Fertility rates in cities are far below replacement and falling every year. In every country, religious or secular, liberal or conservative, socialized healthcare/education or no. So they are proving simply not capable of sustaining human life.
This only works as long as rural people keep having lots of kids to feed into the city, but that isn’t really happening anymore either.
This is insane - rural birthrates are higher, but birthrates are falling across the developed world in both urban and rural contexts.
It's not because of density - it's because people with options other than raising children tend to pick them since kids require a lot of effort.
SF and LA could easily be several times more dense than they currently are; that kind of increase would see the capacity of the entire state grow by double-digit percentages.
So now I've gotta ask you: if cities suck for population growth, then where would those double-digit population gains come from? It's not rural America, that's for sure.
For us it wasn’t about not being able to raise kids, it was seeing how garbage parents are with their massive consumption and a whole generation of iPad pacifier kids. This planet is fucked in a hundred years and I’m not bringing kids into that world.
Based on actual data urban individuals (80% of the pop) aren't dependent upon rurals (20% of the pop) having babies because by the numbers most of the native born sons and daughters are born in urban and suburban areas. In fact both are dependent upon immigration to maintain the same level of population.
This only works as long as rural people keep having lots of kids to feed into the city, but that isn’t really happening anymore either.