China economic boom was mostly discussed and negotiated by the UN and the West for some years before it happened with some opposed to it and they got the better end of the deal while some Americans and Industries made billions from moving industries there.
I'm not sure why people think this.
In reality it would likely just be the US which is more populous with a larger economy. Maybe less rich per capita, but not poverty.
It’s mainly down to America industries and investment and support in China that ended the American dream for many and them being viewed as a source of very cheap labour outside the American labour laws, rules and regulations.
If the same Chinese population was in America imagine pleasing such a huge labour workforce /the various demographics come election time.
People who have a lot in common and see themselves as Chinese first under a communist government, India a democracy with its different religions which they tend to vote along in elections and then you have America 2 Parties democracy and the different demographics that the 2 Parties have to appeal to.
That makes absolutely no difference there, though. You're acting like more people would make America poor, when it wouldn't, just like having less people wouldn't make China richer.
Theres literally no reason to expect any other alternative than just the exact same America but with more people.
The same way if the UK had Germanys population, it would just be like the UK but with a larger population - sure it would be more powerful, larger economy, but theres literally no reason to suggest anything else would be different outside of obvious things.
Much of the central coast would be quite difficult to build on, it’s rather rugged. The Salinas valley might get built up. I would miss the artichokes.
Yeah and we’d also get rid of guns and become friends with Russia. Car lobbyists wouldn’t let that happen. We would have trains everywhere if it weren’t for them
Say the US got to a point in present time (2024) where its population reached 1 billion, still in 3rd place after India and China. What if the US had one billion inhabitants much like India and China? What changes, what stays the same, etc? What would the US's relationship with India and China be with a similar population number?
I don't think so, to be honest. Off course states as Nevada, Arizona etc. are stretching their resources to maximum, but anything in the Mississippi drainage area should be fine even if you quintuple the population. The question is, how the additional population would be distributed, because I am no sure states relying on Colorado River would be able to survive three times the current population.
But few things would have to change, e.g. sprawling suburbs would be no longer sustainable. But it is possible. Spain has 3 times larger population density and it is even dryer than USA. If USA had the similar population density as Netherlands or Belgium then USA would have 4 billion inhabitants.
Of course it would have to be gradual process because if you would Thanos snap 700 million people to appear in the USA, the country would collapse.
If the Colorado River states’ populations 5x, they would just need to give up like 1/2 - 2/3 of their cattle & cattle feed growing industry to supply enough household water.
The percentage of California’s water usage that is dedicated to agriculture, and specifically growing cattle feed and cattle drinking water, is awfully high. IIRC I think household & commercial non-agricultural water usage is under 10% of state water usage.
I didn't say anything about internal resources consumption.
I said that if now USA define 25-30% of world consumption then it will be 55% or even 60%. That will lead to global disparity, anger and protests. It will be very unstable construction.
You just assume that all the natural resources would go to the USA without any effect on the markets. If consumption of natural resources would go up then the prices would also go up. That mean less money for resources importers, more money for resources exporters. Besides at these point what even are the resources that USA is net importer? Mostly rare Earth minerals and non-ferrous metals.
China or India would love to have all the natural resources that USA has, then they would be far less reliant on them. USA has it own quirks, but looking globally it is a heavily underpopulated country. While Earth could easily have double of human population and resources (excluding dry regions) would not be a problem. The biggest problem would be carbon emissions, because USA is one of the biggest contributors per capita.
I've been to China.
It was wonderful to visit to see how things operated in regards to food, people, and culture; yet immediately, I could see the effects of overpopulation in the urban areas.
Most of that 1 billion is concentrated along the eastern portion of China, as well.
Quality of life is definitely affected compared to an American's on a basic level, and I assume similar in India.
It would heavily depend on how (and when) the population got to that number. Are there 700M more people on earth or just less in other countries? Are there mass migration events or just amplified “land of the free” draw. If we assume we can’t change the borders id imagine population wouldn’t 3X everywhere. I believe the urban / metro areas would see more than their current population distribution share of growth. The mid sized cities of time say around 1M would be 5X. This would create further urban rural divides in politics
The U.S. has 300m of people rn so that would triple the population. In the ideal scenario where most of them are located in the Midwest or somewhere in the plains I think we’re fine but cities like NYC shits gonna get diabolical
Surprisingly the US actually has the geography to sustain a billion people, and much more comfortably than India and China can.
