the most sustainable home is not what you think // busting the BIGGEST eco myth 

As an urban planner I found this video refreching, but also frustrating. Not because I don't agree with what is said, but becaus it is so hard to actualy get to see the changes. The reason beeing that for the last 40 years our cities has been developed individualy one progject a time. If you are a land owner or project developer you dont want to have half of your plot as a green park. There is no monney in it. So you would not plan for that. And if the goverment said it should be a park here, or green spaces the developers would hust ignore that plot until the goverment changes their mind. Slovly we har though seeing a shift with more regulated green spaces, buss and metro projegts, bikepaths but it is painfully slowly. I am looking forward to the day when the cities are built for humans and not cars, but that is unfortunatly a long way to go.

I live in the countryside in the French Alps 1) I have public transportation until my work - mostly because is a public obligation to have transportation for students to go to school and the high-school is 20min from our village, near Grenoble, so we do have public transportation! And it's like this in all of the Isere region 2) we have a producteurs shop in the village with a lot of stuff and a big organic shop less than 10min by bus 3) for the recycling, we have two recycling points and the recycling centre is actually closer to my home then to the big town 😂 All this was important when I decided to go live in the countryside. I truly love working from home 3 times a week, that I can grow a big garden, that I have lots of trees (and fruits)... And I have saved lots more cats 😊 It's really less stressful, I have a need to travel less and enjoy my home and the countryside!

As an architect I totaly agree with everything you said. When we bought our house 10 years ago (build in 1935) and introduced ourselves to our neighbours they were surprised that we said we wanted to live sustainable in the city. They also the idea you should live on the countryside for that. But as we live close to a trainstation we don't need to own a car. And we still have a small garden to grow some food!

Fully communal living isn’t for everyone. I’m neurodivergent and have ptsd, and I need a completely private space in order to feel comfortable and safe. I have lived in big share houses most of my adult life, and sometimes the thought of interacting with people keeps me from leaving my room to make food or do chores or it keeps me from coming home. (I hate the feeling of being perceived). I like the idea of an apartment building with a communal kitchen and hang out space, but I want those spaces to be something that you opt into when you’re feeling like it and not a hurdle between me and my bed or food when I’m having a bad day. Bring on the solarpunk cities of the future, but let me have a little home of my own.

i know it's selfish to want to move somewhere less sustainable, but i grew up listening to drunk people yelling at night and loud music and a busy city. honestly i'm just tired of living in a city. i want to not hear sirens all the time, i want to be able to sleep without neighbors yelling on the phone, i want to be able to open the windows at night in the summer without listening to horror movie osts and screams. i want to be able to go for a walk without feeling suffocated by the sheer amount of people on the streets. i'm so tired. i know it might be selfish of me but i just want a house with a small garden close enough to a city to not be ultra isolated. i just want some rest. i find the city beautiful but i can't stand it here anymore. i grew to hate living in the city i love.

I live in NYC and hate it here, constantly being surrounded by people has made me realize how much I actually don't like people. The constant yelling, screaming, fighting, not to mention the high rate of poverty and all the joys that come along with that namely you know, crime. The constant blasting of music, all the drug addicts and drunkards strewn about, the vacuousness in constantly being pressured to consume and buy, and the very limited nature, all the while you live in a small box that consumes 50% of your income. Maybe this is "good for the environment" but it's no way to live. There's a reason people sought refuge in the suburbs. The dream for many is to get away from the city, just about every person I know is miserable and hates it here, and this is reflected in people's hostility, and the crime rate. Even if you got rid of cars like many city planners want to do, there's still the issue of crime, homelessness, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, lack of space, and poverty; illiteracy, being prone to violent outbursts, and capitalist hell. If being a better environmentalists means I have to want this than I'll gladly be forfeit my environmentalists card.

From Montreal here, in a neighborhood that has been working for many years to create what we call "micro neighborhoods" where everything you need is very close, like a "15-minute city". It's awesome 👍

Thank you for this video! I was really surprised by what you shared. Ive always thought of really living sustainably as something I can't do until I have a higher income, but because of my low income, I have lived in rented apartments, I bike and take public transport everywhere, and I rely on secondhand goods. I'm learning to make my own clothes with secondhand fabric because I can't afford new clothes and I usually only have meat with dinners. This video was kind of a revelation for me. I've always felt bad for not doing more and told myself I'll do better once I finish school and get a nice job. I think instead I'll focus on what Im doing now and what else I can do to both save money and live sustainably.

I flinched a little bit when you suggested we should all live in smaller apartments and use communal spaces more - but then I reminded myself you're speaking to a global audience, and probably that comment applies more to Americans. I'm in the UK and for a golden period between approx. 1940 and 1970 we had strong state building design guidance about minimum domestic space/size needs - buildings from this period tend to be sized so well (rooms are generous enough to be flexible, but small enough to heat efficiently, and layouts are really functional). I've lived in a 1930s flat that was designed for a middle class bachelor with a live-in servant - so it was actually cramped for 2 people to share, as the servant's spaces (kitchen and bedroom) were little more than large cupboards. And homes from the 1980s onwards often have really awkward layouts and inflexible spaces (because developers were maximising profit by reducing costs per square foot) meaning they "age" poorly in terms of how our domestic needs have changed over the past 40 years. Our new government should bring in space standards again, but something that "turns off" people from living in apartments is a concern space will be cramped with no quick access to the outside. We live in an apartment block built in 1959, and it is one the best homes I've lived in (and I've lived in incredibly modern, "top of the market" apartments in London, as well as growing up in the countryside in a very small town in a fairly sizeable - for the UK - 120 year old terraced house).

Depending on what we mean by sustainability, I would argue that no room for trees/green areas isn’t sustainable. Climate change adaptation is unfortunately a thing that needs to be considered, and trees make a significant difference to the heat in the area.

