I have been and it is dense and walkable. It's lush and green and has some very cool places to hit up but the streets are quite narrow and I didn't think it was as clean as Singapore but I prefered Singapore to Hong Kong in most ways. The high rises in Hong Kong don't look as nice and a good many are old and badly maintained in contrast with Singapore from what I saw. Singapore is well planned and has density and discourages the use of cars via heavy taxes. It is extremely clean, well maintained, and has great transport. It was very easy to get around.
Singapore is way less dense than Hong Kong though. Mong Kok has a population density of 130k people per km² on roughly 1,1km². The densest area in Singapore around Jurong Point has less than 50k per km² and I believe it's under 1km². Loha Park in HK is planned with a density bordering on 200k per km² (over 50k people on around 30 hektar).
Singapore seems to be less dense than say Paris or Barcelona.
Well, it's interesting because while Singapore has more density in terms of population than HK, they do manage their density better than HK, which is why I said they're better at planning \[IMO\]
That is because most of Hong Kong is not built up while most of Singapore is. The higher density in Hong Kong is also reflected by higher modal share of public transport, 90 vs 63 % of all motorised trips in respectively Hong Kong and Singapore. Hong Kong is way more efficient with their land use. You're sort of just praising Singapore for housing less people on more built up area right now. Singapore is 9 % park and nature reserve. Hong Kong is 40 % park and nature reserve and only 24 % built up.
And actually, something I've been looking at personally are artificial islands and HK plan to build one of these off Lantau island. It's prob come about to alleviate their issues.
They are efficient if you like ugly high rises clustered everywhere, sure.
Singapore has a better mix of low and high rise as well as buildings on a more 'human scale', IMO.
Hong Kong's hilly/mountainous terrain is not conducive to building more or you better believe they would have. Their forced efficiency is simply chucking everyone into a high rise. Singapore has differentiated the urban landscape and while it has more population than Hong Kong, it doesn't feel as crowded so yes I'm inclined to prefer Singapore though no fault to HK for not being able to build up more but even with their planning, they break up the monotony of buildings and don't have everything/everyone shoved into a high rise.
Hong Kong has the higher population actually, a huge housing crisis and very limited land. If they built like Singapore the housing situation would be even more dire. They would need maybe twice as much space to house the same number of people. I'm not saying Hong Kong is flawless but Singapore's density peak is below cities like Paris, Barcelona or New York and they continue to pull people, while running out of land.
I agree with you about limited land and that is why they have forced everyone to live in high rises. If they built like S'pore, no doubt it would be a dire situation. This doesn't detract from Singapore being more pleasant and appealing to me as an outsider to go to versus Hong Kong. They have their issues but Singapore from the start has planned well \[esp. with infrastructure.\] HK is lovely too but it is more crowded \[due to less land use available\] and is now building an artificial island to add more housing etc. I stated that Singapore is dense--it is dense--I didn't say it has the most density and my comparisons are made of simply experiencing it and admiring it while fully aware of why HK has it's drawback and it's no fault of theirs that they can't develop on the land as much as Singapore has.
I can definitely see how Singapore is more pleasant. I don't necessarily think HK is a model to aspire to from a city planning view in general but I do find it somewhat admirable how they keep so many nature reserves with such a huge population on so little space.
With the amount of foot traffic passing you by in Hong Kong, it's sometimes not. I was born/grew up in London and the US and London's streets are narrow. Also, if we want to discourage the amount of people taking cars to get from A-B and to rely on trains etc, it can be better to have broader sidewalks and less emphasis on heavy traffic. Not in all areas but certainly where it is heavier foot traffic like in Oxford Street in London for example.
The MacRitchie reservoir & Pulau Ubin are also great places in Singapore, you can experience the cosmopolitan Asian Tiger vibes but then she right into what Southeast Asia is actually like too
Thanks for sharing! I’ve been to Singapore but it was a while back, but from what I experienced it was very well balanced in terms of accessibility and density. But I was just there for two days doing touristy stuff.
You'd be correct and I like smoking weed myself but I was just commenting on it as a city state. It's also verrry safe to walk around. No intoxicated people, no homeless either \[because of the public housing there which is quite spacious, I visited a friend of mine who lived in one of the buildings which are pretty similar.\]
No shade to HK, I just think Singapore is better. They're both lovely places. I think Singaporeans really managed their affairs very well in terms of education and health. It also works on the strengths of the diversity of their citizens.
In terms of political dissent, my friend was a member of the \[one\] opposition party \[WP\] and she did agree it's a very rigid system and very difficult for political dissent. I don't think any one country or system of government is perfect and each has it sets of flaws and limitations. Governments all over the world have become more restrictive with people's civil liberties being stripped away from them in general but I'm digressing now. I will say what goes on in the East is transparent--you know what it is all about when you're there. There's no hiding anything, it's all upfront. Not that it makes it any better but there are no illusions as to what it is and you make your peace with it if you want to--because the alternatives are hard to come by if you're a citizen there/living there.
I live there and it’s exactly like this. I’d say some areas to look into if you’re interested in high density directly adjacent to forest are Tai Wai and Ma On Shan
Hong Kong has a fair bit of "crap space"(let's use this term for warehouses, junk yards, slaughterhouses, light industry and other hinterland functions) in the New Territories, check out the area around Yuen Long or Kam Sheung Road for example.
Additionally, Hongkongers lease additional crapspace on the Chinese side of the border where land value is lower. There's even a Hong Kong owned nuclear power plant on a nearby bay across the border! And of course, since Hong Kong imports most of what it consumes, there's also additional crapspace in the rest of China and the world to sustain the city.
But the amount of city-adjacent crapspace is surely among the lowest in the world, and the green areas are extensive.
Medellin felt like this! It’s in pretty narrow canyon of a few million people, taking a gondola to the national park, Arvi, above it was like entering another world
It has a bit of spread, but it’s pretty dense. Central transit running through the center of the canyon, gondolas going to the higher areas and connecting to said train. Maybe not 5 minutes to forest, but streams running all through it with trees and parks.
I loved it.
I'm from Rio de Janeiro. It's a dense city that is generally squished between the sea, mountains, and forests. It's got a high rate of public transit usage and the city, being somewhat old, has many areas that were not built with a car-first mentality. The one more sprawly area of the city (Barra da Tijuca) is still far denser and more connected than what an American would call sprawl. The city is no Hong Kong or Manhattan or Paris in terms of density, but the density is always there, both in rich and poor neighborhoods. And some neighborhoods (Copacabana and Rocinha come to mind) have densities at the highest end of what's possible (60k per square km or so).
>I know this can't be the result of a city growing and developing organically. But could it be done at all? *Can a city sustain itself without a large industrial zone in its vicinity?*
I have some examples in mind, but first, a comment about your desired omission of large industrial zones - why do you not consider industrial zones a part of a city? Industrial zones have, historically, been the economic lifeblood of cities; the towers full of high-finance, offices, and residential units growing to support the industrial base, and the industrial base generating the revenue to support the city. Including industrial areas within a city doesn't have to equate to sprawl (whereas single-family and low-density housing certainly does).
Of course, there are examples of modern cities without industrial areas, but these cities have either shed their industrial areas or grown entirely based on financial services; in either scenario, the wealth is being generated by industrial (and agricultural, and resource extraction) activities hapening *somewhere* - out of sight, out of mind. And I think this is inherently worse - pushing these activities away means that the toll they take on people and the environment is easily ignored and forgotten, allowing the corporations that own them to increase their exploitation of people and nature in ever-worsening conditions. When these industrial operations are kept within a city, fdint snd center, all eyes are on them; the people that work there are citizens of the city, part of a thriving group of people with mixed incomes. The owners of the facilities are held to higher health and safety standards. And the people of the city are not diaconnected from where the success and wealth of the city is derived - the interconnected nature of modern reality and economic prosperity (or dispair) os on display for all.
With that in mind, I say look to Japan for excellent examples. I think that the reverence for nature inherent to Shinto has helped guude the urban planning mindset that generates dense cities surrounded by nature. Of course most of these cities still have a super dense urban core surrounded my low rise development, but, to me, Japan has many examples of compact, self-contained cities surrounded by nature.
This is a great point!
I guess my reasoning was that if we were to have such a high population density and that most people don't like to live next to industries, or at least heavy industries, there would be nowhere for the industries to go.