Tons of developable land, fertile farm land, fresh water, raw industrial inputs (oil, minerals, etc.) - pretty much any natural resource needed for modern civilization. Even easier if we focused on more dense development and public transit, but that's more sociopolitical than geographic.
This is the answer. But even if the US didn’t focus on more dense development and public transit, it would still find areas to develop. Along my parts, the west, I’m almost certain cities would develop along the 10 between Palm Springs and Phoenix. The biggest issue is water, which is solvable with desalination if the right investments are made.
That area, I imagine, if it can be handled makes almost any other area in the US manageable.
How are you going to transport all that water even if you can desalination enough? Better to put most of them in the Mississippi River basin where their is enough water to go around.
Eh, the west occasionally are freaking out by the draining lakes for a long time. I cant imagine with a whole hundreds of millions in one state surviving in a state running out of water. Like Utah, Nevada, etc
Yeah western US is far more population-capped than eastern for this reason, most of those 1 billion would live on the eastern US, near the Great Lakes and large rivers like Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, etc
For now, as long as all the trees don't burn down and turn into another desert land. None the less I don't think having more people would be a bonus. It would be better if there were less people. Less resources are needed, less people go create jobs for, and less people to wasted food and energy.
but more people would probably move to rural areas, u can’t really just triple the population of every city/state and expect the numbers to stay the same proportionately
Why would more people move to rural areas? The exact opposite happened in China during their population boom. Same for America. Same for everywhere in the world.
ok maybe not rural areas, but people would still have to spread out a bit more? it's not like you can just fit 3x as many people in some places, they still have to go somewhere
No, they definitely would not have to spread out anymore. And they wouldn't be able to really, not unless they could all afford to buy big chunks of land in rural areas and spread out which generally people can't. American cities would just get much denser. Go to Europe or China or Japan and you can see they have cities of 10 or 20 or 30 million on the same footprint of our midsize cities. A place like Denver the Twin Cities could easily fit 10 million people if you just imagine most of the sprawling single family neighborhoods with Big lots as high rises instead. A lot of city and suburban US neighborhoods have five or six houses on an acre; put a couple of high rises on that same acre and you can easily have 1,000 families living there instead.
Our cities can be way more dense and populated. Asia builds up. LA, SF/Bay Area, Phoenix, Houston and Chicago would need to turn have at least a density of Hong Kong (about 2x more dense than LA) to get us half way to 1B
If you’ve ever been to Wyoming you’d understand why it has such a low population to begin with. If the population of the country triples, my guess is that Wyoming would see far less growth than that.
OP never indicated that the population tripled. Who’s to say that all the population got distributed equally and not all 700M people just got placed in Wyoming?
Rajasthan has a population density of about 200/sq km or 500/sq mi. That makes it still more dense than Florida with a population density of \~163/sq km. The eastern parts of the state are still fairly humid. Like, take a look at Rajasthan on Google Street View and see how much of it is farmland. For sure it's still one of the least dense states in India, it's just population densities in India defy American logic.
They don't just say that, it's true. Less than 600,000 people in Wyoming elect the same number of US senators as over 40 million Californias. They also of course have the fewest people per electoral vote so they have the most influence per person over the presidential election by a good margin.
A billion people in the US would still mean it is pretty much empty, you could probably fit the whole world population in US while still keeping Montana empty
You could fit the entire world's population in Rhode Island, as long as you don't mind being crowded:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2M8Y0z9Rl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2M8Y0z9Rl0)
We’d get used to living in small spaces more densely packed. Both of those countries have a lot of rural areas. China and the US are about the same size (3.7 million sq. miles), and India is 1.4 million sq. miles. It’s entirely possible, but we’d have to give up our love of big houses with big yards.
China's cities are packed along their coastline. The US has more coastline and a better highway system connecting the center of the country. A ton of China's land is low density.
