
The Dense States of America (Map) - jsm386
http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/450-the-united-states-of-brooklyn-nh/
======
Sindisil
Not that anyone cares, but I don't _want_ to live that way. I certainly
understand how many love the urban life, I just prefer suburbia, thanks.

That being said, a more relevant question is what the societal effects would
be. My first question is how this would affect crime rates. A quick search
seems to indicate that crime rate may go up with population density, though
other factors are, of course, more highly correlated (such as poverty).

Some of those other factors also correlate highly with high density areas. No
clue what the causative links are ... could be that density has no effect, or
even reduces crime rate, I suppose - I'm way to lazy to research it for ta
quick hn comment!

I do know that being too close to too many other people makes _me_ think about
perpetrating violent crime, though! ;)

~~~
sliverstorm
Is that crime rate per capita?

------
sp332
To contrast with the current state of the, uh, State of New Hampshire, we are
currently 83% covered in trees. And that's the way we like it :-)

------
houseabsolute
Let's just be sure to put the waste processing and power plants over in Maine,
OK?

------
DougWebb
I live in a dense part of NJ, around 7000 inh/mi2. But I've got a single
family home with a nice yard, and many of my neighbors have even more space
than I do. We've got lots of trees and open spaces too. At this density we'd
need 5 New Hampshires, but that's still not much and it would provide a much
higher quality of life than packing in at 35000 inh/mi2.

------
hernan7
Reminded me of that article by P.J. O'Rourke where he compared Santa Clara
County (I think) to Bangladesh. Both have the same population density...

------
sophacles
I'm sure this is doable. Better still would be to create a few population
centers of this density but slightly smaller. say 9 of them, 33x33. This would
allow for redundancy of civilization (in case of disaster and whatnot). It
also would allow better access to the appropriate resources (which is
frequently a major motivator in which cities are successful). It still reduces
the number of transport corridors, so trains an such become viable.

The problem comes for people like me: I enjoy my small city experience. I live
a short walk from downtown, but have a house w/ yard (and a big garden), and a
garage/workshop (mostly workshop as I don't actually have a car). Such space
uses are unrealistic as density goes up.

------
adi92
Somebody could nuke that small area and effectively kill of the entire
country..

~~~
lmkg
Screw the man-made disasters, just think of how fast diseases would spread.
IIRC, dense population centers were one of the contributing factors to the
bubonic plague.

~~~
natrius
Another contributing factor was the _lack of modern medicine_. Plenty of
communicable diseases exist today, and residents of dense neighborhoods are
doing fine. If a disease kills too fast for a treatment to be discovered in
time to prevent many deaths, it will probably be killing too fast to spread
effectively. Swine flu killed ~14,000 people worldwide, so I'd put dying from
an outbreak of a deadly disease at the same level of probability as a man-made
disaster like terrorism. In other words, not likely enough to be of much
concern.

------
Groxx
I don't _want_ to live in Brooklyn, though.

This ignores that a _larger_ area with similar population density would
require much more robust transportation systems than currently exists in, oh,
_the world_. Have a happy mental visualization:

Take every car in America on the road right now. Divide by, say, 100, assuming
that most are driving ~ 1 hour, and the new density would make their trips
within 6 minutes after such a change, and the transport system fits 10 people
into the space of _one_ car.

Now, cram them into New Hampshire. And imagine rush-hour traffic.

~~~
enntwo
I think you are missing the point. First, the article doesn't care what you
want.

Second, it is using the current population density of Brooklyn, and that is
with the current transportation infrastructure. If your foreseeable maximum
travel distance was 100 miles, none of this would be necessary. It is very
unlikely you or 99% of the people would need cars. Transportation would be
optimized for mass transit/walking/biking. It would probably feel less crowded
than current day brooklyn.

~~~
_delirium
I think you'd need something of a revolution in transport infrastructure to
serve a Brooklyn that was the size of New Hampshire. With the current
Brooklyn, the longest public-transit trips, if you're very unlucky with where
you're going to/from, are about 90 minutes, and most are around 30 mins. But
if you just organically grew out the same infrastructure to a Brooklyn the
size of New Hampshire, it would take 5+ hours to get from one side of New
Brooklyn to another.

