Solarpunk

I'm sorry, but using data from US averages (largely representative of single-family-home suburbs) to make sweeping statements about how urban living is bad is simply misleading and borderline irresponsible. Living in a multi-family building, living without a car, getting electricity from renewables, and using electricity for heating and cooking is insanely energy efficient. It takes advantage of density to reduce infrastructure needs, and can benefit from having resources developed / farmed at scale, further reducing energy and emissions.

If you need ANY infrastructure to connect your "shire" to anywhere else, you need to include that in your analysis. It will have a massive impact. Need a car? You've already lost. The road infrastructure per capita alone will put you over the edge, let alone the infrastructure required to build and maintain said car or the emissions from the car itself if not electric.

Looking back now, knowing what I know, it might have been better had I been raised in the hills of Romania, including the unpleasant bit of living under dictatorship

Is this a serious article? I'm all for getting rid of suburbs but the author seems to be advocating for the whole world to move into farming communes.

I think it lacks imagination to suggest that urban areas cannot be sustainable or developed sustainably and that instead we should all go live agrarian lifestyles.