America could still be much less dense, generally, than the Chinese cities are, assuming people don't all want to live in a few major cities.
but this is where the US would have to change urban development. We would have to assume that the population of 1bn would grow naturally. So there wouldn't just spawn multiple metro areas in the low populated areas of the country, that would allow for the current zoning laws. Instead the already exhisting Metro areas would just be a lot bigger and you can only build so much suburbs. So the cities would be forced to build more high density high rise residential areas and to invest heavily in public transportation. Otherwise traffic would just completly clog up with endless amounts of urban sprawl. Just look at the area of current US metro areas like LA, now imagine that with triple the population. It would be a nightmare when everyone has to get downtown in the mornings. And there is no reason why suddenly there would be big cities where currently no big cities are.
There are plenty of medium sized cities that aren’t built out, all across the Midwest and flyover states
Building high rises in those empty spaces is the only way the population could possibly triple.
Its much cheaper to build on farmland in a LCOL area than it is to tear down existing buildings and rebuild in a HCOL area
Matthew Iglesias wrote a book called One Billion Americans: the case for thinking bigger. I recommend it one interesting fact is that the lower 48 can accommodate 1bn Americans and have the population density of France
There is a line in the US where 80% of people live east of the Winnipeg/austin line.
China has another line (don’t recall the cities in the top of my head) but it’s even more stark with 92%. Granted 8% is still >100mil.
Assuming current trends in population distribution in the US. It would be a lot like China! Very similar in size, the east coast would still be home to over 2/3 of the population. There would probably be a lot more cities with 1 million+ and currentblarge cities being mega cities like NYC and LA. I see west of the Mississippi River still being less populated overall but there would be a lot more folks living in Texas and weather coast states. NYC would probably have the population of Tokyo, with LA,Chicago, Houston having 20 million + metro areas.
Local communities would probably have a lot more stake in beliefs and customs than the large regional divide we currently see. Also, the geopolitical world order would probably have the US seated much further at the top with an even more huge GDP, better infrastructure with more people to work construction, and the world’s culture would be even more US centric. We would likely be the sole superpower far into the future
There are over 100 cities in China that have a population of one million or more. The US does not currently have ten cities of one million or more people. However, if the 100 largest cities in the US were to swell to having at least one million each, the US would be well on its way to reaching one billion people.
Canada is roughly the same size as Europe. Europe has a population of about 800 million while Canada has a population of around 40 million. The largest city in Canada is just under 3 million people. Obviously much of Canada has a climate that's far more extreme than that of Europe, so there are vast sections of the country where it would be very difficult to build cities that large, but Canada has an immense area of relatively temperate land where many more large cities could be built - and by land area the US is actually larger than Canada.
The US would not be anywhere near as rural as it is now in parts, but I've travelled extensively through China and there are vast sections of wilderness to be found. This is because the wide majority of the population is concentrated in tremendously large cities, some of them approaching 30 million people. 30 cities of 30,000,000 would equal 900,000,000. There are currently only two US states with a population greater than 30 million - California and Texas, so obviously the overall population density in the US would need to go up considerably; however, it's not a guarantee that the rural character of the country overall would be lost.
Alaska comprises nearly 20% of the land area of the US. Imagine that Alaska doesn't change in character while the population of the contiguous US jumps up 670,000,000... The US would still have a LOT of undeveloped land. Far, far more than most countries.
You'd have to use MSA populations in the US for a more accurate comparison as Chinese city populations are less skewed by arbitrary city limits. DFW, for example, would be counted as a city of 8 million in China rather than one city of 1m+ and a whole bunch of smaller ones
Keep in mind that Alaska has land about the same size as Missouri with a climate that’s not drastically different from the Pacific Northwest.
Alaska could easily house 10-million people without asking anyone to live in an extreme climate.
Overnight lows throughout the panhandle of Alaska are nearly identical to areas west of the Coast Range in BC, WA, and OR.
Precipitation patterns are also not drastically different from significant portions of BC, WA, and OR west of the Cascades.
Eh, there’s 52 American cities with metropolitan populations over 1 million.
Lots of massive cities out there with tiny city propers and sprawling suburbs.