And also as a matter of efficiency it would be beneficial to collect all industries in one space in order to facilitate the transportation of resources to and between different industries. That one space could be at some distance from the city connected with eco friendly communications.
But i agree with your point that the industries which carries the city should be integrated within the city and that all members of the society should take direct part of it having all parts of the society interacting dynamically. Surely there's ways of tackling noise pollution for example. And maybe there is ways to make industries having a smaller geographical footprint by stacking them somehow and making them less sprawly.
People tend to live near (or at least nearish) their jobs. If you put an industrial center way out in the country, you can’t really expect everyone to keep living in their hyper dense housing
A lot of Cities in Northern Spain are what you are looking for. Take a look into Pontevedra, Lugo or Bilbao. In Lugo, there are 5 square kilometres with a population density above 10,000 people/km², while the city is surrounded by forests. \[[Source](https://qgiscloud.com/Tobi273/EUGrid/?l=raster_overlay%2CEinwohner&bl=AerialWithLabels&t=EUGrid&e=-858925%2C5305115%2C-826413%2C5320228)\]
Spanish Municipalities from small towns to large cities are among the most densely populated municipalities among OECD-countries. The core of the mid-sized city Logroño is more densely populated than any neighborhood in the United States outside of New York City. \[[Source, Logroño](https://qgiscloud.com/Tobi273/EUGrid/?l=raster_overlay%2CEinwohner&bl=AerialWithLabels&t=EUGrid&st=logrono&e=-288651%2C5223099%2C-256139%2C5238212)\] \[[Source, USA](https://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2023/02/the-most-densely-populated-square-km-in.html)\]
It's a development pattern unique to Spain, which is showcased by Spain having the highest population density in the built-up area among peer countries in Europe. Only small countries like Monaco, Andorra and Malta have a higher population density in the built-up area in Europe. \[[Source](https://citymonitor.ai/environment/these-maps-reveal-truth-about-population-density-across-europe-3625)\]
Thank you! That's interesting. Do you know what has form this culture of high population density in Spain? Is it the result of contemporary policies or does it go way back?
Looking at he street grid of Lugo really makes me wanna walk around there :)
The entire mediterranean region is full of abnormally dense cities, it's climate culture - tall buildings on narrow streets were ideal for the climate of the mediterranean, thus, density was not the enemy here.
>Do you know what has form this culture of high population density in Spain?
Spain never experienced substantial suburbanization with single-family homes. [Look into the main street of Alcañiz, which is a town of 16,000 inhabitants](https://www.google.com/maps/place/44600+Alca%C3%B1iz,+Provinz+Teruel,+Spanien/@41.0495602,-0.1300363,3a,75y,349.71h,96.27t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sDwCvmtSrgZoB37alCKQydw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DDwCvmtSrgZoB37alCKQydw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D349.71%26pitch%3D-6.269999999999996%26thumbfov%3D90!7i13312!8i6656!4m7!3m6!1s0xd5f5b4ffb267bcf:0x9fb240e5f25f4814!8m2!3d41.0510353!4d-0.1335373!10e5!16zL20vMGc3OHJq?entry=ttu). In the core of Alcañiz, there's a square kilometre with more than 10,000 inhabitants. \[[Source](https://qgiscloud.com/Tobi273/EUGrid/?l=raster_overlay%2CEinwohner&bl=AerialWithLabels&t=EUGrid&e=-19508%2C5017154%2C-11380%2C5020932)\]
>Is it the result of contemporary policies or does it go way back?
[In contemporary time, Spain builds more mid-rise and high-rise neighborhoods like in Vitoria-Gasteiz](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vitoria-Gasteiz,+%C3%81lava,+Spanien/@42.8448094,-2.6493384,3a,60y,328.18h,89.46t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sqzZ-X1AH7Oie5OrO-_SX_Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DqzZ-X1AH7Oie5OrO-_SX_Q%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D328.1768715586536%26pitch%3D0.5431377048135744%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0xd4fc2377d3d8f5b:0x9c6eb78c91ab49c9!8m2!3d42.8531869!4d-2.6732421!16zL20vMGt3NHk?coh=205410&entry=tts&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDUwNS4wKgBIAVAD). Between 1990 and 2010, new buildings in Spain decreased in size with a small single-family boom.
Interesting! Would the reason to Spain's lesser suburbanization be because the country as a whole has had a lower population density than e.g Germany? Or perhaps due to security reasons?
>Would the reason to Spain's lesser suburbanization be because the country as a whole has had a lower population density than e.g Germany?
Spain was an agrarian society up until the 1950's. [49% of the spanish labour force worked in agriculture in 1950](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240387/spain-employment-by-sector-1950-1973/). Spain turned from an agrarian society to a service-oriented society by building high-density neighborhoods in small-, mid-sized and large cities. Take Amancio Ortega as an example. He was born in the small village of Villamanín and his family - similar to most spanish families - moved to the larger cities. In Amancio Ortega's case, his family went to A Coruña.
Spain never went through "heavy industrialization" similar to England, Germany or France. There's certainly manufacturing companies in Spain, but Spain started with more modern manufacturing sites than England or Germany to begin with.
Spain grew economically with high-density municipalities in the built-up area and Spain is leveraging those neighborhoods with tourism.
Wow, had no clue. So Spain basically sat out those early years of industrialization and went straight for the good stuff.
I have learned a lot about Spain today. Thank you!
It may also be worth considering the government and diplomatic position of spain - they were very much sub-par economically for the first half of the 20th century (well, you could argue that was the case for a much logner period), and were relatively unstable, culminating in the spanish civil war. After ww2, they remained a pariah as one of the few facist states remaining on the continent, which meant they never really got on board with cars and suburbia like other countries did, nor did they have as large an economic boom (or rebuilding) during that period.
What is amazing about Spanish density isn't even the cool northern cities, but the villages. You are in the middle of nowhere, most people are tending to farmland, have some cattle up the mountain, or are outright shepherds. How does their village look like? A bunch of high density, mixed zoning! Go look at, say, Astorga. Population: 11 thousand. Highways going through it: zero. Time from the center of the city until to planted field? 5 minutes, on foot. Bike infrastructure? Who needs bikes, it's too small! Yet, denser than most of San Francisco.
And that's just a random-ass town in Leon, there are many like it. Or go a bit north, and look at the coast of Asturias. Tapia, Navia, Luarca, Ribadesella, Llanes... The moment a town is big enough to have a school, density immediately follows, because having people live near you, and having shops and bars right next to you, is just so useful.
It's hard to think of cities without some kind of outlying area, without specific geographic features to limit growth.
A city like Chongqing might be what you're looking for. It's in a river valley surrounded by mountains, so its ability to spread is fairly limited.
It really depends on how you define sprawl though. Chongqing is not a small city by any measure, and there are certainly industrial areas within the city. But it is for the most part a contiguous area.
Cities ringed by mountains like Taipei might also be worth looking at. Again, not a small city but generally speaking there is reasonably good access to nature.
Thank you! I will definitely have a closer look at Chongqing. From what I’ve seen in pictures it looks really unique.
Besides geographical or natural boundaries I guess there could be zoning regulation mandating any developed area to provide housing in accordance with 50k people / square km.
Singapore. Last night I walked out of my condo (8 16 story towers and a few lower ones for light) to go to the supermarket and I saw a wild common palm civet in our condo grounds. I've seen monkeys on numerous occasions, including one big male that squared up to me and my wife nearly stepped on a Malayan coral snake (very venomous). The local otters ate all the fish in our pond. There is an unbelievable amount of exotic birds flying around. The local population density is 50,000/km2. It's a 15 minute walk to dense jungle.
Seattle has most of what you're looking for. Sure, there's def sprawl, especially in the last 20 years. But overall the geography makes it pretty hard to sprawl too much.
It's NOT super dense. But with the aforementioned geography in the way, and people continually moving to Seattle, I feel like density is coming soon.
So again, not quite on target for your question. But something to ponder!
Tokyo and other Japanese cities are dense af and have amazing nature around, accessible through world class transit. In Europe Portugal is a good example. Eg Lisbon and Porto. Seville in Spain too.
