Yet there are so many areas where the economies of scale created by lots of people living in close proximity with one another are just not realised: energy creation, food production, pooling of resources or assets (cars, tools, childcare, political pressure, even social pressure)…

And surely there’s a point where diminishing returns render economies of scale meaningless – take massive energy plants where the energy from a nuclear reactor is more expensive than several smaller district level CHP plants because of the costs of safety, maintenance, dealing with the waste, sourcing the amount of fuel necessary just to keep it running efficiently.

So yes, cities are probably more resource efficient but there comes a point where there are costs associated with living in close proximity with each other – mental health problems, loss of social capital, respiratory problems, costs of treating road traffic accident injuries etc. I imagine there’s a host of research on “optimal development size” that looks at the equilibrium between tiny rural settlement and megalopolis.