With 50 US states vs half the number of Chinese provinces, surprisingly, the population numbers wouldn’t be too staggering except for the top US states if we simply multiply everything by 3. California would be a behemoth at 120 million people, similar to Guangdong, and Texas would have 90 million people. Washington State for example though with 18 million people doesn’t sound too crazy, or Colorado with around 15 milllion.
our sheer inefficiency with everything would lead to insane levels of habitat destruction and pollution and traffic at ports and airports. some cities would do better bc of how many people wanna live there in the limited space they have but most would be enormous suburban blobs. imagine a houston of twice its current diameter, or denver nearly reaching wyoming and kansas, or a mostly urbanized central valley that'll tank california's economy (we grow cool valuable crops), or las vegas abruply ending when the nttr starts the same way scottsdale does with the reservation. it would be really bad
I feel like it would eventually force the Feds to take a more active role. They would probably have to go on a huge infrastructure building tear and take on more debt. More highways, public transportation to account for the needed increase in density, and upgrades to the electric grid to account for the increased demand. They would probably do some shit that hasn't been done in the modern era, like works programs where recent immigrants are assigned to some part of the country to help build a rail line. It would be absolutely bonkers.
the american continent is still the new world in terms of population, so it will take centuries before it reaches the population density of india, china and europe. consider that the european standard of living is not far from the american one and yet they have almost double the population with 1/3 of the surface of the usa. so a north america of 1 billion people by 2200 could be feasible.
https://images.app.goo.gl/pA9mK2WpZKSbT1mN8
no, it's just that some people have fragile egos and whenever i mention something from their country that i don't like, they downvote it. 80% of americans are completely fine though
We couldn't fit the extra 6 million if we kept standard USA building practices of single family homes and car-dependent infrastructure.
We could easily fit them if we adopted Paris style building practices.
Nah, there'd still be plenty of empty space. China's has over a billion people and takes up the same land as the US and there's still plenty of rural and empty land.
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I see no biases here 😂. Medical and university costs would definitely be two pretty big concerns. Demand would go up massively, and I'm not sure we have enough supply right now to keep up. I guess it depends on how the 1 billion population is achieved. We'd definitely have to import medical professionals from other countries that we didn't train. Housing would also be an issue but wouldn't have to be if we were just allowed to scale up production accordingly. Massive population increase would probably force that to happen. It's kind of happening right now.
Unrionically, the rust belt would probably recover. It's one of the few places in the US with enough fresh water to handle a tripling of its population.
Have you taken a look at the birthrate in the US lately? Steadily decreasing past replacement level. Immigration is the only thing buoying the population
Fine, Dems will rule the House forever. While 3/4 of a billion people stay hostage to the Senate magas and the 2 spots per state nonsense without the population to justify holding us back a century.
I can't imagine it unless there's open unenforced borders for a very long time. Even if these new migrants benefited from the social programs, it would take a massive population boom to get to 1 billion. As far what would happen? The Americans who own property prosper in wealth , and the newer "boomed" will grow up penniless. You'd have super concentrated mega cities where the native white Americans would avoid/despise, but the land they'll own, and the entire government would be on the precipice of change (at least in my mind). The political government would much resemble today with massive gridlock, but the populism from the major centers would have much much greater sway. More demagogues. I could see mega centers in Southern California, Northern California, Texas, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta/Florida. I don't think it will be like China. There's too much developed in the Chinese culture to preserve social order whereas there's too much ingrained in US culture to preserve individual liberty.
Matt Yglesias wrote “1 Billion Americans” for precisely this question. Though it was more of an argument for it, rather than an explanation of what would happen
Less car centric, not as much suburban sprawl or cities would just be massive. Probably certain states like California, Texas, Florida, New York are even more dominant in the House than usual
If everyone lived in the major metropolitan cities, we’d never have a “republican” president again, so I’m ok with that, but WW3 or another more serious pandemic are more likely than a billion+ people living in the US.
I think it's in cards more than century from now. There are a bunch of estimates for population change in the future. The US usually ranges from 400 million on the low end and 700 million on the very high end.
The US would have been forced to seriously overhaul their urban development politics. It would have a lot more high rise residential buildings and a lot more public transportation.
Its not like we dont have enough land just dont use most of it. If the whole country were flooded with cities im sure we could house 1B population. Would i like that, no. Too many people on the road, many lacking brain cells to feel safe cranking the population to 1B...