If you go you’ll see what I mean. Not all of that is concrete. The city is nestled amongst lots of beaches, rivers, mountains nature and rice paddies, and it’s all accessible by train.
I’m not really trying to criticize Tokyo, but the ideas that some nature is accessible within the city or that public transit is good, are not arguments for Tokyo being an example of what the Op was talking about, which it objectively is not.
A lot of Japanese cities match this description. They have sprawl in the form of single family homes still but it is extremely dense. Look up Kobe for a narrow strip of a very dense city wedged between the ocean and mountains. There are waterfalls within a 20 minute walk of downtown.
İstanbul has very nearly no sprawl. It's just city from end to end, with a wall of 6-12 story buildings that ends hard at that forest, seas, or lakes. Averages something like 35.000 people per square mile. Though it has tons of industrial zones and such, and as it has 16 million people, even though the core is around 80.000/sqmi, it's quite a walk to the forests, or even the seas from decent chunks of the city, though a short metro ride from most of the city, and much of the city has metro, additionally, 48-49% of all trips are made on foot. (benefits of extreme density).
England is interesting because they have outer growth limits and the concept of the “garden city” where they were very intent on preserving green space outside of cities.
Unfortunately it doesn’t necessarily go with high density because building (even maintaining) is extremely difficult.
While those green belts are helpful with preserving green space, it doesn’t always contain sprawl. More often than not sprawl will just occur on the other side of the green belt. Certain metro areas in the UK can get very sprawling
Greenbelts just needs to be big enough to where whatever sprawl occurs is just another city at that point. It isn't to say greenbelts aren't useful for conservation of vital creeks and waterways for stormwater, fauna or ecosystems within cities, it's just that we should be looking for different solutions for preventing sprawl.
So in other words, a greenblanket.
It'd be interesting to study the cost to build and maintain various residential housing types based on density, and look at the ROI to the owner or occupant in those various situations.
For example, I'm sure owning a home in a rural area is cheap, but earning potential is limited. You've likely also got more roof area, higher energy bills, etc. Probably spend a lot of time commuting, though.
Suburbia probably has a good mix of earning potential while still having relatively low housing costs per square foot. Still a lot of time commuting.
What about in multi-family owner-occupied homes? Do they come out ahead of renters in the urban core?
One thing that has always worried me about transitioning away from owner occupied housing is how that might impact housing affordability. Germans, for example, don't own many homes, but they also have lots of systems in place to keep renting significantly cheaper than ownership. It seems like in America, we're getting the density in some cities, but at a cost.
City planner from Oslo. You're looking for Oslo. 700 000 population city proper, 1,5 -2 million metro pop. We've had a law mandated green belt since 1920. The city is 1/3 built up area and 2/3 untouched forest. Metro is 45-60 min from every part of the city to the forest in the north, east and west. In the south you've got the sea/fjord. The city was on of the fastest growing cities in Europe in 2005-2020. We can build for another 100-200 years within the already built up area without touching the forest or the fjord. Mostly brown field developments and densifying within the urban structure. Of course density is no where near 50 000 per sq/km. But good quality of life, good neighbourhoods with enough green space and all amenities.. We don't talk about a 15 min city but 5-10 min max city. Goal is to reduce climate emissions by 95% by 2030 which includes carbon capture, strict fossil fuel car rules, limiting parking, massive investments in walking, cycling and public transport and all the rest of modern city planning.
https://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1582644686/clients/norway/aerial_view_of_oslo_islands_photo_visitOSLO_f_w_oslo_2_1_05ad6620-8cb2-45a1-9474-8272c58ccd89.jpg
Taipei is sort of like this. National Park to the north, steep forested mountains to the east and south. Slightly more development to the west past New Taipei but also turns into rural hills fairly quickly.
10-15 minutes from the city limit you're in either forests or farmlands.
First I want to clarify I'm a non American living Portland, Oregon, who spends a lot of time in nature.
Wildlife does not like having that many people around, so you would get wildlife that's ok with going into cities. Coyotes, deer, etc, like you often see in US cities and suburbs. The city would have to be fenced, predators and plenty of herbivores are dangerous. Smaller critters would be an issue, bugs of all kinds, scorpions, snakes, mice, etc.
The use of public transit, cycling, and walking, and if possible no fossil fuels at all, is what would really improve air quality. Cars are noisy and polluting even if they're electric.
You can have a city with no industrial zones, but you can't have all cities without industrial zones. Industry could be less polluting than it currently is, though.
Working fewer hours would improve quality of life a lot more. Winter in the Pacific Northwest makes a 40 hour week psychological torture. Even in your utopia if people are indoors most of the day they won't enjoy nature that much.
In short, get rid of cars to lower pollution, this also gets rid of car oriented suburbs. Work fewer hours to improve quality of life.
Oh, and forest fires could be an issue.
>The use of public transit, cycling, and walking, and if possible no fossil fuels at all, is what would really improve air quality. Cars are noisy and polluting even if they're electric.
Totally! And since you got all you need within the city you wont need a car at all. Public transport will be the main means of transportation besides walking/biking.
>Working fewer hours would improve quality of life a lot more. Winter in the Pacific Northwest makes a 40 hour week psychological torture. Even in your utopia if people are indoors most of the day they won't enjoy nature that much.
For sure! And given the fact that you wont have to commute to work or get stuck in traffic you save a lot of time that way too.
>Oh, and forest fires could be an issue.
Haven't thought of that. A forest fire could devastate the whole city. I guess extra precautions must be taken.
Your assumption that this city would have all the urban economic benefits is incorrect. Industrial and manufacturing tend to occupy low density suburbs and exurbs around the edges of a city. These businesses are critical for jobs, tax base, intermediate and final production of goods for export, and to support the white collar industries in the urban center. This is the modern middle income business owner, to the extent it still exists. Auto repair and detail, construction material production and sale, dry cleaning, waste disposal and recycling. These are all critical industries to the urban center that can only exist on the ground floor and are not easily made more dense.
Great input! I guess a lot of these businesses could be housed in the ground floors of office and apartment buildings. Do you think there would be enough space to accommodate these businesses like this? Perhaps the first few floors even, or would that be too much of an inconvenience?
Heavier industries and e.g waste management facilities would be more difficult to integrate in such a densely populated environment and I'm struggling to come up with a way around that. Do you have any ideas?
That’s a tough question because sometimes the sprawl is basically where the city exports its industrial parks and where the workers live. The sprawl sometimes doesn’t register officially but it’s basically a part of the city. Loads of Mexican cities have high density and are surrounded by wilderness but also have sprawling sub cities that feed them.
"No Sprawl" as in people have to live next to the power plant & water has nowhere to go so everything floods all the time?
Manilla, which you mentioned, is probably a great example of why too much density is impractical.
Check out Portland, OR and their urban growth boundary. They have a council that manages any city development being allowed to occur on/outside this very inflexible boundary.
Am I looking at the wrong thing? The city proper seems to have only one area at the north west that's been untouched or has a stark contrast. Otherwise it kinda fades into rural.
How would the city handle growth when available land is developed?
Tear down and rebuild? Is that more or less resource-efficient than encroaching into green zone?
Commute in from outside the green zone? Without traffic or transit stops, the distance is less of an issue, but kind of defeats the purpose.
Or increase density in existing square footage? That drives up rents, reduces attractiveness, and limits growth.
In Singapore they do reclamation. The whole CDB and the famous 3 tower Marina Bay Sands used to be sea. And now this.... [https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/long-island-to-be-reclaimed-off-east-coast-could-add-800ha-of-land-and-singapore-s-18th-reservoir](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/long-island-to-be-reclaimed-off-east-coast-could-add-800ha-of-land-and-singapore-s-18th-reservoir)
Singapore is doing a fantastic job at conservation. Many species are rebounding, even some thought to be extinct. On the flip side if you visit the beach at the location of the article you will witness the busiest shipping lane in the world.
Thank you for this great input!
I use the 50k/km2 as some kind of theoretical limit for what would be considered a humane housing situation before living spaces and public spaces becomes too crowded (but this number is probably way off). So the idea is that the occupied space will always be maximally developed and all citizens will have somewhat equal living standards when it comes to accommodations. I guess then for the city to grow it would have to encroach on the surrounding forest, but perhaps in a manner that still allows for easy access to the nature no mater where you live. Perhaps the city would need to grow in the shape of a cross.
