Stimulated by this fresh study I RANT a bit (following my Contra Polis series I'll re-publish soon in this revamped site, the migration is not that automatic) on how we can improve our lives without consuming more non-renewable Earth resources, building a modern society instead of the old capitalist one for the sake of few dictators, born in the neomalthusianism where the nazism was born as well.
It would be interesting to have a study on how much consumption in Western society would plummet if we de-urbanise, the only realistic way to implement the Green New Deal, by building A-class houses and sheds, with photovoltaic up to the latitudes where it makes sense, and enough energy storage to last from one day to the next, in order to charge batteries in a rotating smart-grid, absorbing the maximum production capacity as a network, which can thus be lower than the instantaneous demand for energy. With integrated EVs (bi-directional usage @400V with p.v. battery inverters). By mandating remote working and with it a healthy digitisation of society, causing the failure of the so-called cloud+mobile mainframe model of the present era in favour of a decentralised, distributed one, from currency to contracts, passing through digital identity without giants, with free software and open hardware de jure, thus wiping out, over a few decades, the enormous energy consumption of climate control in large buildings, the inefficiency of commuting to the office, the inefficiency of poor digitisation with all its associated costs, the inefficiency of home-delivered ready meals with their thousand layers of packaging, the waste of fast tech and fast fashion for the city, and IT that moves from proprietary rubbish to desktops with an 8-10-12 year operational life, unlike the LIES of OEMs (UN 2024 PDF report on tech and sustainability) who lobby the United Nations for short-lived mobile devices to increase sales and piles of waste to maximise profits.
It would also be interesting to truly weigh the total cost of a large condo/high rise, not considering "land occupation" as "consumption" but rather the waterproofing of vast areas that leads to the death of soil humus, with the earth turning to sand, the inevitable formation of sinkholes, subsidence, the alteration of the water cycle due to massive extraction and discharge, etc etc etc versus scattered light settlements. I've done some rough calculations and I estimate that a large building costs almost 40% more in resources, far from being a saving.
It's a pity that for the sake of four kleptocrats who want the majority to have nothing so they can own everything themselves, for which they need the modern city, despite admitting it's impossible (PDF, Club of Rome 2025) people, including researchers, don't even consider these aspects, which aren't that hard to appreciate if one thinks about them without prejudice.
I suggest to see how all modern smart-cities projects fails resulting in extremely costly wasted resources, start form the original Fordlândia to modern Neom, Songdo, Masdar, PlanIT Valley, Lavasa, Ordos, Santander city, Toronto Quayside (Google Sidewalk Labs), Amazon HQ2, Egypt new Cairo still nameless, Modi's Indian 100-smart city program, Arkadag, Innopolis, Nusantara, Proton City, … I suggest also to recall that reinforced concrete, the main construction material of modern cities and civil infras was considered eternal and we lower the bar to 50 years some decades ago… Check this nice video if you know nothing about that topic.