How would a population of that number accumulate? Spread out the growth from 1776 to now? Bigger population boosts through industrialization? Much higher immigration?
So it's "only" 4x the current population , so not as big a change as you might think.
Freehold homes, even rowhouses would be rare in every major metros, the vast vast majority of the population would live in flats. Public transit would dominate in those regions.
"Rural" regions would be denser, liikely with some major metros emerging in places you'd never expect, but it would not scale up equally (look at Japan and Korea, those countries have massive, dense, and still growing core cities, but shrinking rural areas) but overall, they probably wouldn't look dramatically different.
Birth rates would be lower. There'd be far less immigration, the population would almost certainly be shrinking.
France is actually probably a good example to look at, it has roughly the equivalent population density, and the US would need a population of close to 2b to reach Germany's present density, although obviously both those countries don't have big chunks of difficult to inhabit territory like Alaska or the western mountain and desert regions.
This is only tangentially related to your second point, but I remember going to Tokyo and being shocked at how many single family homes there were. Obviously nowhere near as numerous as the US but shockingly abundant for the most populous city in the world. They just had a few small changes that made fit better in dense cities. Like not having much space outside of the home itself. Instead of a 2 car garage with a 2 car driveway, you get a 1 car garage or a 1 car driveway that parallels the house instead of pointing at it. The house isn't surrounded by only other single family homes but by other housing types like stacked triplexes and small apartments and, of course, shops like pharmacies, produce stores, convenience stores, salons etc. It was very different from what I expected, I thought it would just be tall towers endlessly.
Yeah, I'm always amazed at how "low" Japan is (although even there, about half the population lives in flats, and rising). It has very few tall towers, although lots of midrise buildings.
It is a bit of an oddball. I think earthquakes have a lot to do with it, and it's odd attitude to buildings, namely that they are disposable (although less odd when you consider earthquakes).
But anyhoo, that's why I emphasized the split between major metros and rural. Outside the major metros, things won't change too much, although perhaps I shouldn't quite gone so far as to say freehold row hosuing would be rare in major metros, they'd just be in the distant suburbs.
I'm in Toronto right now (a rapidly growing metro), and the "build up" is very obvious. We've got a core that's tall, old low density suburbs surrounding it, and high densitiy new exurbs around that. Highrises exist in pockets over the entire area. There is some inner suburb redevelopment, with rich people spending multiple millions to get detached lots with little post war homes and rebuild on them, and some smaller amount of rowhousing (still costing million+) where a developer can pick up a decent sized tract. But far and away new housing in the inner suburbs is high rises. Even edge of metro development is "medium" density, either rowhouses or detached homes so close together they look like row houses. Low density is now solely the preserve of the rich, and even semi-detached anywhere near the city is heading that way.
We could handle it unless they all decided to live in an area that's already overstressed like Arizona or the California coast. The Midwest and the Plains (and even the northern Rockies) have the land and the water necessary to sustain that kind of population. But we already have a sustainability problem because approximately 20% of Americans insist on living in a desert. It would be impossible to triple the population with that same dispersal pattern.
We’d be fine. We have plenty of room to grow.
I’d recommend the book “1 Billion Americans” by Matthew Yglesias for a deeper dive on how that would work
Single family homes would not be a thing. The suburban sprawl would be so insane, the average worker would need to commute for 6h a day.
Maybe mass transit would be more implemented as higher density would lead to more profitable mass transit peers.
The US could support a population of at least 10 Billion in the lower 48. In theory. However the overall infrastructure and family support systems are appalling to say the least coupled with the egregious expense of having children or even one child largely render the possibility highly remote from happening.
I'm not even sure it would feel crowded, unlike china and india where their population centers are on their riverways, our major internal riverways are largely undeveloped. The fact that the city at the intersection of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers has a population of 300k (saint louis) is a testament to just how unpopulated and under developed the american interior is.
The Mississippi basin is comparable to the Himalayan front range, and has a population like 1/10th the size.
I think you could add a few hundred million to the US interior and north west and it would still feel empty. Hell new york alone could double or triple in population and it wouldn't strain it at all.
a lot of poverty probably, we have seen that countries with very high population tend to struggle with stability, and money.
its might not be the same with the US but i dont think the current US can support that many people,
It either would lead to a lot of new development like in China, or a lot of poverty and unincorporated communities scraping by.