Thank you for this video! I’ve always been a city girl. Although, I grew up in a car centric city in the DR, I’m now living in a “walkable” city in the South of France. I always hear people around me talking about their dreams of moving to the countryside, but it has always given me anxiety. Being so isolated and car dependent is a big no no for me. I hope we can develop more sustainable cities in the future. 🌿

One thing to also consider in this ever heating world is the effect of needing more AC in small city apartments. Before moving to a small countryside town (i use train to travel and bike, no need for a car) I lived in a stone apartment building from the 50’s, which was fantasticly ecologically heated during winter, but with the summer heatwaves it was IMPOSSIBLE to get the inside temperature to drop once it got past 24c, and during the heatwave when it was 28-33c outside for weeks, I could not get it down from 28c inside. No AC, and even if you open the windows during the night and have the blinds on during the day, it doesn’t help as the stone in the building has collected the heat and keeps it in. Shading the buildings with greenery would help, but putting AC in these apartment buildings will crank up the electricity use to sky high during summers so thats not very sustainable. I moved into an old log-house from the 40’s with only fireplaces as the heating, but houses like these keep a pleasant temperature during heatwaves so no need to even run a fan in the summer. And taking good care of old buildings is always better as they’ve been built from materials that last basically forever if you just keep up with the maintanence. Unfortunately many new logbuildings are built with mixedmaterials and plastic within which means they’re not going to stand the test of time. This is always the challenge with countries that have 4seasons, you need to let the building breathe to keep it healthy, but when it breathes it means you’ll loose some heat so it’s not optimised, but it works and has worked for hundreds of years. Also, if the electricity goes down, everything in your house still works. I’d never want to live in a ”smart home” being dependent on a computer.

Love this ! I won’t ever move back to the city again as my mental and physical health has been so much better . I think a huge thing is how terrible apartments are in the us . Overpriced , moldy , rude neighbors, no recycling ect. Since moving to a home out in the middle of nowhere I have been able to afford to survive, gotten more than 3 hours of sleep a night ect. The apartments also had terrible access to public transport and constantly towing our car. Also most us cities don’t let you buy apartments you are stuck renting with rent increases every year 😢 I’ve been able to compost, garden, (all secondhand and organic using home compost) plant a pollinator garden and so much more . Alternately I know so many people who love city life and I’m glad it works for them . I hope there is a future for room for both!:) ❤

Future tiny house homesteader here, we didn't really pick this, we literally can not afford to live in any city in the US! We scored super cheap undeveloped land with the onetime payment in 2020. We will be self building, literally, not paying contractors but with our own hands, and/or converting sheds. The local area has no building codes or rules about what you can build on your land. We can't afford rent anywhere, we are basically homeless until we build things. I would love to live in a city, but my disability won't even cover rent on a one bed apt much well utilities! Sometimes survival trumps sustainability, and that sucks! Yes a fireplace is more noxious (maybe, still have coal plants around here) but wood can be acquired for free.

As a city person I am not surprised and am happy for the validation. To me, the countryside sustainability myth is more aspirational and about privilege than helping the environment. Of course sharing space and resources is more sustainable. Also the infrastructure is more sustainable. Schools, hospitals etc can serve more people and those people drive shorter distances. The roads, sewer systems, water systems also serve more people. When I would invite my friends from outside the city to an event such as a concert in the park, they would complain "But the traffic!". My response was, I don't have traffic. I'm already within walking distance. It's the people who aren't already within the hub who have to deal with the traffic and all that entails. Unfortunately, I had to move to a suburb. I am trying to adjust.

If we all head off to live in the countryside, it won't be long before there isn't any countryside.

Commercial agriculture may produce less carbon to grow, but transportation to large cities increases the footprint quite significantly. Most sustainable is to have large towns that can have land nearby that produces a large amount of it's needs. I personally can't live in built up areas, I am an extremely light sleeper and suffer over sensory issues with noise. We live tiny , in the country sharing other people's land.

Noise is an issue. Thr constant rumble of a city is wearing. Covid showed how much racket we habitually make. That is my main reason for preferring less densly packed

Thank you for this! I live in a car-centric city that suffers from urban sprawl. I was aware of a lot of this from calculating my carbon footprint years ago and finding it was about 1/3 home utilities, 1/3 car travel (in a small car) and 1/3 everything else put together, including food and banking. Lately I've been getting taken in by the idea that growing one's own food is of the utmost importance. Thank you for the reality check that by moving to a central apartment I have in fact maneuvered my life into a pretty sustainable place already, and undoing that to grow my own veggies doesn't actually make sense. The home and the car use are HUGE impacts.

I wasn't surprised by this. I lived in a high-rise condo for seven years and never once had to turn on either the heat or the air conditioner. It stayed at a comfortable temperature ambiently. One mail delivery stop serviced 320 residences. One garbage stop did the same. One water system, one boiler system, one electrical system, one roof, one foundation. There was no need to own a car, because everything was accessible by foot or public transportation. I realized while living there that a high-rise condo building is one of the most energy efficient living configurations around.

My wife and I have a backyard urban vegetable garden and have done so for 15 years, still using the very same EarthBox containers we started with. We only use a small amount of organic (manure) based fertilizer at the beginning of each season. The only pesticide we use is neem oil, on an as needed basis. We use a drip irrigation system to optimize our water usage. We grow primarily herbs like basil, rosemary, and mint, as well as tomatoes. I feel pretty good about the environmental impact of our gardening practices, and it is extremely satisfying to supplement our shopping with delicious fresh herbs and vegetables from the garden.

After 20 years of living your ideal, I'm trying to leave. I live in a tower block, in a 15 minute town, with great public transport. It's not as much fun as you seem to think it would be. Medium and high density living kinda sucks because of the neighbours, and there being no rules restraining what the neighbours are allowed to do or how much noise they can make. Other city problems can be fixed, as you say in the video. But for some reason this one never gets mentioned...

The ideal situation would be living in a walkable city, but I can't deal with having walls that are directly connected to my neighbors (anxiety triggered by loud and sudden noises). So I think we also need to take into consideration that some people can't live in very dense areas and make sure there is a robust bus (and train!) system in the more rural areas.

My house was built in 1980 and my husband and I plan to live here for another 30-50 years.

"the average building has a lifetime of 39 years" blew my away. Why are we building so much? There are so many buildings already! Repurpose that shit!

I was so confused when you mentioned peat, I have had my home garden for more than 5 years and I have never touched peat. :') I then went to Google where peat is used largely used and oh wow my eyes open. No urban gardens do not need peat.

I agree that probably the best option is a city planned with more communal spaces and like that Colombian city where they brought in way more green to help cool things down, but living in Taiwan, the heat island effect is INTENSE particularly in the Taipei downtown because it’s literally in a basin surrounded by mountains. Modern apartments should be built with more awnings, bigger balconies that might support a mini garden, and have rooftop gardens and most vital of all, adequate soundproofing and no shared air ducts so your bathroom fan isn’t bringing in second hand smoke. Capitalism isn’t good about doing any of that yet and housing is already so expensive people are unlikely to push hard for something that will just drive housing prices from unattainable to …lolsob.

