Feeling Crowded?

[Razors Edge ★]

Back when I was a kid, there were "only" 64 people per square mile on planet Earth.  Now, there are more than twice that many!  Sort of crazy.  Are folks starting to crowd you?  How long until it is doubled again?  How long until Mars and/or the Moon are ready???  It's gonna be like we all live with @Randomguy in the big city soon!  Man, the good old Biblical days where it was 1:1 must have felt downright lonely!

[ChrisL]

My area has changed in one major way in that it is much more crowded than when I was growing up.  More freeways were built, more houses, apartments & condos & businesses.  I bitched about this before but sometimes it takes me 20 minutes to drive to the grocery store 1.5 miles away.  There are just so many cars & traffic lights it takes forever to drive in my area. 

[maddmaxx ★]

There were only 141 million people in this country when I was born.  there are 330 million as of this year.  More houses on empty land, more roads, more cars, more waste.  Pick you more, it's there.

[shootingstar]

More people living cities.  Less farmland every year.

Sure there has been a small migration of folks looking for cheaper housing /able to work remotely or finding the job they need/want, in small towns.  But probably not enough. Sure there's more people in Canada ...meanwhile we still have  millions of hectares of sparsely populated land. Canada is not overpopulated. So working from home option at least part-time, is a good thing.

[Razors Edge ★]

Apparently, there are 640 acres in a square mile, so we can all still get 5 acres or so each!   That's a lot of grass to mow, though.

[maddmaxx ★]

1 hour ago, Razors Edge said:

Apparently, there are 640 acres in a square mile, so we can all still get 5 acres or so each!   That's a lot of grass to mow, though.

You can have yours a few miles northeast of Marquette MI.

[Thaddeus Kosciuszko]

 

I think this chart means people are becoming more   dense.

[shootingstar]

While we are concerned about more denser cities   (I think that's the real issue)  and supposed  overuse of resources (water supply,  farmland), are our habits better than 50 yrs. ago, not to outstrip natural resources?  Here I am taking long hot showers, but I don't use much electricity light vs. heating small condo home.

Then  various countries are worried/trying to plan for dropping natural birth rate and either trying to encourage more babies (China's recent new 3-child/family  policy/slogan encouragement is making alot of younger women there, laugh) or keep immigration rate stable.  ***All of this population sustainment ...is to prop up our economics, support cost of  our social support system (tax paying heads), educational system, etc.  Can you blame for national govn't's for trying to sustain their future economies? 

The drop in natural birth rate (North America, Japan, Spain, Italy, etc.) is real..and we've all seen it by comparing 1 generation prior to us vs. 2 generations after us: less children/family, more women choosing not to have children .

Except for  LJ's size of grandchildren family...which is rare now.    (excludes blended families)  

I personally do not know any woman in person in my generation, who has more than  4 children. The latter is actually a Toronto cousin my age, she's the mother and all kids are with 1 guy. I'm one of the childfree women who has several long-time friends...who themselves don't have children. Life just worked out that way....and I became friends when we were all in "fertile" years.   My "normal" is  actually more frequent experience now than ever before.   

So the population growth is more among various specific groups (some First Nations groups) and in certain countries  -for now. That will probably change in 25 years.  

[sheep_herder ★]

10 hours ago, Razors Edge said:

Apparently, there are 640 acres in a square mile, so we can all still get 5 acres or so each!   That's a lot of grass to mow, though.

Mow?

[shootingstar]

Until someone can explain that  Canada is super crowded when we live in the 2nd biggest land mass  in the world..even if we make an additional 15% of our land more liveable for human habitat instead of just trees, rock, bog, tundra, many lakes and mountains.

It freaks me out the size of Canada and how much is not inhabited.

[Wilbur ★]

4 minutes ago, shootingstar said:

Until someone can explain that  Canada is super crowded when we live in the 2nd biggest land mass  in the world..even if we make an additional 15% of our land more liveable for human habitat instead of just trees, rock, bog, tundra, many lakes and mountains.

It freaks me out the size of Canada and how much is not inhabited.

The population distribution keeps it crowded but yes, we have a lot of unused land.  We also have a lot that id unsupported for human existence and may as well be Mars. 

[Guest]

Yeah, over crowded and I hate it now.  Used to go to the market 1 block away and see 2 or 3 cars. Now 200 or so and long waits at the light. If you gotta turn, forget about it. 🤣

[shootingstar]

17 minutes ago, Mr Beanz said:

Yeah, over crowded and I hate it now.  Used to go to the market 1 block away and see 2 or 3 cars. Now 200 or so and long waits at the light. If you gotta turn, forget about it. 🤣

A nice  bike camping trip would tame feelings. 

While this pandemic has squashed alot of foreign overseas travel for now, I can't bitch for not exploring enough of Canada. I was 51, when for the first time I experienced in a car-truck vehicle the sheer length of Canada when dearie and I went across Canada with my belongings to move from Toronto to   VAncouver.  Of course one experiences the shocking enormity as a cyclist across the continent and isolation..the sudden lack of decent  many road route options as one just travels just 200 km. north of any of the big southern cities over 1 million each. It doesn't take much to travel north of Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver....where you must plan /hope for decent food sources and clean place with a bed,  shower etc. Then you ask yourself, after 60 km. (unlike Europe), is there anything more than a gas station?

[Razors Edge ★]

9 hours ago, sheep_herder said:

Mow?

I was hoping to lure @Kzoo back with his favorite topic!

[Parr8hed]

My little square of Indiana isn't too crowded but the damn campgrounds sure are.

[MickinMD ★]

What bothers me most is traffic congestion. Expressways that used to be empty at 6 in the morning when I drove to work in the 1980's were so crowded when I retired in 2006 that often I couldn't get out of the slow lane from entrance to exit several miles down the road.

There was a brief period of a couple months in 2020 when traffic had been cut way down due to pandemic restrictions and I told my nephew Ryan, when he said how much more fun it was to drive, that's the way it used to be outside of the rush hours decades earlier.

Around Baltimore, we definitely need a second, outer beltway because the suburbs have sprawled far outside the city.  In places, the Baltimore suburbs run right into the D.C. suburbs.  If we had an outer beltway, then people who now have to drive into the Baltimore Beltway, drive 10 miles, then get off to go to work, shopping, etc. in a distant suburb would have a shorter drive and also relieve congestion.