Originally Posted by
jon c.
Consider the opposite. What happens if most of the rural population moves to the city. This tends to happen when rural economies collapse and the results are not pretty. I think in a moderately well functioning society, human population distribution works itself out pretty well.
If there's sudden migration due to a crisis that's a different thing.
What I meant is that if your region had evolved differently so that all of the 200,000 or whatever people living in Tallahassee instead lived on rural lots, they would need a lot more resources than they do now. They would need a lot more buildings - a separate house for every family with no apartment blocks or row houses to reduce land or materials. They'd need a lot more roads - instead of 10 houses sharing 300 feet of frontage, each house might have 300 feet of frontage. They'd need a lot of schoolbuses. They'd have to use a lot more of the existing farm or wildlands. None of them would walk to work or the store and fewer would bike, and those who already drive would drive farther. They'd need to own more cars. You'd have a lot more neighbours and would have a harder time finding a place where you didn't have to see them or deal with them, if that is what you like about your current location, and the spring air would smell a tiny bit less fresh.
Now apply the same logic to the millions currently packed into Chicago, Philadelphia, etc. That's a lot of lost idyllic rural solitude.