Impact series suggestion!!!!:::::::::: I would love to see your evaluation of people living on wheels. It's very popular now to have a van, schoolie, camper, and live in campground situation or stealth camp in cities, or find a land owner who has space and needs help. There are also tiny homes on wheels or container houses. In my situation, I live in a pop up camper that I can transport with my truck. I work at festivals around America for two months at a time about 30 mins out from the city limits of larger cities. There are so many factors that go into each situation so I know it would be hard to calculate. Although I travel thousands of miles several times a year for work in a non efficient truck, I find that I actually drive less this way. In America, most cities aren't built to support public transportation or biking, walking situations. So when I find myself needing to live in the city, I drive more commuting to work and to friends, and to nature. Here in this community, I live in the same property as work, and as all my friends, and many times the nature I seek is steps away. My home has very little material compared to a normal apartment. Most of the year, I live with no actual running water or power, so I am very conservative of the energy I get when I charge a small battery, and fill and haul my water by hand. I do find that there are not many options for recycling on the road unless you travel to cities with more inclination for drop off recycling centers. And for many, food is definitely not grown when living on the road. I hope to one day build by own tiny home with repurposed materials and live in a tiny home village with my closest friends making a homestead, where we barely ever need to leave our land for necessities. I think this might be the in between we need as humans. A group who can combine resources and efforts, while working with nature, in nature. Get community, food, water, shelter, and connection with nature, all in one place? The idyllic scene you painted here was not so much a community living off the land, but an individual or nuclear family, who is so far from others that they have to still drive to work, friends, and many grocery items too. I'm curious how much the impact would change if you shifted that tiny off grid house in the country, to community of small homes, permaculture gardening together, a big closer to a town but still living off the land

Great video! We're so here for the nuance. Re-thinking our built environment is essential to our climate goals, and doing it right will also result in better homes for everyone, whether in the city or the countryside. In the EU, heating and cooling in residential buildings account for 44% of households' greenhouse gas emissions. In 2020, the heating and cooling sector was responsible for about 9% of the EU's total greenhouse gas emissions. That's why we're advocating for decarbonisation by 2040!

I live in the states and there is no way I would ever live in a city again. It’s ugly and always feels dirty and unsafe, and there’s no space of your own. I feel incredibly claustrophobic with the buildings towering above me, blocking my view. Not to mention having three kids during covid was rough, even with a yard for them to play in. Being cooped up in an apartment all day with small children, unable to even go out for a walk, much less to a park would have driven me crazy. Being sustainable is awesome, but you also have to do whatever is best for you and anyone who may be dependent on you. For me, that’s doing as much as I can where I am, and that won’t be in a city.

Thank you for the truth of the plus and minus of an idea. No rose colored glasses but truth. Keep making us all think about our existence in the world not just another marketing ploy. ❤❤❤

The reason for rural living to be “not sustainable “ is if the farmer has to work off the farm. As a child from a farm we didn’t travel daily and we grew most of our food where as having your food trucked from far away places can by no means be truly sustainable. So many of these so called “green or sold as sustainable “ are far from it. Consuming less and buying truly “natural “ goods is my way of being good with our environment. Buying all these gadgetry requiring batteries that contain mined rare minerals, that I must add don’t last long. Not to mention all the really unsustainable unhealthy synthetic clothing, made with plastics, harming us and our environment. Plants need carbon to live to give us oxygen. Someone explain as the govts are pushing for so called “green energy “ at the same time as blocking out the sun to slow this heat problem? Who’s really winning at this game of marketing? I feel we’ve all be bamboozled into this marketing scheme. Fear sells that’s why this whole “world ending” propaganda is being pushed. These folks that’s intentionally pushing these it, (not those who are just naive, we all have that at times), flying private jets, buying huge houses, and having no problem with polluting our planet while increasing their profits all the while telling you and I that we need to live less squished into cities to be sustainable. We need rural, small communities, and even small cities. We need to do the best we can to source locally grown food and handcrafted products. We need reusable items instead of all the disposable products, beyond simply cups and straws. Natural dyes to avoid poisoning our waterways. I’m an original environmentalist, not a carbon footprint believer. We need carbon for life on our planet. All I see with this theoretical “footprint” is only to tax us to death, because carbon is part of life. Go back to science. Carbon to plants, plants then oxygen, oxygen to people and animals. FYI wood burning for heat creates ashes. Those ashes put back into the soil adds minerals for the soil thus minerals for plants that grow your food thus giving people and animals the vital minerals we need. High vitamin and mineral containing food we won’t need to spend money on supplements. All the best.

Thank you, Gittemary, that's a great overview. I suspect, like most on your channel, I already knew this - preaching to the converted. There is a gulf between optimised eco living and human needs. I live in a communal development of 40 houses & flats. It's the most hostile environment I've lived in because one anti-social family has destroyed the community. For this to work, there needs to be a recognition that anti social people need to be removed and placed in lovely sustainable prisons.

Counterpoints : less pessimism (thus increasing the likelihood to make positive environmental change), less bureaucratic drama BS if you want to do even the most basic stuffs (such as rooftop gardening), LESS CONSUMERISM that was caused by all of the stress/insane social ills in the city. Even if rural life is boring/stressful your medicines are right in front of you/just walk a bit further into the woods than before, thus there's little/no need for consumerism (the closest minimarket that sells even the most basic products are 20 min drive anyway). Plus all of your concerns for rural life are easy to fix : 60% - 90% sustainable communal living (reducing the need to travel individually by cars) + vernacular architecture (reducing cement use) + horses/other animals as subtitutes for cars (if possible) + customizable water management system(s) (literally impossible to control if you live in the big city).

I think good news about that statistic on home gardens is that the lower emissions methods are also lower cost - compost is one of the most expensive things in home gardening, and pesticides cost a pretty penny too! I'm lucky that I have enough space behind my townhome/rowhouse-style apartment that I may be able to start a little compost pile, and we live backed up right to the woods, so my main pest control is the local birds and pest predators! Since we started putting out birdseed I've hardly had anything eating my leaves. I think it is important for people to remember that on a small scale, and without learning to reuse recycle, vegetable gardening on your own is not a money saver but a hobby that will cost you money, because mass monoculture planting is so vast and cost-optimized (and often subsidized)

The US county I live in has a mid sized city, a few small cities a couple tiny cities and several unincorporated "villages" but by land use is mostly rural. There is a lot of bicycle infrastructure connecting the cities and villages to each other and more being built. I'm pretty sure the entire county is within 10 miles of a city or village. In areas even more isolated, bicycles night not help but in a lot of places bicycle/wheelchair infrastructure is going to give a lot of people increased mobility. Unless we are going to surrender all control over to corporations, there needs to be people living in farming villages and the surrounding countryside and those people need access to quality services.

