Capping population for cities, a thought experiment

>Hypothetically, would capping populations of cities and towns be a better way to utilize resources as well as distribute resources so everyone can have a basic quality of life?

Isn't that what many cities in the US are doing with their zoning laws? The "cap" is being enforced by the number of housing units that's available (although not perfectly), and the result is that the housing units available are rented/sold to the highest bidder. Whether that resulted in "everyone can have a basic quality of life" is... doubtful.

So your main problem here is that cities (and larger cities) are more efficient than less dense places. Less energy use, easier to get around etc.

Sure it takes an hour to get to the other side of town but you have millions of people reachable in that hour. If they were all in small towns the number of people in a one our radius goes right down.

Also think carefully about why big cities are growing everywhere and villages, towns and small cities are struggling.

They are already doing this by refusing to build. It obviously isn’t working unless you are a homeowner looking to maximize the value of your home.

Most people want their kids to be able to live in the same area, and their extended family to stay there. Both may move away if prices go sky-high due to low supply.

I’m not sure why so many people are anti-city. If you don’t like living in a city, don’t live in one. But please don’t handicap all of us trying to start our lives because you want everything to stay the same as it was two decades ago

Er, why?

I live in London. It's quite big. Why would I want to cap its' size? I live there precisely because it's big; it has great connectivity.

~0.2-0.3% of the world population are within an hour or two of my front door. If that were 0.5% I'd be happier.

Do you like to live in totalitarian world, where some statesman make decisions, who should live where, etc?

In democracy world, exists local government system, where all citizens of one community could make agreement, for things like you say. Because in this case, community is closer to private property, where (co)owner(s) decide, how to use their property.

Some democracy countries implement this idea so extensively, that their central government MUST make agreement with EVERY community on foreign policy.

That's all. For example, Switzerland live with such idea, and north European countries mostly share it. Because of this, Switzerland situated inside Europe, is not member of EU, and similarly, Norway is also not member, but have special agreement with EU.

And yes, Switzerland is one of the most effective countries in the world.

I was thinking about something similar: What would happen if the countries were smaller (with a maximum of 1000 people per country)? it would be more appropriate to call them micro-countries, the 1000 people would work together so that their taxes go to improve only the quality of life of those 1000 people, the social and economic laws would be specific to that area, people would have the opportunity to be someone important in their community and not simple fish in the ocean like most workers are...

The logistics in many areas would be very simple... The current governments cannot solve all the problems of a country because the countries are gigantic and each area has its own problems... All this brainstorming could be turned into a more serious analysis if you had the help of experts in sociology, politics, philosophy, history and economics.

Decentralizing populations was an official policy in many countries prior to 1980 or so when I think there was a lot of concern major cities would get shot up in an atomic war.

Also there was a sense that countries like Britain and France had too much power and wealth in London and Paris and that something had to be done about it for the sake of fairness.

Post 1990 the fear of atomic war is reduced (e.g. there are dramatically fewer missiles and warheads) and the triumph of Reagan and Thatcher brought us globalization, so now London has to beat New York as a financial center for the good of the whole U.K... In the last few years there is talk of "leveling up" the hinterland but let's see where that goes.

Unless you force people not to give birth, no you can't cap the population of a town.

If you mean restrict new residents from moving in once some limit has been reached, sure that is possible, but ultimately what issue does it solve?

Since no one has mentioned China yet,I'll go ahead. What you are suggesting was done in China through the hukou system, to devastating effect. Paired with top-down mismanagement of farmland, it led to widespread famine.

Arizona tried to do that around ’02 or so with a bill that made new developments have to show where their water was going to be sourced from.

Didn’t pass and then the building frenzy leading up to the economic crash was a sight to see.

Centrally planning cities is famously a great and successful idea.

It’s a great idea. The vast majority of cities and towns in America are far too small and too sparse to support a basic quality of life. Yet we all pay for their ridiculously inefficient infrastructure and are slowly dying of their vehicle-miles-traveled. Many of their economies would collapse in weeks without federal transfer payments. Consolidating this sprawl into fewer, larger, more sustainable, more productive places would be a huge improvement for most people.