life, was instigated near the greatest urban aggregates of its time.
Now, people speculate that perhaps the new means of communication can lead to innovators getting together without having the urban life to bring them together. We don't have concrete examples, as yet.
Efficiency, diversity, innovation, what we need to go into a better future, is what the large urban centers have provided in the past and seem to be providing today.