I'm skeptical of the standard explanations of how the entire population of the world could fit into Delaware/Alberta/the Grand Canyon, and so forth.
Since the Grand Canyon is about 2 miles deep and 10 miles across, this means a 40 mile cross-section of the Grand Canyon should suffice to fit everyone on earth. Kinda leaves a hell of a lot of the planet for supporting that community, no? ...Yeah, but who wants to live in the center of a giant cube, 4 miles from the nearest window? What about hallways, garbage collection, water, waste, air conditioning, and so forth? For starters, a giant cube wouldn't have nearly enough surface area to provide all these things to its inhabitants, and their standard of living would be severely impacted.For giggles, I’ve drawn a 9 square mile map of my neighborhood. If we equally distributed California’s population, each mile would have to support 1/9 of 35,484,453 or 3,942,717. If we further divide this by 256 and 256 again, we’ll get the number of stories we’ll need, which is about 60.
So, in a little area of my neighborhood in California, if it was sixty 20′ stories tall, is sufficient to house EVERYONE in California in their own 20′ by 20′ by 20′ home. A family of 4 would have 4 of these cubes or 24 10′x10′ rooms!
So how much volume would be needed to house everyone in the way to which we've become accustomed? Well, probably about as much we're currently using. There's already an existing incentive structure that discourages people from spreading too thinly, because as functional density increases so does efficiency. As efficiency rises people become more wealthy. As people become more wealthy they want to live more luxuriously. As people want to live more luxuriously they require more space -- and thus desire a lower functional density.
It's a feedback loop that regulates population rather well, as can be seen in wealthy countries with dropping birth rates. That's the real reason that population growth isn't going to be a problem in the future, not because we could all live in Canyon Cube Condos (or "C-cubeds" as I call them).
Just imagine trying to transport food for 6 billion people into (and the waste from 6 billion people out of) the Grand Canyon. Imagine the damage a single nuke could do, or a brownout
> Yeah, but who wants to live in the center of a
> giant cube, 4 miles from the nearest window
The Borg. Resistance is futile.
This brings to mind John Brunner's great science fiction novel of the '60's - Stand on Zanzibar - which kept track of world population growth in its Dos Passos' manner by noting that "the human race would be knee deep off Zanzibar."
I had originally heard the argument as 1/4 acre per person = the world population living in Texas.
I checked this and it works if you make no concesion for rivers, roads, industry, etc.
Still, the massing of the world population would reduce the need for resources and ease societal growth. Still, who would want to live with that many assholes around you.
"..or a brownout"
Sounds exactly like the waste management that would result from everyone living in the grand canyon.
Transporting food. Feh. Apparently you've never heard of Soylent Green.
The point of the math whimsy is just to show how ridiculous the Malthusian doomsayers are. Of course you would need more room per person. The point is just to demonstrate that there's plenty of room.
When you live in the city, it's easy to get the feeling that the entire world is crowded. When you live on the prairie, like I do, it's easier to appreciate just how much room there is.
Your point about functional density is interesting. If population density has been controlled by tension between the urge to concentrate for efficiency and the urge to rarify for luxury, then doesn't the information economy mean that people will steadily spread out for luxury as their importance of their physical location decreases? (This is not a theoretical question: My sister-in-law's husband just spent three weeks in his remote cabin in the mountains of Colorado telecommuting to his managerial job in Connecticut, courtesy of a satellite internet connection.)
And how does this population density question affect overall population? They don't want to crowd their houses with children? I don't get it.
My guess is that wealth decreases fertility because producing and raising children is a lot of work and discomfort. When our citizens are so comfortable that it's a major inconvenience to lose the TV remote control and be forced to change the channel by hand, it isn't hard to see how a woman could have second thoughts about:
1. a few months of morning nausea, followed by
2. a few months of fatigue and muscle aches, followed by
3. a few hours of excruciating pain, possibly accompanied by major abdominal surgery, followed by
4. months of poor sleep, little dirty diapers, and the hospital bill, followed by
. . .
135. buying the kid a car, followed by
136. paying for college.
Mind you, I'm not saying it isn't worth it. In fact, I'll definitely say that it is worth it. I've got two of my own and will probably have a third. (Of course, I got a pass on the first three of those steps.) But I can see how someone in 21st century America could decide the whole scary ordeal isn't worth it, and go back to watching TV.
I should add to the first part: The Malthusian doomsayers are wrong on the idea that we will run out of room through overpopulation, just as they were about food. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that there isn't some other resource that will prove problematic. Water is a concern, for instance.
BB: Working in a cabin in the woods is an excellent example of how functional density can be increased without increasing actual density.
the world population living in Texas.
Texas is 267,000 square miles. If you figure the Earth's population at 6 billion, that works out to 1240 square feet per person, or about 5,000 square feet per family of 4.
That doesn't account for roads and stuff, but if we included New Mexico, we'd have a population density of 17,000 people per square mile - the same as Singapore and Hong Kong have. I don't know what living conditions are like there, but I assume the food distribution and waste management is at least tolerable. Not that I actually want all those people here, but it does help put some claims in perspective.