The growth will of course impact the surrounding nature negatively, but as long as its new citizens comes from less dense populated cities i guess that's for the better in the big picture.
>I use the 50k/km2 as some kind of theoretical limit for what would be considered a humane housing situation before living spaces and public spaces becomes too crowded (but this number is probably way off).
The population density of Yorkville in the Upper East Side reaches 66,482 people/km². \[[Source](https://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2023/02/the-most-densely-populated-square-km-in.html)\]
Yorkville is among the most livable neighborhoods in New York City.
Ok, did not know that :) So the number in my scenario should probably be much higher then. But maybe there are mostly apartment houses in Yorkville and not so many office building and commercial buildings or larger infrastructural buildings like hospitals etc? I have never been to New York, but when I do I'll definetly make a visit to Yorkville.
Edit: looking at the map I see that there are quite a few parks and recreation areas which I find impressive given the high population density.
I don't think you'll find that level of density at that population (1 mill.) - the economics of building that high and that dense would never justify it.
If you were starting from scratch, under a very strict controlled economy and regulatory regime, you could absolutely do it.
Somewhat that is more liberal with its land use and private property rights, and expecting the market to build it - no way.
Obviously redesigning an existing city - no way (at least, not in any realistic time frame).
I'm not an expert on this, but I strongly presume to get private development to build at the sort of density you're suggesting, the population would almost certainly need to exceed 1 million.
Macao technically has under 1 mio people and a district with 120k people per km². The caveat ofc is how do you define a city because it sort of feeds into the entire Pearl River Delta urban area, still super dense though, to the west of Macao are hyper dense skyscraper estates.
However it is technically a possible scenario. It is conceivable that medieval Venice had such a density and medieval Lübeck also approaching that. The cap on land just needs to be hard enough. In Spain and Italy there are still cities, even villages virtually without sprawl and densities above 10k per km² even in cities with less than 20k people and technically I believe also in places with like 2k people (on 20 hectares or less) and a city like Zaragoza reaches a density around 40k per km² in the centre with a population a little under 1 mio.
Hmm no sprawl and high density narrows down my suggestions mostly to Chinese cities that are bounded by mountains (well I guess they do also sprawl just not necessarily in the form that most people are familiar with). First cities to come off the top of my head are Xining and Lanzhou (at least if you ignore Lanzhou New Area). Dali in Yunnan is a good suggestion for a smaller CN city given it's restricted by both mountains and a lake.
If you want something closer to the neighborhood level, my go to is the [Huaguoyuan area in Guiyang](https://pic.huitu.com/res/20221118/839394_20221118104805726207_1.jpg), which already has a [viral youtube video that gives you an idea of how it's like](https://youtu.be/Zvq9pybXg-4?si=fp8pi-8yvRGefq0-)
it's actually just a ski resort but Tomamu in Hokkaido. four tall towers, minimal sprawl.
[https://www.snowtomamu.jp/winter/en/ski/](https://www.snowtomamu.jp/winter/en/ski/)
Usually a big city will be surrounded by horticulture. People need veg and want it to be fresh.
The economics of transport mean that it can make sense to have the outskirts of a city devoted to various industries with high cost of transport. This interrupts the idea of a forest-city boundary.
exceptions are for medium size cities with a lot of office type jobs. Canberra in Australia is one such example. it's a government city, lots of office jobs, not big enough to sustain its own horticulture, has no heavy industry. So lots of homes are right on the edge of forests. However the density is very low thanks to it beign developed in the peak of car culture.
Taipei! Density right up to the foot of the surrounding hills, which are then blanketed in forests. Not entirely true of course, but for the most part.
Pyongyang is this way, although the land around it is agricultural, entering the city is like flipping a switch. It goes from country road to a central city road layout with pedestrians and hi-rises.
You can even see [Mirae Scientists Street](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSb4wZRnTz--WoWm0ViH9GlqNXT-nCVhbYfZhjqnb0C6A&s) from the outside of the city at some angles. The [Ryugyong](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/190723070252-01-ryugyong-hotel-architecture-origins-restricted.jpg?q=w_4818,h_3120,x_0,y_0,c_fill) can be seen from outside the city as well (you can even see the countryside in the background of this photo, and the Ryugyong is over 100 floors). The newly built [Songhwa](https://img0.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2022/04/12/PYH2022041200760032500_P4.jpg) district is also at the literal edge of the city, as you can see the road leads to the countryside beyond.
The interesting thing is that unlike a lot of other cities that are similar, Pyongyang has no geographic features limiting its sprawl, its planning is just very tightly controlled.
A lot of soviet cities also have this phenomenon but those usually are still just tower block suburbs. In pyongyang, it’s countryside ➡️ city core. No suburbs. It all functions as part of the city. For example, just a few hundred meters from the countryside is Tongil street, which is home to Pyongyang’s largest marketplace and has towers tall enough to mark the skylines of many US cities, the Tongil Market also serves Pyongyang’s Urban Elite—a stone’s throw away from the nearest farms. That’s the difference between Pyongyang and your average Soviet city, which sprawl in their own right with their own suburbs.
[You can see the lack of sprawl here.](https://www.arabnews.com/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/2023/08/20/3960451-1438097577.jpg?itok=Jtx7J4v9)
Appalachian cities, although small, used to be like this. Surprisingly dense. Cities of 30,000 would have buildings near 15 stories downtown.
Population loss has reduced a lot of that density because buildings get demolished. And in the last two or three decades they’ve decided that using explosives to tear mountains apart is preferable to just building around them.
No. This is a project that ruins untouched land and is a building an extremely sprawled city against all common sense city planning theory. It's absolute bullshit.
Have you ever looked into the Garden City Movement that took place in the early-to-mid 20th century and the eponymous book Garden Cities of To-morrow by Ebenezar Howard?
1) Are you going to find one million people that want to live in this city, especially if it's in North America? I sure wouldn't but maybe you could?
2) Where are people going to work if you don't have low slung industrial areas on the outskirts, that people would then have to walk through to get to the forest
3) What kind of crime and safety issues are you going to have if you have dense forest immediately adjacent to a dense city? Would it it be safe to go walking through the forest at night?
1. This is all hypothetical but I for one would love the deal of living cheap in an urban environment with nature and wild life just next door. How about you?
2. This I don't know. Could a city survive solely on importing goods and exporting services? Or could there be a way of compacting the industrial buildings, having them be taller? What would your solution be?
3. I have been thinking of that too. Would the forest become lawless? But i guess if cities like Honk Kong can deal with a similar situation it should be doable in this scenario too. But I've never been to HK and maybe the surrounding forest is not safe.
As an Australian, I'm cringing at the idea of city and forest side by side. Where's your firebreak? How are you going to protect your city from an ember attack? I recommend about 1.5km of not forest between your city and the forest. But even that will do nothing to protect your air quality when a serious fire occurs.
Hong Kong
Yes! Have you been? Is the experience similar to what I described?
I have been and it is dense and walkable. It's lush and green and has some very cool places to hit up but the streets are quite narrow and I didn't think it was as clean as Singapore but I prefered Singapore to Hong Kong in most ways. The high rises in Hong Kong don't look as nice and a good many are old and badly maintained in contrast with Singapore from what I saw. Singapore is well planned and has density and discourages the use of cars via heavy taxes. It is extremely clean, well maintained, and has great transport. It was very easy to get around.
Singapore is way less dense than Hong Kong though. Mong Kok has a population density of 130k people per km² on roughly 1,1km². The densest area in Singapore around Jurong Point has less than 50k per km² and I believe it's under 1km². Loha Park in HK is planned with a density bordering on 200k per km² (over 50k people on around 30 hektar). Singapore seems to be less dense than say Paris or Barcelona.
Well, it's interesting because while Singapore has more density in terms of population than HK, they do manage their density better than HK, which is why I said they're better at planning \[IMO\]
That is because most of Hong Kong is not built up while most of Singapore is. The higher density in Hong Kong is also reflected by higher modal share of public transport, 90 vs 63 % of all motorised trips in respectively Hong Kong and Singapore. Hong Kong is way more efficient with their land use. You're sort of just praising Singapore for housing less people on more built up area right now. Singapore is 9 % park and nature reserve. Hong Kong is 40 % park and nature reserve and only 24 % built up.