~~~
kscaldef
But why would you _need_ to get from one side of New Brooklyn to the other any
more frequently than you need to get from one side of the US to the other
today?

~~~
Groxx
Shipping products. Daily, and _massive_ amounts.

Business travel (ie, flights, currently). Less than shipping, but still
frequent.

Vacation travel. More frequent than business, but likely shorter distances
(still often above 100 miles, though). Though I know of over a dozen people in
my circle of friends who have travelled over 1000 miles to get to their spring
/ summer locations. And these are relatively poor college students.

The problem isn't based around an expected increase in frequency (though there
would be, as things _are_ closer), it's that a large number of people _do_
need such large-scale transports, and shoving _more_ of everything together
brings up new problems (look at Chicago, the roads & tracks are fairly
nightmarish in many places).

~~~
DougWebb
It would require a massive infrastructure project to build up an area that big
and dense, so let's assume transportation is part of the plan. A mesh of rail
lines could be put in with high speed rail with a few stops at the coarsest
level of the grid, moderate speed rail with more stops in the middle, and the
equivalent of the NYC subway system at the finest level of the grid. The
system could be planned out so that no two points are more than a few train
changes and an hour or two apart. That's much better than our current national
transportation system.

Shipping could have a parallel system at the high speed and moderate speed,
using shipping containers and (while we're at it) automated transfer systems
for the containers. Maybe the whole place could be rigged up like a giant
FedEx shipping center, with hundred-mile-long conveyor belts.

------
metamemetics
another fun fact, the entire world population fits in Texas with the same
population density as paris

~~~
javajones
Ah, but not the same amount of water. That would be horrendous.

------
blackguardx
As a current resident of NYC looking to move away, I think this proposal would
have a negative impact on the mental health and well-being of many US
citizens.

------
electromagnetic
For comparison, if Canada had a similar population density to England, you
would fit its entire population onto the island of Newfoundland (not the
province of Newfoundland and Labrador). Interestingly, Newfoundland was
intended to be an independent country. This would leave the whole mainland of
Canada (the worlds 2nd largest country) devoid of habitation.

------
scythe
It'd be a lot of fun bringing in water, food, and oil, that's for sure.

~~~
bh23ha
Oil for sure indeed. It's not like you're getting it from your backyard now.

Pretty much the same goes for most of your food too.

Water is the only thing that would get tricky. But large chunks of the
northern hemisphere have A LOT of water. Think Seatle, or for that matter, ALL
of New England, especially northern New England.

~~~
eru
Or Old England..

------
emarcotte
Imagine trying to drive a truck load of food/supplies to the center of it.
Driving a big rig (or would it be too small for the demand?) through 50 miles
of Brooklyn sounds incredibly tedious.

~~~
evgen
With this sort of density you can use more efficient distribution systems than
driving a truck down the street -- dedicated transport tunnels/tubes and a
handful of distribution centers would eliminate most surface shipping.

~~~
eru
Just lay some rails.

------
biotech
If we filled the entire area of the United States with that population
density, we could fit 132.8 billion people!

------
jcdreads
I call not having to live atop one of the mountains in the Presidential Range.

------
johnnyg
Remember in Civ 2 when you'd build two cities right next to each other?

~~~
eru
Not very advisable. Though a lot of Cities on a grid with one square between
them horizontally and vertically was a viable strategy in Civilization (the
first part, of course).

------
sliverstorm
This would be ruinous. Yes, it'd be great if we could compact and leave most
of America pristine, but that's not what would happen. Leave all that open
space and people will expand into it again, except likely as much more dense
populations.

This would result in mind bogglingly large population growth, which Earth
can't take right now. We need LESS dense populous, not more.

~~~
pyre
Are you saying that we would have _increased_ population growth if the
population was all packed together? By packing together we could do things
such as use less electricity by being more efficient (less power loss due to
transmission distances, less power used to pump water all over the place, less
fuel spent moving all over the place, etc).

~~~
sliverstorm
If we concentrated the population, we would not grow as fast. But that all
depends on concentrating the population and then not allowing it to expand
beyond some set borders, which doesn't seem like it'd go over well. Just look
at the little countries running out of land, looking to their neighboor's turf
as prospective expansion.

You'd need government or fences or armed forces preventing people from
expanding- it is natural for people to expand.

Maybe I am incorrect in thinking so, but my idea was that while the birth rate
may be lower, we'd (in the end) approach a higher net population density if we
slowly sprawled from a single super-dense hub.

