Regulations to halt urban sprawl are indeed mostly inspired by raw capitalism: create a land monopoly and then milk the poor Muppets that have to live there. The Queen of England is the best exponent of this horrible tactic. Listen to > https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/audio/2019/jul/05/who-owns-england-podcast The French revolution forgot to cross the channel and now the poor Britons today are still paying the price.
If we look at the total energy sum there is a clear spatial ratio between the volume of a home, the materials needed to build and insulate it and the minimum roof and facade area needed to solar fuel it (electric & thermal). Function of the specific location the home is situated in. All pretty straight forward calculus.
Where it becomes more interesting is food and transportation.
The current food chain will have to change when the price of oil goes up. Hall & Klitgaard explain that the ratio in US food is around 10 unit energy input (farming, fertilizer, transportation- sometimes refrigerated, waste, etc) for 1 unit of energy from that food. That can’t last. It will all have to transform to regenerative farming and agroforestry, which includes livestock. But these types of farming need more space than intensive farming. But that space can double as local parks and backyard gardens.
So a bit like going back to the Garden of Eden:)
As for transportation, a certain level of density is needed to support functions like schools, hospitals etc. Much can be learnt from rural India. Here instead of all gravitating towards a single nucleus, a main city, they organise so as to form together a type of polycentric “city”.
And indeed the technology for SEV’s :) solar electric vehicles is here. I’m among the first batch of Wefunder citizen investors in Aptera. > https://www.aptera.us/