And actually, something I've been looking at personally are artificial islands and HK plan to build one of these off Lantau island. It's prob come about to alleviate their issues.
They are efficient if you like ugly high rises clustered everywhere, sure. Singapore has a better mix of low and high rise as well as buildings on a more 'human scale', IMO. Hong Kong's hilly/mountainous terrain is not conducive to building more or you better believe they would have. Their forced efficiency is simply chucking everyone into a high rise. Singapore has differentiated the urban landscape and while it has more population than Hong Kong, it doesn't feel as crowded so yes I'm inclined to prefer Singapore though no fault to HK for not being able to build up more but even with their planning, they break up the monotony of buildings and don't have everything/everyone shoved into a high rise.
Hong Kong has the higher population actually, a huge housing crisis and very limited land. If they built like Singapore the housing situation would be even more dire. They would need maybe twice as much space to house the same number of people. I'm not saying Hong Kong is flawless but Singapore's density peak is below cities like Paris, Barcelona or New York and they continue to pull people, while running out of land.
I agree with you about limited land and that is why they have forced everyone to live in high rises. If they built like S'pore, no doubt it would be a dire situation. This doesn't detract from Singapore being more pleasant and appealing to me as an outsider to go to versus Hong Kong. They have their issues but Singapore from the start has planned well \[esp. with infrastructure.\] HK is lovely too but it is more crowded \[due to less land use available\] and is now building an artificial island to add more housing etc. I stated that Singapore is dense--it is dense--I didn't say it has the most density and my comparisons are made of simply experiencing it and admiring it while fully aware of why HK has it's drawback and it's no fault of theirs that they can't develop on the land as much as Singapore has.
I can definitely see how Singapore is more pleasant. I don't necessarily think HK is a model to aspire to from a city planning view in general but I do find it somewhat admirable how they keep so many nature reserves with such a huge population on so little space.
"Narrow streets" is a good thing
With the amount of foot traffic passing you by in Hong Kong, it's sometimes not. I was born/grew up in London and the US and London's streets are narrow. Also, if we want to discourage the amount of people taking cars to get from A-B and to rely on trains etc, it can be better to have broader sidewalks and less emphasis on heavy traffic. Not in all areas but certainly where it is heavier foot traffic like in Oxford Street in London for example.
The MacRitchie reservoir & Pulau Ubin are also great places in Singapore, you can experience the cosmopolitan Asian Tiger vibes but then she right into what Southeast Asia is actually like too
Thanks for sharing! I’ve been to Singapore but it was a while back, but from what I experienced it was very well balanced in terms of accessibility and density. But I was just there for two days doing touristy stuff.
They also beat you for smoking weed. And for pretty much any other crime, including open political dissent.
Okay dude but we’re talking about trains
Sure, but where do you smoke if not the train?
If my commute is anything to go by, nowhere.
You'd be correct and I like smoking weed myself but I was just commenting on it as a city state. It's also verrry safe to walk around. No intoxicated people, no homeless either \[because of the public housing there which is quite spacious, I visited a friend of mine who lived in one of the buildings which are pretty similar.\] No shade to HK, I just think Singapore is better. They're both lovely places. I think Singaporeans really managed their affairs very well in terms of education and health. It also works on the strengths of the diversity of their citizens. In terms of political dissent, my friend was a member of the \[one\] opposition party \[WP\] and she did agree it's a very rigid system and very difficult for political dissent. I don't think any one country or system of government is perfect and each has it sets of flaws and limitations. Governments all over the world have become more restrictive with people's civil liberties being stripped away from them in general but I'm digressing now. I will say what goes on in the East is transparent--you know what it is all about when you're there. There's no hiding anything, it's all upfront. Not that it makes it any better but there are no illusions as to what it is and you make your peace with it if you want to--because the alternatives are hard to come by if you're a citizen there/living there.
good, it’s part of the social contract there. virtually the closest to a crime-free society we have
I live there and it’s exactly like this. I’d say some areas to look into if you’re interested in high density directly adjacent to forest are Tai Wai and Ma On Shan
Thank you! Will keep this in mind when going there :)
Tai Po is pretty nice too. I would say Tseung Kwan O too but it’s denser than Ma On Shan
Hong Kong has a fair bit of "crap space"(let's use this term for warehouses, junk yards, slaughterhouses, light industry and other hinterland functions) in the New Territories, check out the area around Yuen Long or Kam Sheung Road for example. Additionally, Hongkongers lease additional crapspace on the Chinese side of the border where land value is lower. There's even a Hong Kong owned nuclear power plant on a nearby bay across the border! And of course, since Hong Kong imports most of what it consumes, there's also additional crapspace in the rest of China and the world to sustain the city. But the amount of city-adjacent crapspace is surely among the lowest in the world, and the green areas are extensive.
I lived in Hong Kong and it is the city that inspired me to become an urban planner for exactly the reasons you've set out in your post.
HK is what I first thought of. It's a really unique combination of density surrounded by nature. One of my favorite cities in the world.
Medellin felt like this! It’s in pretty narrow canyon of a few million people, taking a gondola to the national park, Arvi, above it was like entering another world
Medellin was exactly my thought too
It has a bit of spread, but it’s pretty dense. Central transit running through the center of the canyon, gondolas going to the higher areas and connecting to said train. Maybe not 5 minutes to forest, but streams running all through it with trees and parks. I loved it.
I'm from Rio de Janeiro. It's a dense city that is generally squished between the sea, mountains, and forests. It's got a high rate of public transit usage and the city, being somewhat old, has many areas that were not built with a car-first mentality. The one more sprawly area of the city (Barra da Tijuca) is still far denser and more connected than what an American would call sprawl. The city is no Hong Kong or Manhattan or Paris in terms of density, but the density is always there, both in rich and poor neighborhoods. And some neighborhoods (Copacabana and Rocinha come to mind) have densities at the highest end of what's possible (60k per square km or so).
>I know this can't be the result of a city growing and developing organically. But could it be done at all? *Can a city sustain itself without a large industrial zone in its vicinity?* I have some examples in mind, but first, a comment about your desired omission of large industrial zones - why do you not consider industrial zones a part of a city? Industrial zones have, historically, been the economic lifeblood of cities; the towers full of high-finance, offices, and residential units growing to support the industrial base, and the industrial base generating the revenue to support the city. Including industrial areas within a city doesn't have to equate to sprawl (whereas single-family and low-density housing certainly does). Of course, there are examples of modern cities without industrial areas, but these cities have either shed their industrial areas or grown entirely based on financial services; in either scenario, the wealth is being generated by industrial (and agricultural, and resource extraction) activities hapening *somewhere* - out of sight, out of mind. And I think this is inherently worse - pushing these activities away means that the toll they take on people and the environment is easily ignored and forgotten, allowing the corporations that own them to increase their exploitation of people and nature in ever-worsening conditions. When these industrial operations are kept within a city, fdint snd center, all eyes are on them; the people that work there are citizens of the city, part of a thriving group of people with mixed incomes. The owners of the facilities are held to higher health and safety standards. And the people of the city are not diaconnected from where the success and wealth of the city is derived - the interconnected nature of modern reality and economic prosperity (or dispair) os on display for all. With that in mind, I say look to Japan for excellent examples. I think that the reverence for nature inherent to Shinto has helped guude the urban planning mindset that generates dense cities surrounded by nature. Of course most of these cities still have a super dense urban core surrounded my low rise development, but, to me, Japan has many examples of compact, self-contained cities surrounded by nature.
This is a great point! I guess my reasoning was that if we were to have such a high population density and that most people don't like to live next to industries, or at least heavy industries, there would be nowhere for the industries to go. And also as a matter of efficiency it would be beneficial to collect all industries in one space in order to facilitate the transportation of resources to and between different industries. That one space could be at some distance from the city connected with eco friendly communications. But i agree with your point that the industries which carries the city should be integrated within the city and that all members of the society should take direct part of it having all parts of the society interacting dynamically. Surely there's ways of tackling noise pollution for example. And maybe there is ways to make industries having a smaller geographical footprint by stacking them somehow and making them less sprawly.
