Wouldn't it be the other way around? Singapore got built dense because they had anti-car attitudes.

Singapore has grown 4x since 1960. A lot of infrastructure and housing got built in that time. American cities in the era built themselves into a corner with auto-sprawl, Singapore didn't.

> Singapore got built dense because they had anti-car attitudes.

No. Singapore doesn't have enough land to do anything other than high-density building.

They could have built it much less dense than they did. It’s a very green city.

It’s also hard to imagine a place with better public transportation.

> They could have built it much less dense than they did.

Only if they don't want any economic future. You're not thinking long term.

You could say the same about San Francisco, and yet it’s full of single family homes, outside of a very small core which is dense. The result is fewer people than would otherwise have lived in SF.

The same could have happened in Singapore, they’d just be a country with a smaller population.

Your claim that high-density housing creates a higher population is exactly backwards. A high population in a small geographic area is what creates the necessity of high-density housing.

The population of Singapore even 70 years ago was higher than San Francisco county's population is today. San Francisco also has a nation's worth of external support, Singapore only has its trade deals.

I think Singaporeans know how to run Singapore better than you do.

....I was saying Singapore displayed foresight and ran themselves well.

My point was that American cities have generally lacked such foresight.

It would have been a mistake for Singapore to build things around the car, and it has been a mistake for San Francisco to use restrictive zoning and car central planning.

In fairness, SF proper is dense, but it's tiny. The surrounding area is not dense.

>A high population in a small geographic area is what creates the necessity of high-density housing.

American cities pre-car were generally as dense as European cities. They chose the car intensive route post war. Europe initially went down that path, then pulled back. And Singapore was wise enough not to pursue it.

Their geography surely focussed minds a bit, but they could have made bad choices rather than good ones. Many cities have.

> American cities pre-car were generally as dense as European cities.

Nope. Even after a massive population increase in the last ten years of the 19th century, New York was still only half as populous as London in 1900:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London

I said dense, not populous. Density incorporates the area you're settled in.

You can see in those charts that both nyc and london had peak density in 1950, as their populations declined after that point, while their area didn't increased. They both reversed that trend around 1990.

NYC has a much higher density than london though: 27,751/sq mi vs. 14,670/sq mi

This was probably roughly accurate in relative terms around 1950 as well, as NYC and London had similar populations in different areas back then.

Singapore increased its density consistently and greatly in the same time period.

> Density incorporates the area you're settled in ... NYC has a much higher density than london though: 27,751/sq mi vs. 14,670/sq mi

So you admit being pro-car or anti-car has nothing to do with it. Good.