this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 months ago (19 children)

Replacement level for whom? To sustain the current population? Population growth? Status quo? Corporations?

Not sure any of these things are needed to be sustained at the levels we are currently at.

Someone please explain the detrimental repercussions of not having an equal to or greater than replacement level.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (16 children)

sure, i'll try to explain briefly

"infrastructure", i.e utilities, transport, bureacracy etc is built to support a fixed population within a city. when the population increases, you have to build more infrastructure to support this new population. this part is easy, you expand your cities at their edges, extend the utilities, and set up satellite bureacracy offices if needed

the tricky part is when you lose population. the correct move would be to demolish this infrastructure and scale back. trouble is, not only would this be wasteful, but it would also leave gaps in cities, since population decline doesn't happen uniformly from a city edge. where exactly, do you demolish the infrastructure?

it would be nice if we live in a theoretical world where, as population decreases, the cities magically shrink at their edges, and suburban residents move closer in to fill the gaps. this is not how populations deplete from an area though (example: detroit, 1950 - 2020)

you will struggle to convince a suburban homeowner at the edge, to sell up and move to one of the gaps left behind by population loss. if we stop short of rewriting laws to force this population transfer, the end result is that you are left with a "swiss cheese" city. houses and settlements will be spread so thinly that becomes impossible for city goverments to provide "infrastructure" without providing it at a loss. your local goverment will then take debt and bankrupt, the infrastructure will collapse through lack of maintenance, and then the remaining population suffers big time

i want to note that i am not using this as an argument to support population growth. i am only stating the big, big problem that needs to be tackled somehow, concerning population loss. some big-brains are going to have to work this problem through, fast!


side note: interestingly, most NA cities are spread out and sprawled so much that they are suffering unaffordable infrastructure bills already, despite not suffering the effects of population loss. goodness knows how these places will fare when population loss actually hits...

[–] [email protected] -2 points 7 months ago (4 children)

the tricky part is when you lose population. the correct move would be to demolish this infrastructure and scale back. trouble is, not only would this be wasteful, but it would also leave gaps in cities, since population decline doesn’t happen uniformly from a city edge. where exactly, do you demolish the infrastructure?

Nah, it's simple. You just redraw the city limits. Tell the "winners" they're now part of the countryside and reduce their public transport to one train per hour.

The problem will solve itself :P

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

If only there was public transport to be taken away

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