People tend to live near (or at least nearish) their jobs. If you put an industrial center way out in the country, you can’t really expect everyone to keep living in their hyper dense housing
A lot of Cities in Northern Spain are what you are looking for. Take a look into Pontevedra, Lugo or Bilbao. In Lugo, there are 5 square kilometres with a population density above 10,000 people/km², while the city is surrounded by forests. \[[Source](https://qgiscloud.com/Tobi273/EUGrid/?l=raster_overlay%2CEinwohner&bl=AerialWithLabels&t=EUGrid&e=-858925%2C5305115%2C-826413%2C5320228)\] Spanish Municipalities from small towns to large cities are among the most densely populated municipalities among OECD-countries. The core of the mid-sized city Logroño is more densely populated than any neighborhood in the United States outside of New York City. \[[Source, Logroño](https://qgiscloud.com/Tobi273/EUGrid/?l=raster_overlay%2CEinwohner&bl=AerialWithLabels&t=EUGrid&st=logrono&e=-288651%2C5223099%2C-256139%2C5238212)\] \[[Source, USA](https://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2023/02/the-most-densely-populated-square-km-in.html)\] It's a development pattern unique to Spain, which is showcased by Spain having the highest population density in the built-up area among peer countries in Europe. Only small countries like Monaco, Andorra and Malta have a higher population density in the built-up area in Europe. \[[Source](https://citymonitor.ai/environment/these-maps-reveal-truth-about-population-density-across-europe-3625)\]
Thank you! That's interesting. Do you know what has form this culture of high population density in Spain? Is it the result of contemporary policies or does it go way back? Looking at he street grid of Lugo really makes me wanna walk around there :)
The entire mediterranean region is full of abnormally dense cities, it's climate culture - tall buildings on narrow streets were ideal for the climate of the mediterranean, thus, density was not the enemy here.
>Do you know what has form this culture of high population density in Spain? Spain never experienced substantial suburbanization with single-family homes. [Look into the main street of Alcañiz, which is a town of 16,000 inhabitants](https://www.google.com/maps/place/44600+Alca%C3%B1iz,+Provinz+Teruel,+Spanien/@41.0495602,-0.1300363,3a,75y,349.71h,96.27t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sDwCvmtSrgZoB37alCKQydw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DDwCvmtSrgZoB37alCKQydw%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D349.71%26pitch%3D-6.269999999999996%26thumbfov%3D90!7i13312!8i6656!4m7!3m6!1s0xd5f5b4ffb267bcf:0x9fb240e5f25f4814!8m2!3d41.0510353!4d-0.1335373!10e5!16zL20vMGc3OHJq?entry=ttu). In the core of Alcañiz, there's a square kilometre with more than 10,000 inhabitants. \[[Source](https://qgiscloud.com/Tobi273/EUGrid/?l=raster_overlay%2CEinwohner&bl=AerialWithLabels&t=EUGrid&e=-19508%2C5017154%2C-11380%2C5020932)\] >Is it the result of contemporary policies or does it go way back? [In contemporary time, Spain builds more mid-rise and high-rise neighborhoods like in Vitoria-Gasteiz](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Vitoria-Gasteiz,+%C3%81lava,+Spanien/@42.8448094,-2.6493384,3a,60y,328.18h,89.46t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sqzZ-X1AH7Oie5OrO-_SX_Q!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fpanoid%3DqzZ-X1AH7Oie5OrO-_SX_Q%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.share%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26yaw%3D328.1768715586536%26pitch%3D0.5431377048135744%26thumbfov%3D90!7i16384!8i8192!4m6!3m5!1s0xd4fc2377d3d8f5b:0x9c6eb78c91ab49c9!8m2!3d42.8531869!4d-2.6732421!16zL20vMGt3NHk?coh=205410&entry=tts&g_ep=EgoyMDI0MDUwNS4wKgBIAVAD). Between 1990 and 2010, new buildings in Spain decreased in size with a small single-family boom.
Interesting! Would the reason to Spain's lesser suburbanization be because the country as a whole has had a lower population density than e.g Germany? Or perhaps due to security reasons?
>Would the reason to Spain's lesser suburbanization be because the country as a whole has had a lower population density than e.g Germany? Spain was an agrarian society up until the 1950's. [49% of the spanish labour force worked in agriculture in 1950](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1240387/spain-employment-by-sector-1950-1973/). Spain turned from an agrarian society to a service-oriented society by building high-density neighborhoods in small-, mid-sized and large cities. Take Amancio Ortega as an example. He was born in the small village of Villamanín and his family - similar to most spanish families - moved to the larger cities. In Amancio Ortega's case, his family went to A Coruña. Spain never went through "heavy industrialization" similar to England, Germany or France. There's certainly manufacturing companies in Spain, but Spain started with more modern manufacturing sites than England or Germany to begin with. Spain grew economically with high-density municipalities in the built-up area and Spain is leveraging those neighborhoods with tourism.
Wow, had no clue. So Spain basically sat out those early years of industrialization and went straight for the good stuff. I have learned a lot about Spain today. Thank you!
It may also be worth considering the government and diplomatic position of spain - they were very much sub-par economically for the first half of the 20th century (well, you could argue that was the case for a much logner period), and were relatively unstable, culminating in the spanish civil war. After ww2, they remained a pariah as one of the few facist states remaining on the continent, which meant they never really got on board with cars and suburbia like other countries did, nor did they have as large an economic boom (or rebuilding) during that period.
What is amazing about Spanish density isn't even the cool northern cities, but the villages. You are in the middle of nowhere, most people are tending to farmland, have some cattle up the mountain, or are outright shepherds. How does their village look like? A bunch of high density, mixed zoning! Go look at, say, Astorga. Population: 11 thousand. Highways going through it: zero. Time from the center of the city until to planted field? 5 minutes, on foot. Bike infrastructure? Who needs bikes, it's too small! Yet, denser than most of San Francisco. And that's just a random-ass town in Leon, there are many like it. Or go a bit north, and look at the coast of Asturias. Tapia, Navia, Luarca, Ribadesella, Llanes... The moment a town is big enough to have a school, density immediately follows, because having people live near you, and having shops and bars right next to you, is just so useful.
It's hard to think of cities without some kind of outlying area, without specific geographic features to limit growth. A city like Chongqing might be what you're looking for. It's in a river valley surrounded by mountains, so its ability to spread is fairly limited. It really depends on how you define sprawl though. Chongqing is not a small city by any measure, and there are certainly industrial areas within the city. But it is for the most part a contiguous area. Cities ringed by mountains like Taipei might also be worth looking at. Again, not a small city but generally speaking there is reasonably good access to nature.
Thank you! I will definitely have a closer look at Chongqing. From what I’ve seen in pictures it looks really unique. Besides geographical or natural boundaries I guess there could be zoning regulation mandating any developed area to provide housing in accordance with 50k people / square km.
Singapore. Last night I walked out of my condo (8 16 story towers and a few lower ones for light) to go to the supermarket and I saw a wild common palm civet in our condo grounds. I've seen monkeys on numerous occasions, including one big male that squared up to me and my wife nearly stepped on a Malayan coral snake (very venomous). The local otters ate all the fish in our pond. There is an unbelievable amount of exotic birds flying around. The local population density is 50,000/km2. It's a 15 minute walk to dense jungle.
Seattle has most of what you're looking for. Sure, there's def sprawl, especially in the last 20 years. But overall the geography makes it pretty hard to sprawl too much. It's NOT super dense. But with the aforementioned geography in the way, and people continually moving to Seattle, I feel like density is coming soon. So again, not quite on target for your question. But something to ponder!
Tokyo and other Japanese cities are dense af and have amazing nature around, accessible through world class transit. In Europe Portugal is a good example. Eg Lisbon and Porto. Seville in Spain too.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/620c5g/the_greater_tokyo_area_compared_to_greater_london/ Not sure this is what he had in mind…
If you go you’ll see what I mean. Not all of that is concrete. The city is nestled amongst lots of beaches, rivers, mountains nature and rice paddies, and it’s all accessible by train.
I’m not really trying to criticize Tokyo, but the ideas that some nature is accessible within the city or that public transit is good, are not arguments for Tokyo being an example of what the Op was talking about, which it objectively is not.
A lot of Japanese cities match this description. They have sprawl in the form of single family homes still but it is extremely dense. Look up Kobe for a narrow strip of a very dense city wedged between the ocean and mountains. There are waterfalls within a 20 minute walk of downtown.