America: best I can do is gun flooded ghettos
Ever been?
China economic boom was mostly discussed and negotiated by the UN and the West for some years before it happened with some opposed to it and they got the better end of the deal while some Americans and Industries made billions from moving industries there.
The second part is also like China ftr
Both points would be “like in china”
So it’ll be either like china or like india, got it.
I'm not sure why people think this. In reality it would likely just be the US which is more populous with a larger economy. Maybe less rich per capita, but not poverty.
It’s mainly down to America industries and investment and support in China that ended the American dream for many and them being viewed as a source of very cheap labour outside the American labour laws, rules and regulations. If the same Chinese population was in America imagine pleasing such a huge labour workforce /the various demographics come election time. People who have a lot in common and see themselves as Chinese first under a communist government, India a democracy with its different religions which they tend to vote along in elections and then you have America 2 Parties democracy and the different demographics that the 2 Parties have to appeal to.
That makes absolutely no difference there, though. You're acting like more people would make America poor, when it wouldn't, just like having less people wouldn't make China richer. Theres literally no reason to expect any other alternative than just the exact same America but with more people. The same way if the UK had Germanys population, it would just be like the UK but with a larger population - sure it would be more powerful, larger economy, but theres literally no reason to suggest anything else would be different outside of obvious things.
The Bay Area might have sensible zoning laws
The Bay Area and LA would be connected as a huge megalopolis that extended all the way down the coast of California
Bakersfield and Fresno would never
Ahh, Fresno. So nice, it has a city recommendation in the title.
Big Sur says hello
Eventually Birmingham/Monthgonery to Atlanta to Greenville SC to Charlotte NC will be one. Hell the Atlanta metro goes from Alabama to SC already lmao
Much of the central coast would be quite difficult to build on, it’s rather rugged. The Salinas valley might get built up. I would miss the artichokes.
never
Can I have some of the drugs you're on? I need a break from reality
“Might” doing some heavy lifting in my comment
Lol! Love the optimism!
He said billion not trillion.
They wouldn’t be so car-centric country. Probably would have fast railway network and metro system in every major city.
Yeah and we’d also get rid of guns and become friends with Russia. Car lobbyists wouldn’t let that happen. We would have trains everywhere if it weren’t for them
Say the US got to a point in present time (2024) where its population reached 1 billion, still in 3rd place after India and China. What if the US had one billion inhabitants much like India and China? What changes, what stays the same, etc? What would the US's relationship with India and China be with a similar population number?
Taking into account the share of world resources used by USA at this moment with 330M population only it could be a catastrophe with 1B.
I don't think so, to be honest. Off course states as Nevada, Arizona etc. are stretching their resources to maximum, but anything in the Mississippi drainage area should be fine even if you quintuple the population. The question is, how the additional population would be distributed, because I am no sure states relying on Colorado River would be able to survive three times the current population. But few things would have to change, e.g. sprawling suburbs would be no longer sustainable. But it is possible. Spain has 3 times larger population density and it is even dryer than USA. If USA had the similar population density as Netherlands or Belgium then USA would have 4 billion inhabitants. Of course it would have to be gradual process because if you would Thanos snap 700 million people to appear in the USA, the country would collapse.
If the Colorado River states’ populations 5x, they would just need to give up like 1/2 - 2/3 of their cattle & cattle feed growing industry to supply enough household water. The percentage of California’s water usage that is dedicated to agriculture, and specifically growing cattle feed and cattle drinking water, is awfully high. IIRC I think household & commercial non-agricultural water usage is under 10% of state water usage.
I didn't say anything about internal resources consumption. I said that if now USA define 25-30% of world consumption then it will be 55% or even 60%. That will lead to global disparity, anger and protests. It will be very unstable construction.
You just assume that all the natural resources would go to the USA without any effect on the markets. If consumption of natural resources would go up then the prices would also go up. That mean less money for resources importers, more money for resources exporters. Besides at these point what even are the resources that USA is net importer? Mostly rare Earth minerals and non-ferrous metals. China or India would love to have all the natural resources that USA has, then they would be far less reliant on them. USA has it own quirks, but looking globally it is a heavily underpopulated country. While Earth could easily have double of human population and resources (excluding dry regions) would not be a problem. The biggest problem would be carbon emissions, because USA is one of the biggest contributors per capita.
