Iran Protests

Abbas Goya According to available data, the area currently occupied by nearly 8 billion people for housing and urban infrastructure amounts to only about one percent of the planet’s total habitable land—roughly 1.5 million square kilometers. In other words, an area smaller than Iran is sufficient to accommodate the entire human population. Contrary to popular science-fiction narratives, humanity’s problem is not a lack of space, nor is there any necessity to “conquer other planets.” All of the world’s 64 million kilometers of roads, together with roughly 2.5 billion housing units and other built infrastructure (excluding open spaces), would also fit into an area smaller than Iran. The real question, however, is not whether this is physically possible, but whether it is desirable for everyone—or even a large portion of humanity—to live at extremely high densities in one place. The answer is clearly no. Urbanization has a history stretching back several thousand years, perhaps even ten t...