I'm actually not very surprised, since I grew up in the countryside, too, and we had the same problem of having to drive everywhere. At some point, every person in my family had their own car. When I got my job in a big city with great public transportation, I decided to retire the only car I had ever owned (and driven for half my life), find an apartment (in an older, bigger complex and with good access to bus, underground and local trains, a mall around the corner, and several parks and green spaces nearby) that was also relatively close to my workplace, so I could manage to get there by bike. It was a very deliberate decision taking all of these aspects into account in order to live a more sustainable life since we are fortunate enough to afford it and my partner and I sifted through hundreds of ads to find a few apartments meeting our criteria. Shockingly, some of the apartments we looked at had no place for bikes whatsoever, not even outside, but our house has a room in the basement with outside access ("Fahrradkeller" in German). I think our neighbourhood is very close to the walkable city ideal. Due to great sound insulation of the building itself and the buses going by being electric, we also don't have to deal with too much noise, even from our neighbours, and we don't even need to turn the heat up too much, benefiting from the heat of all the apartments around us. Yes, apartment life can be both sustainable and comfortable.

Seattle, WA USA has a City-run urban gardening program that hosts over 90 gardens (P-Patches) where resident gardeners care for their own small plot but collectively share seeds and gardening equipment (and care for some of the shared spaces). No commercial fertilizers are permitted. I think its a great model and I know other cities do this too. I like the points you make about gardening but also that there are simple solutions to lower emissions! Thanks for the lovely video.

Okay, small living spaces might be "more sustainable" but also claustrophobic, empty, sad, depressing and distressing. We are after all humans and not roaches.

I've moved to a small town in Germany in a somewhat rural area (1,5 hour drive to the city). I have noticed most people don't know much about crops or wild gardening and only cover their gardens in lawn and some laurel hedges to make it look neat. No meadows, plants for wildlife, etc. People are often surprised at the amount of crops I've grown with very little money and a lot of DIY. Especially the elderly seem to want to make their yards as neat as possible and then wonder why the one crop they're growing is getting eaten by wildlife. The apartment buildings all have an outside area which is a lawn no one ever uses. In contrast, my university friends in the city make their tiny balconies as green as possible and utilize every space to plant stuff. It's fun to look at. Also, the people in the city tend to care more about the enviroment than the people in the countryside. Things like zero waste or being accepting of veganism. People like to joke about me "Germans grow flowers and lawn while Asians grow crops". I'm half Asian and in Asia I've seen people using every small space to grow stuff like spring onions.

I just have to point out: a single person having a car, but growing most of their own food would probably have lower emission, than a city where nothing is produced and everything is delivered with trucks/per person. People in the countryside have to ride everywhere, but they have less reasons to drive everywhere if most of the things they need is already in their home.

I'm the chorus, so I loved this. I live in under 280 sq ft, in an urban area, without a car, and I've been a veggie for over 50 years.The wonderful "sustainable" houses far from town drive me nuts.Not only do they cost a fortune and require lots of materials, but just getting the materials and workers to the site burns up a huge amount of gas. Here's an unfortunate additional problem, since you brought up the environmental costs of the building industry. Ready? Almost everything built in the past 70 years should be torn out and replaced. This includes most of the urban automobile infrastructure. San Francisco has already torn down and replaced 2 sections of the old freeway system but we would be better off removing even more of it. Urban areas can't heal from those wounds until the roadways are removed and replaced by something more in tune with urban life. This was a great video and you are really on the right track. Now I want to see if you got any irate comments.... EDIT: Many of the complaints about city living could be addressed with better windows and better sound insulation.

We’re not just escaping the traffic, the noise, the garbage, the smog… we are also escaping the drugs, the homeless, and the hectic pace of life. I would rather die than live in a city over 20,000 people again. I’m a mountain girl and need country roads, greenery, animals, trees, and wild spaces. A cultivated park with kids playing ball isn’t bad, but it’s not at all the same. We don’t have to choose between grass or concrete? We do, though. We aren’t free to let plants grow tall or let dandelions thrive. Sad, but true. Choose to live more sustainably wherever you are. I cook on an electric stove many have owned before; it’s 98 yrs old! I wash clothes in the sink and hang them to dry. I take a bath (not daily, far from it) enough with a basin half full. I use a deodorant with a paper wrapper and few chemicals. I save and reuse fabric. I buy little, fix much. I eat less, no soda chips etc in the house. I bake. Yes the bakery can make a cake more efficiently, but not with fewer ingredients and save me money. There are so many things we can do to be more sustainable. Look at everything you bring in, and do better. ❤

Omg thank you for so much for making this

I think the biggest mental barrier for people is the lack of public spaces in existing metro areas (outside of the ones doing a good job with urban development). This was further ingrained during the COVID lockdowns since people were stuck in their homes. You don’t need much space if there are cost-free shared spaces you can inhabit for free outside of your home that are enjoyable to be in and that have good public transport. But if there aren’t, you need hobby rooms, a garage, a yard, 1-2 cars, storage space, etc. For me, I really enjoy woodworking and gardening. If there were better and more public spaces for those activities (maker spaces, community gardens, etc.), I’d downsize in a heartbeat, but that also leaves you vulnerable to public policy decisions that you don’t have much control over. Additionally, rent should not be the predominant housing solution. It leaves people with zero equity so they have to pay perpetually inflating costs for their housing. There should be more condo-style housing arrangements and apartments should be niche market options available for people temporarily inhabiting the area. You still pay for the maintenance/taxes of the property through communal associations, but you still eventually pay off the mortgage portion of your home.

My house is 68 years old! I live in western Canada so that is very old by our standards. It has been renovated/modernized. I got a heat pump installed earlier this year to replace the old air conditioner that came with the house and greyly reduce the use of the natural gas furnace in the winter.

I live in an appartment right now, renting, and I'm daydreaming about living in a village for privacy and nature related reasons. However I do understand the simple physics that heating a private home in winter will be way more expensive than heating the appartment I live in right now due to a dumb heat loss in every possible direction. That's just heating, not including everything else mentioned in the video. So for a while I'm looking for opportunities to have joned tiny homes for 4-6 families with common yard, as it seems to be the best option for me to still have some degree of privacy but better energy efficiency compared to an isolated house.

I live in developing country, and i feel like its such a different reality. First of all, your "underconsumption" is our "normal"😅 in the countryside we have kinda good infrastructure, mb because we are still at agricultural stage😂 but also we are not as spoiled: i dont have any shops in my tiny village, and if i need to go buy some bread to another village and it will take me around 1.5 hours - im ok with it😅 though when im in the big city i feel like im wasting so much resurses and also time that i can spend on gardening as its sooooo rewarding! But i support green cities and roof gardens and all that anyways 💚

Unfortunately here in Ireland apartments are few and far between, and urban housing in general is more expensive than the already overpriced housing here. As things stand, the only realistic debt free solution on my income, whenever I move out of my parents home, is getting a small plot of land in the middle of the countryside and building a small cabin, ..possibly off-grid,. .depending on how PV panels and batteries compare to grid hook-up costs.

