If you haven't read them, The Plague Cycle and Order Without Design are excellent connections to your work here on several points.
Kenny's Plague Cycle is mainly about overcoming the public health issues with density. It's an argument for and defense of globalization in the face of disease.
Order Without Design has a short discussion of city size that you've made me think is too optimistic. It has been years since I read the book, but my memory was a claim to one-to-one scaling of city population and output. However, Bertaud's conclusion is that planners should be much more thoughtful in how they think about city design. Again, my memory is fuzzy, but he advocated for a focus on quality of life measures instead of minimum lot sizes etc. That seems in line with your points about crime and costs of major cities.
I haven't read Plague Cycle, but I have read Order Without Design. I don't have my copy of the book on me right now, but I recall the discussion of satellite cities around Seoul, and how the effort to design self-contained sub-cities was unsuccessful because people will naturally mix throughout the metro area if they can. I don't recall specifically what he said about city size--I would like to review it if I can find that book--but he is very critical throughout about efforts to limit city size growth, urban containment, etc. I suspect his motivation is more about maintaining a free market than maximizing GDP.
If you haven't read them, The Plague Cycle and Order Without Design are excellent connections to your work here on several points.
Kenny's Plague Cycle is mainly about overcoming the public health issues with density. It's an argument for and defense of globalization in the face of disease.
Order Without Design has a short discussion of city size that you've made me think is too optimistic. It has been years since I read the book, but my memory was a claim to one-to-one scaling of city population and output. However, Bertaud's conclusion is that planners should be much more thoughtful in how they think about city design. Again, my memory is fuzzy, but he advocated for a focus on quality of life measures instead of minimum lot sizes etc. That seems in line with your points about crime and costs of major cities.
I haven't read Plague Cycle, but I have read Order Without Design. I don't have my copy of the book on me right now, but I recall the discussion of satellite cities around Seoul, and how the effort to design self-contained sub-cities was unsuccessful because people will naturally mix throughout the metro area if they can. I don't recall specifically what he said about city size--I would like to review it if I can find that book--but he is very critical throughout about efforts to limit city size growth, urban containment, etc. I suspect his motivation is more about maintaining a free market than maximizing GDP.