<p><pre><code>    huge cities like Beijing [...] are having huge problems
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I don&#x27;t think these problems are city problems. The problem  is a consequence of the numbers of people. For example the waste n people produce is more or less constant (relative to a given level of development) regardless of whether these n people live in a dense city space, or are spread out.<p>Indeed, densely populated cities are probably better placed to deal with transport energy and so on, because economies of scale work in favour of dense cities. A particularly good example of this is public transport. Only dense cities can be walkable, and only dense cities can support efficient, well utilised public transport networks.