I work as a R&D engineer for a modular house/dwelling builder. We make houses and apartments in our factory and than transport it to location, which means we can also move it in 20 years if needed. My focus is on making it all more sustainable, but something that is very difficult is the materials needed to make a house safe. You need plasterboard for fire safety, and when building high appartment buildings (4 floors or more) you almost always need a lot of steel. So I think the impact of one house (even though small) is bigger now than it was a couple years ago...

Savannah, Georgia, here! We live in an apartment, but very far from the type described. We live on the second floor of a carriage house that was turned into apartments, it is old, poorly insulated, and requires multiple air conditioning units to run at a time in order to not be a legitimate health risk in the extreme heat. However, we will be moving to Virginia soon and purchased a house! I definitely already knew that this was not necessarily the most sustainable thing to do, but as two parents who work from home and have a toddler, Not having that space is simply not an option for us if we want to to keep our jobs. I’m looking forward to finding ways to continue to minimize our impact in this new phase of life!

Excellent video, you really shed light on the complexities of these situations. I want to add that I cannot ever live in an apartment, whenever I"ve lived in an apartment, my spirit feels caged. I would love to buy land in the city, but that is much more expensive than I can afford, so likely, if I buy land, I would have to either relocate entirely to a much more affordable city or just buy it somewhere very remotely.

I'm glad to have found a video that explains the simple point that a city can be much more efficient than people being spread out in the countryside. It's sad to see, however, that many people seem to be unable to arrive at this obvious conclusion themselves...

Thank you for this video! I don't live in the country side but I think this does not apply to a lot of places in Switzerland : you have public transports everywhere, you have to bring to the recycling center your own stuff (no one is coming to your door in most of the regions), we don't have big big companies that produce enormous amount of veggies ( you talked about this mentioning CO2 of a home garden) and we have restrictives laws on pesticides and so on

How much does it cost to get food into the cities? How much does it cost to maintain the city infrastructure? What is the carbon emissions of a city compared to a rural area 10x the land area? The sustainability lies in the people’s ability to do two things: consume less energy and consume less products that require logistics. The inefficiency lies in the individuals willingness to make small life changes.

Pesticides? Professional growers of fruit spray up to 20 times per year. No person uses this in their garden ever, because you'd essentially have to not have job to do it - which would sort of make you a professional grower. Few people i know use much peat anymore - it is, again, used by large scale producers. Heating with a fireplace on a homestead is done with 'waste' wood, that is crooked pieces not good enough for construction wood, parts of fruit trees removed for maintenance etc that the industrial producers of the same products will most often just dump into a pile and burn in one go. You need much less transport when you already have most of what you need just growing in front of the house. Also, it is questionable if housing and transport are the biggest issues - it is important to factor in erosion that is caused by modern farming practices, some farms are many feet lower then they used to be (as it is left bare after plowing etc), the carbon content is just released into the air, leaving the soil with very low carbon percentage.

When I lived in a very rural area there was no trash pick up. Everyone brought their trash to a comunal recycling center. Because they did this with their vehicles it used way less energy than a big garbage truck. And and the farthest points in town were about four miles from each other, and there was no traffic, so gas use was minimal. Plus because no one really enjoys loading their car with garbage it incentivized people to create less waste. And there was a spot at the recycling center where people would put things they would have thrown away but could still be used. There was no fast fashion and no fast furniture or anything of the sort. Clothes were passed endlessly from family to family and furniture was always scooped up by someone else as soon as it was available. Most things were recycled not by a recycling plant but rather by a community member. And most things were made by local people with local resources. I met the man who built my house. All water came from wells and was disposed of in septic tanks. Everyone knew how to use them and cared a lot about the quality of the ground water, and the quantity as well, because it was a shared, essential, and limited resource. Despite not being zero waste or aesthetic or anything like that, people in rural communities care deeply about their impact on their environment and use considerably less resources than people of more means in urban communities. There is a lot of truth to this video in that isolation, car dependency, etc. is problematic. But there are many rural communities that are more interdependent and use significantly less resources per capita

Something that helped me a lot about recognizing what city life can be like in the future is that cities themselves aren't loud, cars are! So much of the background noise where I live would go away with more sustainable transport ❤

It is extremely important to note our environmental sustainability issues are institutionalized, society-wide, and cannot be fixed by our individual actions alone. Change has to come through organized action and incentives to develop environmentally sustainability on a society-wide scale. I've heard a lot of people discussing urban "green spaces" and while I think that's a great start, it still promotes this understanding of "humans" and "the environment" being two separated things. We need to work with the reality that human living is inherently environmental. We should be designing urban ecosystems, places where human impact is intentionally directed to have a mutually beneficial relationship with the local ecosystem. How do we design our infrastructure, our transportation, or our housing with that concept in mind? I admit, that will definitely require some time and creativity, but it's where we need to be headed as a global community.

I live on a 70 hectare property and I 100% agree with you. We created a nature reserve out of degraded farmland and burnt forest, accesible to anyone, for people with disabilities we made a trail. We grow our own organic food, planted 40.000 native trees 18 years ago and protect the existing forest from ilegal deforestation. All that has a ( environmental) impact as well, we have to drive sometimes with our car to get to places, we burn firewood and unfortunately don't rely on gas that comes from other places. As we are far from a city unfortunately we can't go to restaurants and always have to cook our own food. For most people in the world who live in the countryside it is not a choice but a not so idealistic reality sometimes.

Big cities are like a cancerous tumor in the countryside consuming enormous resources for people who do nothing else than work in the service sector and go shopping.

If you are self sustainable and dont need to travel to meet friends or go to work, then living countryside is sustainable. But practically no one lives that way. But also people in city use a lot of energy demanding services just because they are easily available: movie theaters, swimming halls, shopping etc. Also lot of apartment buildings use a lot of energy for warning "dead space" ie. stairways, cellar space etc.

Moved to the countryside to my boyfriends house two years ago. One thing that's also a struggle is shopping for other things than the average food shop. We need to order many things online because the other option would be driving minimum half an hour by car to the next bigger city to hope you can find what you need there (mostly you don't and still need to order it after that).