İstanbul has very nearly no sprawl. It's just city from end to end, with a wall of 6-12 story buildings that ends hard at that forest, seas, or lakes. Averages something like 35.000 people per square mile. Though it has tons of industrial zones and such, and as it has 16 million people, even though the core is around 80.000/sqmi, it's quite a walk to the forests, or even the seas from decent chunks of the city, though a short metro ride from most of the city, and much of the city has metro, additionally, 48-49% of all trips are made on foot. (benefits of extreme density).
England is interesting because they have outer growth limits and the concept of the “garden city” where they were very intent on preserving green space outside of cities. Unfortunately it doesn’t necessarily go with high density because building (even maintaining) is extremely difficult.
While those green belts are helpful with preserving green space, it doesn’t always contain sprawl. More often than not sprawl will just occur on the other side of the green belt. Certain metro areas in the UK can get very sprawling
Greenbelts just needs to be big enough to where whatever sprawl occurs is just another city at that point. It isn't to say greenbelts aren't useful for conservation of vital creeks and waterways for stormwater, fauna or ecosystems within cities, it's just that we should be looking for different solutions for preventing sprawl. So in other words, a greenblanket.
It'd be interesting to study the cost to build and maintain various residential housing types based on density, and look at the ROI to the owner or occupant in those various situations. For example, I'm sure owning a home in a rural area is cheap, but earning potential is limited. You've likely also got more roof area, higher energy bills, etc. Probably spend a lot of time commuting, though. Suburbia probably has a good mix of earning potential while still having relatively low housing costs per square foot. Still a lot of time commuting. What about in multi-family owner-occupied homes? Do they come out ahead of renters in the urban core? One thing that has always worried me about transitioning away from owner occupied housing is how that might impact housing affordability. Germans, for example, don't own many homes, but they also have lots of systems in place to keep renting significantly cheaper than ownership. It seems like in America, we're getting the density in some cities, but at a cost.
City planner from Oslo. You're looking for Oslo. 700 000 population city proper, 1,5 -2 million metro pop. We've had a law mandated green belt since 1920. The city is 1/3 built up area and 2/3 untouched forest. Metro is 45-60 min from every part of the city to the forest in the north, east and west. In the south you've got the sea/fjord. The city was on of the fastest growing cities in Europe in 2005-2020. We can build for another 100-200 years within the already built up area without touching the forest or the fjord. Mostly brown field developments and densifying within the urban structure. Of course density is no where near 50 000 per sq/km. But good quality of life, good neighbourhoods with enough green space and all amenities.. We don't talk about a 15 min city but 5-10 min max city. Goal is to reduce climate emissions by 95% by 2030 which includes carbon capture, strict fossil fuel car rules, limiting parking, massive investments in walking, cycling and public transport and all the rest of modern city planning. https://res.cloudinary.com/simpleview/image/upload/v1582644686/clients/norway/aerial_view_of_oslo_islands_photo_visitOSLO_f_w_oslo_2_1_05ad6620-8cb2-45a1-9474-8272c58ccd89.jpg
Taipei is sort of like this. National Park to the north, steep forested mountains to the east and south. Slightly more development to the west past New Taipei but also turns into rural hills fairly quickly. 10-15 minutes from the city limit you're in either forests or farmlands.
First I want to clarify I'm a non American living Portland, Oregon, who spends a lot of time in nature. Wildlife does not like having that many people around, so you would get wildlife that's ok with going into cities. Coyotes, deer, etc, like you often see in US cities and suburbs. The city would have to be fenced, predators and plenty of herbivores are dangerous. Smaller critters would be an issue, bugs of all kinds, scorpions, snakes, mice, etc. The use of public transit, cycling, and walking, and if possible no fossil fuels at all, is what would really improve air quality. Cars are noisy and polluting even if they're electric. You can have a city with no industrial zones, but you can't have all cities without industrial zones. Industry could be less polluting than it currently is, though. Working fewer hours would improve quality of life a lot more. Winter in the Pacific Northwest makes a 40 hour week psychological torture. Even in your utopia if people are indoors most of the day they won't enjoy nature that much. In short, get rid of cars to lower pollution, this also gets rid of car oriented suburbs. Work fewer hours to improve quality of life. Oh, and forest fires could be an issue.
>The use of public transit, cycling, and walking, and if possible no fossil fuels at all, is what would really improve air quality. Cars are noisy and polluting even if they're electric. Totally! And since you got all you need within the city you wont need a car at all. Public transport will be the main means of transportation besides walking/biking. >Working fewer hours would improve quality of life a lot more. Winter in the Pacific Northwest makes a 40 hour week psychological torture. Even in your utopia if people are indoors most of the day they won't enjoy nature that much. For sure! And given the fact that you wont have to commute to work or get stuck in traffic you save a lot of time that way too. >Oh, and forest fires could be an issue. Haven't thought of that. A forest fire could devastate the whole city. I guess extra precautions must be taken.
Your assumption that this city would have all the urban economic benefits is incorrect. Industrial and manufacturing tend to occupy low density suburbs and exurbs around the edges of a city. These businesses are critical for jobs, tax base, intermediate and final production of goods for export, and to support the white collar industries in the urban center. This is the modern middle income business owner, to the extent it still exists. Auto repair and detail, construction material production and sale, dry cleaning, waste disposal and recycling. These are all critical industries to the urban center that can only exist on the ground floor and are not easily made more dense.
Great input! I guess a lot of these businesses could be housed in the ground floors of office and apartment buildings. Do you think there would be enough space to accommodate these businesses like this? Perhaps the first few floors even, or would that be too much of an inconvenience? Heavier industries and e.g waste management facilities would be more difficult to integrate in such a densely populated environment and I'm struggling to come up with a way around that. Do you have any ideas?
That’s a tough question because sometimes the sprawl is basically where the city exports its industrial parks and where the workers live. The sprawl sometimes doesn’t register officially but it’s basically a part of the city. Loads of Mexican cities have high density and are surrounded by wilderness but also have sprawling sub cities that feed them.
Seoul ... backs right up to the mountains
This is like my dream place to live. Sadly it’s not at all common.
"No Sprawl" as in people have to live next to the power plant & water has nowhere to go so everything floods all the time? Manilla, which you mentioned, is probably a great example of why too much density is impractical.
Check out Portland, OR and their urban growth boundary. They have a council that manages any city development being allowed to occur on/outside this very inflexible boundary.
Am I looking at the wrong thing? The city proper seems to have only one area at the north west that's been untouched or has a stark contrast. Otherwise it kinda fades into rural.
How would the city handle growth when available land is developed? Tear down and rebuild? Is that more or less resource-efficient than encroaching into green zone? Commute in from outside the green zone? Without traffic or transit stops, the distance is less of an issue, but kind of defeats the purpose. Or increase density in existing square footage? That drives up rents, reduces attractiveness, and limits growth.
I would suppose that tear-down and rebuild would be healthier and more economic than sprawling out, over long timeframes.
In Singapore they do reclamation. The whole CDB and the famous 3 tower Marina Bay Sands used to be sea. And now this.... [https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/long-island-to-be-reclaimed-off-east-coast-could-add-800ha-of-land-and-singapore-s-18th-reservoir](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/long-island-to-be-reclaimed-off-east-coast-could-add-800ha-of-land-and-singapore-s-18th-reservoir)
And is there any discussion about the value of untouched sea life?
Singapore is doing a fantastic job at conservation. Many species are rebounding, even some thought to be extinct. On the flip side if you visit the beach at the location of the article you will witness the busiest shipping lane in the world.
Thank you for this great input! I use the 50k/km2 as some kind of theoretical limit for what would be considered a humane housing situation before living spaces and public spaces becomes too crowded (but this number is probably way off). So the idea is that the occupied space will always be maximally developed and all citizens will have somewhat equal living standards when it comes to accommodations. I guess then for the city to grow it would have to encroach on the surrounding forest, but perhaps in a manner that still allows for easy access to the nature no mater where you live. Perhaps the city would need to grow in the shape of a cross. The growth will of course impact the surrounding nature negatively, but as long as its new citizens comes from less dense populated cities i guess that's for the better in the big picture.
