These two images are typical rural sprawl compared with Central Manhattan, on the exact same scale. Now I'm not an expert on these matters, but something tells me pollution, traffic and logistical problems would be much, much worse is everyone had their own plot of land.
Yeah, so just throwing out there almost all data shows that in general, people who live in cities have a greater carbon footprint than people who live in the country and have to have a car to drive everywhere. It's wild to think about.
Know why? People who are rich live in cities.
The negative outcomes of living in the country with literally no public transit are yes, bad and inefficient, but to make the biggest dent in the shortest amount of time we need to be targeting the excess wealth of the top 10% in the imperial core so they can't have huge homes, huge cars, private jets, yachts, helicopters, so they can't drive/fly as much as they want, eat as much beef as they want, consume as much product as they want, etc.
This story doesn't address the cost of all the transportation infrastructure to build out ot these towns in the first place. The cost of vertical farming greens/pigs near cities vs the cost of rural farming communities will reach a tipping point. At least at the level of lifestyle most Americans would be willing to accept with sprawling Walmarts and cheap fast food, some towns might become unviable to live in. Ghost towns can happen in any generation.
The whole rewilding thing might happen if urban areas start attracting even farming talent to the cities.
IDK comrade, the carbon cost of transport of food is not really that big in comparison other factors. The idea of increasing the capital intensity of farming by an order of magnitude (without, mind you, a commensurate decrease in labour requirements) by farming vertically doesn't really sound like a realistic goal in our lifetime we have other things to deal with that are more important.
Citation?
cities are a key contributor to climate change, as urban activities are major sources of greenhouse gas emissions. Estimates suggest that cities are responsible for 75 percent of global CO2 emissions, with transport and buildings being among the largest contributors, while it's estimated that only 56% of people live in cities
It is really the suburbs that jack up the carbon footprint of urban living in "developed" countries, as actually living directly in the downtown core in an apartment with subways and no daily highway commutes is actually pretty good.
In developing nations the pattern is more clear
if you're counting suburbs the whole thing is garbage
This post feels unnecessarily hostile comrade. I didn't make suburbs cities I'm just sharing some studies on the subject