No I hate cities. I really really really hate to have a lot of people around me. I can't deal with all the noises 24/7. I live in a small village and in american terms its a tiny house, in the netherlands its a familyhome for 4 people. I do notice people who live in the city get the flu more often, come across very stressed out. There is also more violence which i dont wont my kids to het involved with bevause i had to live 'sustainable'. This video gave me the ick, sounded very klaus scwabisch

Person in the country 🙋🏼‍♀️ I so miss being in town where I can walk or bus most places

We currently live in a very small apartment in a large building near the metro aka as sustainable as it gets. But the flat is basically just one room and there is four of us in 250 sq feet (24 sq meter), so I am really looking forward to moving to a somewhat bigger house (think 80 sq m) in a smál-ish city. We will still be able to walk to most places or take a train to mayor cities close by and the house itself is build to be sustainable: heat pump, solar panels, reusing water, collecting rainwater etc. For the garden we are poanning to try the no dig method. All of this is to say, nuanse is key!

I live in a rural area of ​​South Brazil. We have a small house, 50m2. We grow part of our food, and buy 60% of our food from local communities and an organic cooperative, and other products from the local market place. We have grocery delivery, organic products, artisanal breads and pizza delivered to our door. We live 4km from the local village and 20km from the city. We have a small local waste management center in the community. We compost the organic portion and treat our own sewage. Wood is one of our energy sources, which is spectacular and could be fairly sustainable. We are reforesting 80% of our 40-acre farm. And of course, our diet is plant-based.

These big apartment blocks are surely economically sustainable. Socially sustainable, it is not. Literally everyone hates it when they have to live there. They hate noticing their neighbors through constant noises and smells. They hate that they can't actualize themselves by shaping their direct environment. They can't paint their walls how they want. They can't install a satellite dish if they want one, they have super-limited space for growing their own vegetables. And if any of the instalments fails, they are not allowed to repair them themselves and need to pay a company. Down the line, they become less selfreliant, less competent in daily life, less independent. Up to the point that what could be a fulfledged human being has degenerated to a mere consumer.

I remember learning about the footprint of living in a city vs. living in a rural area years ago. I was a bit sad at first, but ultimately relief settled in.

Public transportation is better in Europe than pretty much anywhere else in the world. I have lived in both cities and out in the country in the USA, and I have never lived in a situation where I didn't need a car. Our public transportation just isn't good enough, and too often, we end up having to take jobs in a different city than the one we live in. Even when living in a city, a carless commute might mean two hours by bus and half an hour of riding your bike the rest of the way. I've only spent a few months living in a place that had a 24 hour bus system, and I've never lived in a place with an actual 'metro.' Everywhere else either had busses that would stop running early in the evening, with large gaps between busses, or was limited only to airport shuttles that ran a couple times a day!

I shut that dream of a cob house dead a few years ago ... definitely 'low-key expected', but brilliant video and an excellent presentation. Thank you for sharing.

As someone who lives in a big city in the United States, it's just simply not affordable. I think thats why country or off grid living is becoming so popular around here. Though i dont think you're talking about the country side living im thinking about. My goal is be self sufficient on my own land, not needing to go into town much at all and hope my kids would like build tiney homes on or near the land so we can all take care of eachother.

I am lucky to live in one of the best compromise solutions I can imagine. On the outskirts of Berlin, 10min walk to our local forest, 30min hard cardio cycling to work. It's an apartment building but with a balcony that allows for at least the inevitable balcony tomatoes, chilies and herbs and buzzie food plants. It also keeps the flat cooler by several degrees, provides a relaxation space we appreciate the hell out of and always has some buzzies hanging around. I do compost with bokashi buckets or by just mulching with green leftovers as the peat-free compost soil you can get here seems to have come with compost worm eggs in it. It's little in terms of self-sufficiency, but it does feel really good, and it feels like a compromise solution one can work from.

Genuinely, I would not mind being stacked into a sustainable appartment box....if I had the chance to actually afford it, and could access autonomy over all my needs from within it. Like, I don't mind sharing things, I've just been brutally taught from a young age to fear sharing things with those who will hoard all the resources and not care if masses go without, like companies and billionaires, or even just smaller scale greedy people. The fantasy of a private homestead is the one of being free and far away from a very artificial threat that appears to be very well sustained systemically. It's an act of giving up on expecting capitalist colonies to actually serve human and global needs. I don't want it to be that way though.

I’m never going to live in a big city. I don’t even like staying in them for a few days but I do think how we design cities, with a focus on mental health of inhabitants, is imperative.

City life just makes me wanna cry..... 😭😭😭 Sure... Life is more convenient and sustainable.... but.... I'm dying inside....

I lived in a cheaply insulated 1970 apartment building where you could hear neighbors walk. It was very annoying. On the other hand, well built condo where it was quiet was a wonderful living space.

The most environmentally sustainable way to live is to live the shortest life possible and delete oneself. Obviously that’s not a goal we want. I’m still moving towards my countryside life goal

Regarding urban living, it is important to choose areas which have long term fresh water resources (rain) for big amount of people and not too far away from large scale food production. Good examples are: - Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue Corridor (USA) with food from Willamette Valley (USA). - Toronto-Greater Golden Horseshoe (Canada) with food from Prairie Provinces (Canada). - Central Europe (e.g. Berlin, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, ...) with food from Limburg Region (Netherlands and Belgium) and Lombardy and Po Valley (Italy). - Pearl River Delta (China, e.g. Hongkong) with food from Sichuan Basin (China). Disclaimer, don't move to cities in the Tropics (e.g. Singapore, Sao Paulo), they have incredible crucial biodiversity! And regarding datacenters and heavy industry: Don't put them on fertile soil! Put them to The Dalles (USA), Great Basin Desert (USA), Konya Plain (Turkey), Andalusia (Spain), Inner Mongolia and Gobi Desert Region (China).

I live in a small appartement in a 6 story building. I use metro and bus to commute, or I walk. I don’t have an AC. I use natural gas to heat up the space, or to cook or to take showers. If the space had better designed, I would not have to use a fan to cool myself in summer. And if the building had sun heater, it would significantly cut my c foodprint and spending. I would love to live in countryside, but as a farmer. I don’t live to cut my c foodprint but I value avoiding waste. If I don’t own an run a farm, than in city, I would love to live in a single home with garden, but I am ok with living in a small appartement with ample light, air circulation, high ceiling, ample storage areas, good kitchen and bathroom, and a balcony to create a replica of countryside in it.

I read that study on conventional ag vs gardens. A huge detail that makes the study numbers invalid to me, is that they amortize commercial equipment over a longer timespan than the gardens, based on the assumption that gardens are used for a couple of years only. The numbers will be very different if they authorize the equipment equally, to remove the time variable.