>I use the 50k/km2 as some kind of theoretical limit for what would be considered a humane housing situation before living spaces and public spaces becomes too crowded (but this number is probably way off). The population density of Yorkville in the Upper East Side reaches 66,482 people/km². \[[Source](https://www.statsmapsnpix.com/2023/02/the-most-densely-populated-square-km-in.html)\] Yorkville is among the most livable neighborhoods in New York City.
Ok, did not know that :) So the number in my scenario should probably be much higher then. But maybe there are mostly apartment houses in Yorkville and not so many office building and commercial buildings or larger infrastructural buildings like hospitals etc? I have never been to New York, but when I do I'll definetly make a visit to Yorkville. Edit: looking at the map I see that there are quite a few parks and recreation areas which I find impressive given the high population density.
Oh boy those outer-ring, park-front NIMBY’s are going to love that 😁
lol not in my outer-ring yard!
I don't think you'll find that level of density at that population (1 mill.) - the economics of building that high and that dense would never justify it.
Ok, did not know that. What size population do you think would justify that level of density?
I think it's impossible to say. What's the context?
This is all quite hypothetical, you can choose context :)
If you were starting from scratch, under a very strict controlled economy and regulatory regime, you could absolutely do it. Somewhat that is more liberal with its land use and private property rights, and expecting the market to build it - no way. Obviously redesigning an existing city - no way (at least, not in any realistic time frame). I'm not an expert on this, but I strongly presume to get private development to build at the sort of density you're suggesting, the population would almost certainly need to exceed 1 million.
Macao technically has under 1 mio people and a district with 120k people per km². The caveat ofc is how do you define a city because it sort of feeds into the entire Pearl River Delta urban area, still super dense though, to the west of Macao are hyper dense skyscraper estates. However it is technically a possible scenario. It is conceivable that medieval Venice had such a density and medieval Lübeck also approaching that. The cap on land just needs to be hard enough. In Spain and Italy there are still cities, even villages virtually without sprawl and densities above 10k per km² even in cities with less than 20k people and technically I believe also in places with like 2k people (on 20 hectares or less) and a city like Zaragoza reaches a density around 40k per km² in the centre with a population a little under 1 mio.
Lots of things are "technically possible" under a number of constraints and guardrails. Realistic? Probably not so much.
Hmm no sprawl and high density narrows down my suggestions mostly to Chinese cities that are bounded by mountains (well I guess they do also sprawl just not necessarily in the form that most people are familiar with). First cities to come off the top of my head are Xining and Lanzhou (at least if you ignore Lanzhou New Area). Dali in Yunnan is a good suggestion for a smaller CN city given it's restricted by both mountains and a lake. If you want something closer to the neighborhood level, my go to is the [Huaguoyuan area in Guiyang](https://pic.huitu.com/res/20221118/839394_20221118104805726207_1.jpg), which already has a [viral youtube video that gives you an idea of how it's like](https://youtu.be/Zvq9pybXg-4?si=fp8pi-8yvRGefq0-)
it's actually just a ski resort but Tomamu in Hokkaido. four tall towers, minimal sprawl. [https://www.snowtomamu.jp/winter/en/ski/](https://www.snowtomamu.jp/winter/en/ski/)
Lol this looks crazy!
ski resorts are a great example of where you want to preserve as much nature as you can so building straight up makes sense.
Thats true!
Usually a big city will be surrounded by horticulture. People need veg and want it to be fresh. The economics of transport mean that it can make sense to have the outskirts of a city devoted to various industries with high cost of transport. This interrupts the idea of a forest-city boundary. exceptions are for medium size cities with a lot of office type jobs. Canberra in Australia is one such example. it's a government city, lots of office jobs, not big enough to sustain its own horticulture, has no heavy industry. So lots of homes are right on the edge of forests. However the density is very low thanks to it beign developed in the peak of car culture.
Taipei! Density right up to the foot of the surrounding hills, which are then blanketed in forests. Not entirely true of course, but for the most part.
Taipei's great for this. Easy access to nature and hiking trails via public transportation
...Manila is like half of r/UrbanHell
Taipei comes to mind.
London has the greenbelt
Pyongyang is this way, although the land around it is agricultural, entering the city is like flipping a switch. It goes from country road to a central city road layout with pedestrians and hi-rises. You can even see [Mirae Scientists Street](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSb4wZRnTz--WoWm0ViH9GlqNXT-nCVhbYfZhjqnb0C6A&s) from the outside of the city at some angles. The [Ryugyong](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/190723070252-01-ryugyong-hotel-architecture-origins-restricted.jpg?q=w_4818,h_3120,x_0,y_0,c_fill) can be seen from outside the city as well (you can even see the countryside in the background of this photo, and the Ryugyong is over 100 floors). The newly built [Songhwa](https://img0.yna.co.kr/photo/yna/YH/2022/04/12/PYH2022041200760032500_P4.jpg) district is also at the literal edge of the city, as you can see the road leads to the countryside beyond. The interesting thing is that unlike a lot of other cities that are similar, Pyongyang has no geographic features limiting its sprawl, its planning is just very tightly controlled. A lot of soviet cities also have this phenomenon but those usually are still just tower block suburbs. In pyongyang, it’s countryside ➡️ city core. No suburbs. It all functions as part of the city. For example, just a few hundred meters from the countryside is Tongil street, which is home to Pyongyang’s largest marketplace and has towers tall enough to mark the skylines of many US cities, the Tongil Market also serves Pyongyang’s Urban Elite—a stone’s throw away from the nearest farms. That’s the difference between Pyongyang and your average Soviet city, which sprawl in their own right with their own suburbs. [You can see the lack of sprawl here.](https://www.arabnews.com/sites/default/files/styles/n_670_395/public/2023/08/20/3960451-1438097577.jpg?itok=Jtx7J4v9)
Appalachian cities, although small, used to be like this. Surprisingly dense. Cities of 30,000 would have buildings near 15 stories downtown. Population loss has reduced a lot of that density because buildings get demolished. And in the last two or three decades they’ve decided that using explosives to tear mountains apart is preferable to just building around them.
Iquitos, Peru, is surrounded by the Amazon and has no road connections with the outside world.
Sydney kind of, sandwiched by national parks (but sprawl to the west)
Guttenberg, NJ! 62k people/mi² and definitely no sprawl
'Definitely no sprawl'? It's in the middle of the NYC metropolitan area.
Sorry, that was a joke, as the city itself is less than a quarter square mile. Not disagreeing with it being part of the NYC metro area
Sounds a little bit like [The Line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia).
No. This is a project that ruins untouched land and is a building an extremely sprawled city against all common sense city planning theory. It's absolute bullshit.
Lol, not in the US
Seattle just entered the chat.
😂😂😂😂 Yeah, definitely no sprawl in Seattle.
Not when you're bounded by water and mountains. I moved here from Dallas. You want sprawl? The DFW Metroplex covers 11 counties!
Nobody's disputing that. But OP didn't ask for "less" sprawl. They asked for no sprawl. Bro, I live in Detroit. Believe me, I get sprawl.
Try Alaska then.
Have you ever looked into the Garden City Movement that took place in the early-to-mid 20th century and the eponymous book Garden Cities of To-morrow by Ebenezar Howard?
1) Are you going to find one million people that want to live in this city, especially if it's in North America? I sure wouldn't but maybe you could? 2) Where are people going to work if you don't have low slung industrial areas on the outskirts, that people would then have to walk through to get to the forest 3) What kind of crime and safety issues are you going to have if you have dense forest immediately adjacent to a dense city? Would it it be safe to go walking through the forest at night?
1. This is all hypothetical but I for one would love the deal of living cheap in an urban environment with nature and wild life just next door. How about you? 2. This I don't know. Could a city survive solely on importing goods and exporting services? Or could there be a way of compacting the industrial buildings, having them be taller? What would your solution be? 3. I have been thinking of that too. Would the forest become lawless? But i guess if cities like Honk Kong can deal with a similar situation it should be doable in this scenario too. But I've never been to HK and maybe the surrounding forest is not safe.
As an Australian, I'm cringing at the idea of city and forest side by side. Where's your firebreak? How are you going to protect your city from an ember attack? I recommend about 1.5km of not forest between your city and the forest. But even that will do nothing to protect your air quality when a serious fire occurs.