Let me paint you a much more hopeful picture of what sustainable living looks like, based on my personal life. I live in a walkable urban neighborhood, with seven people living in a very small single family house with quite a large back yard (about a fifth of an acre). I realize this combination is rare in America, and it really shouldn't be. We live within walking distance of two public parks, four grocery stores, our church building, the hospital, and a whole host of other things. We have enough land to grow most of our own food, we can walk to most places, and we have a roof covered in solar panels to deliver all of our electricity needs. We live in a semi-arid climate which gets very little water in summer, so I capture and store rainwater off my roof and use it to irrigate my crops through the summer. I only water about once a week. If something can't handle that in my very hot, very dry climate, it can die and I'll grow something else that can. Home gardening is only unsustainable when home gardener buy gadgets and fertilizers and uses water inefficiently. There is absolutely nothing necessary about any of those things. My fertilizer is wood chips (which I get for free from ChipDrop) and urine (which I get for free from my body). I buy tools only when I need them. (My Meadow Creature broadfork is amazing.) I sometimes buy plants, but that's both very expensive and not very ecologically sustainable, so I prefer to only buy perennials that I can't grow from seed. I study foraging and pay attention to which weeds are edible, and taste them. If they're yummy (like shepherd's purse and lambsquarters), I let them stay until they get big, and then harvest them to eat. I also save seeds from wild plants that are tasty that I find growing elsewhere, and sow them as crops that don't need to be cared for or irrigated. (Like purslane and salsify.) And of course I save all my own garden seeds, and both use them myself and share them with others in my area. Because they were grown locally, they're locally adapted, and therefore need no coddling to do well. I don't have a lawn. I covered it over in wood chips. I won't water anything I can't eat. Eventually, I don't think I'll even need to keep adding wood chips, because all the biomass I need for mulch will come from fruit trees (autumn leaves, prunings, etc.) and other deep-rooted perennials that don't need to be watered or fertilized in my climate. I think the most environmentally sustainable thing to do is to have comfortable housing (of any kind -- high-density and low-density are both compatible with this) intertwined with the needed amenities, easy access to public transportation, and climate-appropriate agricultural spaces that everyone is welcome to harvest and eat from. The solution is to integrate everything into seamless, local wholes that feed body and soul.

Holy fuck this is the most city person video I've ever come across. 1. Your good is trucked in. So you might not have had to pay for the gad to get it to your house, but it's still being spent moving it. Also, if you grow your food and raise and butcher your meat and dairy, why would you need to go anywhere? My mom only went into town once a week for groceries. 2. Trees, man. They eat CO2. So, whatever "carbon footprint" I may make is easily absorbed by the amount of trees you have on your property 3. Using what already exists (a renovated farmhouse) is far better than building an entirely new monstrosity. you would just be spending more carbon. 4. Wood is a renewable resource. Oil and nuclear are not. It may spit out carbon, but you can get wood furnaces that are more efficient than an open-face fireplace. Also relates to my next point. 5. Tiny homes/houses that are smaller. If you create a house or build one, you are going to improve the insulation value of the house. Also, new windows. A smaller space doesn't need as much heat as a larger modern home now. Also, brick houses are meant to breathe. In the summer, I don't use air conditioning often as long as I keep my windows shut and the curtains closed when the sun is coming in. That saves a bunch of electricity right there. Vs a huge concrete hot rock next to other concrete hot rocks that are all dumping their heat from the inside out. Also, there are no trees for shade cover. If you're smart with your house, you can protect it from all seasons. 6. Eating meat isn't the problem. Its how the current meat industry is run on a commercial scale. People eat way too much, and companies are sacrificing quality for quality. I never buy meat from the grocery store. It's old, fatty, poor nutritional value because it wasn't fed properly or exercised. I'd much rather raise my rabbits or chickens or fish than buy it. I think people would be much better off if they met their meat. So ya live like the Amish do. THAT'S the most "eco-friendly" way of living

I get that you wanted to challenge the assumption that sustainability equals country living. But you definitely oversimplified some things to a degree of misinformation. You assume that country homes are large which is definitely not always true and from this you conclude that heating is a bigger polluter in country homes. When in fact sustainable heating like geothermal energy is much more common and attainable in the countryside. You assume that country people drive, while city people walk or take public transport. Plenty of cities are not walkable and many younger people move to the country side because the internet has made it possible to work remotely and so they probably leave their home much less than city residents. Add to this that in the country people have more room for solar panels or windmills on their property, to provide electricity for both their home and car. Trash can be reduced greatly when you have a composting system and when you can buy from neighboring farms using less packaging than the supermarket. Plus: owning land outside the city is a great way to give areas back to nature that agriculture has taken away. Rooftop gardens are great but you definitely can’t accommodate all species with the air, noise and light pollution that cities have. In terms of human health there’s a massive difference between spending an hour in a city park a few times a week and actually being free of pollution most of the time. Bad sleep is really damaging to your health and studies show that people who sleep next to a trafficked street has greater chance of depression, obesity and other serious lifestyle diseases. I normally think you have very well-researched and nuanced takes so this just seems like a bit of a miss. Hope you’ll consider following up with other perspectives.

Living in a city also comes with more opportunities to shop unnecessary things and for some people it's then easier to fall for overconsumption. Living in a smaller village with supermarkets but no stores I've learned to repair and make do with the things I have at home. Eco villages and collective housing is also a possibility that I want to learn more about! Without any deep research I think and really hope that's a sustainable way to go.

I live in a 38.2 m2 (411 square foot) apartment in Ottawa that is next to a shopping plaza with a small transit hub and is walking distance to several parks/community centres. While it's a great that I live in a "15-minute neighbourhood", Ottawa suffers from "urban sprawl" where the city has amalgamated several smaller communities (e.g., Kanata, Barhaven, Orleans). As a result, public transit has been spread thin causing unreliable service in several areas and many people relying on cars.

Thank you for your video! I knew the basics on this topic, but not so much details. And yes I am one of those people idealising country live because I am so fed up with city live. So maybe there is a chance to save my bubble... The thing is...We have a 110 year old house in the mittle of nowhere were we stay in summer. It's in a village with about 200 inhabitants. There is still a bus about a 7 minutes walk away, that comes every 30 Minutes. The recycling truck comes once a month. At the moment, we live in a large city in an equally old apartment building. We have parks around, we have everything is in walking distance and we have a perfect public transport, so everything is great. But... because it's a rental our warm water and heating is run on gas 😵‍💫, in summer it gets so hot that a lot of people I know are now buying airconditioning, we have found a method of kind of keeping the temperature down without but it still get's pretty hot. Also a lot of them take the car, because they don't want to sweat in public transport with the peasants and at least in my neighbourhood I have noticed that people spend more time in the parks and it's much more littered than it used to be. I know that we are lucky in the countryside with our infrastructure, but do you think that in this case, the "sustainabilty numbers" could turn and I can stay in my bubble? 😊

All I would say is how do you quantify the amount of resources need to even come up with an urban eco living system? It takes far less mouths to feed for me to own a piece of land, dig a well, cut down some trees and build a cabin than it does to operate a facility to make concrete, steel beams, etc. The amount of people it takes to sustain yourself is one. The amount of people it takes to sustain urban living is immeasurable.

I can tell you that in the European country with the strictest building regulation there are measurable numbers of how much heat are allowed to go through something, and that's true for every legally constructed building. So you can be right or wrong depending on which year-version of the building-code each building was build according to.

15:04 It depends on the amount of people, living in the house or apartment. In Germany, many smaller apartments for singles are now being built. However, these apartments are not more environmentally friendly than larger apartments occupied by families or shared flats, as they require more space per person.

I enjoyed reading about LEED certification in the US- living in a denser urban area, near public transit, libraries, groceries, etc is section to have a green certified home.

You won't be able to sell me your lifestyle in a city 😂🤣😂! I live in the middle of nowhere and I love it. I do my best to live in the most sustainable way. Love your content!

I lived on a 5+ ac off-grid permaculture homestead farm in the middle of the National forest. Prior to that, I lived in Chicago, a big city. Which is more sustainable? I would say that it depends upon your life choices. If you live in the city, use public transportation ALL the time (never commute), walk or ride a folding bike from the train or bus ALL the time (never take a taxi), grow and consume your own food in a nearby rooftop or community garden or a hydroponic setup in your apartment (if you have the space and can afford the space) and NEVER eat out or consume food at work, collect and filter ALL your potable water from rainwater (if it’s legal and pure enough) and never buy or drink and other water, place solar panels on your balcony (if it’s legal and if your patio faces the sun) and never use electricity at work or at the coffee shop, etc. etc., etc. then you could be more sustainable. The vast majority of city dwellers do none of these things. In contrast, My permaculture farm called “Jubilee” did all those things and more. Not just for us but for our neighbors (who traded labor or teaching for fresh food), for the poor and the homeless at local shelters. and for our customers at the local farmers markets, restaurants (some in the big city), our grocery store products (some sold in the city). My farm also provided a home for or livestock, an oasis in a desert of burned out monoculture ag and forestry land for wildlife, educational facilities to train other people in off-grid living, survival courses, local cultural heritage. Space for an art studio (may painting were sold to customers in the big city), quite conducive for writing my books (sold worldwide). I hiked and ran in the local forest and paddled on the local lakes for exercise. I fished and hunted on my farm and in the local lakes and woods. I could also ride my horse in the forest for free. I Produced so much electricity from my Agrosolar farm that I could be a power company (if only the power company would pay me for my electricity at the same rate as I pay them for theirs - no matter, it was more than enough to charge my electric vehicle, electric bike, electric velomobile, by kids electric stuff, pump water uphill so that I could irrigate my entire farm using gravity flow). But the biggest product that my farm produced was my LIBERTY. If you are dependent upon ANY external provider for your subsistence life-support, then THEY OWN YOU. You are their slave and you will do whatever they want to have them continue to supply your life support. You have to work for them and then pay them what you earned to buy your life support. In my case, I provide my life-support. Therefore, I control me and nobody else controls me. I am therefore free to act in a responsible manner in accordance with my conscience - the definition of liberty. Few if any people who live in the big city can say that as they, with few exceptions, are ALL dependent on big business or big government to provide their life-support and are thus owned and controlled by the same. They have zero liberty.

Ask the people who survived the Grenfell tower fire if they think that it's " sustainable".

Here where I live in Indonesia, there are no many apartments or public transportation. They are individual houses, and everyone moves by motorbike. There is no good waste management here, so it’s almost the same to live in the city center or “country side” because here they have shops, schools etc everywhere. I am moving 20km from the city center and I am planing to make a house from old wood. Hope thats sustainable… because I am not Ok to rent a house here made from concrete and full of humidity. Houses here don’t have space for composting or place were we can separate the trash. And I could have that in my new old house. I hope I can have my own small garden for me and for my neighbors. I want to libe more sustainable, hope I am not making a bad choice moving and making a new house from old materials

I don't want sustainability. I want a home, or at least flat with 4m ceiling and big square rooms and dedicated kitchen. Other options just not feel good enough.

I live in a rural area, having lived most of my life in urban areas, and I do recognize some of this in terms of driving, and having to have couriers drive to deliver things to your home. However many of the issues you raise suggest the need for systemic change (ie. greater availability of zero emissions vehicles, local recycling schemes) rather than being simply urban is more sustainable than rural, and also your reference to the totally flawed home growing study was disappointing. There are some really important aspects that you miss, such as high rise apartment buildings use a lot of emissions intensive materials to build, and urban heat problems lead to high usage of air conditioning. A cob and straw structure that can literally biodegrade if left empty, it not less 'sustainable' than a tower block. And also it ignores the fact that ecosystem regeneration and rewilding is more successful with human care (try reading Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass!). I think the perfect set up will be different for each person, but we know that communities, small cities and towns and most importantly, great zero emissions transport options. I'm glad you raised the 15 minute city topic though...but you never mentioned the fact that this has been hooked on to by the far right conspiracy people. I was attacked recently in the comments thread of a post by the permaculture magazine by people telling me I was naive to see it as an urban planning tool, and that really it's a plan to imprison urban residents!

Yeah, people know that. Less pipes, cables, roads.. we know that. But for the mind is much better to live in a small independent house than in a building with neighbours above, below, and by your side... The car noise, people screaming, strong smells, no nature or parks.... Yeah, I wish I could live away from the city. I don't care if I'll need a car or if it's not sustainable.

I wonder how much of our dissatisfaction with living in a city is linked to renting and the limitations it places on creating homes that feel like our own. Where I live it's rare to find a landlord who will even let you hang pictures on your walls, let alone paint them or reconfigure rooms to make them more functional. Tenants usually can't replace or repair things that are broken without sign-off from the landlord. They often can't have pets. I think allowing people ownership of their space would mean we're much happier to live in smaller spaces. And that's before we even get to the prohibitive cost of living in a larger city. Apartment living needs to be more personal and more cost-effective.

I totally agree, says the girl in rural Australia. I would love it if we had 3 buses a day, but every 2 hours would be amazing.