I think tripling the population would shake up American consumption, surely?
Came in here to say that too. The world can't handle 1b americans.
You're goddam right. Wooooo. 
Imagine the fossil fuels being burned by all those cars…
I've been to China. It was wonderful to visit to see how things operated in regards to food, people, and culture; yet immediately, I could see the effects of overpopulation in the urban areas. Most of that 1 billion is concentrated along the eastern portion of China, as well. Quality of life is definitely affected compared to an American's on a basic level, and I assume similar in India.
It would heavily depend on how (and when) the population got to that number. Are there 700M more people on earth or just less in other countries? Are there mass migration events or just amplified “land of the free” draw. If we assume we can’t change the borders id imagine population wouldn’t 3X everywhere. I believe the urban / metro areas would see more than their current population distribution share of growth. The mid sized cities of time say around 1M would be 5X. This would create further urban rural divides in politics
The U.S. has 300m of people rn so that would triple the population. In the ideal scenario where most of them are located in the Midwest or somewhere in the plains I think we’re fine but cities like NYC shits gonna get diabolical
Surprisingly the US actually has the geography to sustain a billion people, and much more comfortably than India and China can. Tons of developable land, fertile farm land, fresh water, raw industrial inputs (oil, minerals, etc.) - pretty much any natural resource needed for modern civilization. Even easier if we focused on more dense development and public transit, but that's more sociopolitical than geographic.
This is the answer. But even if the US didn’t focus on more dense development and public transit, it would still find areas to develop. Along my parts, the west, I’m almost certain cities would develop along the 10 between Palm Springs and Phoenix. The biggest issue is water, which is solvable with desalination if the right investments are made. That area, I imagine, if it can be handled makes almost any other area in the US manageable.
How are you going to transport all that water even if you can desalination enough? Better to put most of them in the Mississippi River basin where their is enough water to go around.
Eh, the west occasionally are freaking out by the draining lakes for a long time. I cant imagine with a whole hundreds of millions in one state surviving in a state running out of water. Like Utah, Nevada, etc
Yeah western US is far more population-capped than eastern for this reason, most of those 1 billion would live on the eastern US, near the Great Lakes and large rivers like Mississippi, Ohio, Missouri, etc
For now, as long as all the trees don't burn down and turn into another desert land. None the less I don't think having more people would be a bonus. It would be better if there were less people. Less resources are needed, less people go create jobs for, and less people to wasted food and energy.
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If you tripled the population it would only be 1.74 mil ppl and still very rural
Yep. It would basically be Idahos population and so much of Idaho is very rural as half the state lives in the Boise area.
but more people would probably move to rural areas, u can’t really just triple the population of every city/state and expect the numbers to stay the same proportionately
Why would more people move to rural areas? The exact opposite happened in China during their population boom. Same for America. Same for everywhere in the world.
ok maybe not rural areas, but people would still have to spread out a bit more? it's not like you can just fit 3x as many people in some places, they still have to go somewhere
You can always fit more people.
What was that thing someone did, every person can fit in san francisco shoulder to shoulder using the buildings?
yeah, you can take a "selfie"with everyone on earth in san fran
The US could easily fit 3x more people in the same surface area by just changing parking laws.
Yes, they go into greater density housing. More skyscrapers. Or if you want to imagine it in a dystopian timeline, more suburbs.
No, they definitely would not have to spread out anymore. And they wouldn't be able to really, not unless they could all afford to buy big chunks of land in rural areas and spread out which generally people can't. American cities would just get much denser. Go to Europe or China or Japan and you can see they have cities of 10 or 20 or 30 million on the same footprint of our midsize cities. A place like Denver the Twin Cities could easily fit 10 million people if you just imagine most of the sprawling single family neighborhoods with Big lots as high rises instead. A lot of city and suburban US neighborhoods have five or six houses on an acre; put a couple of high rises on that same acre and you can easily have 1,000 families living there instead.
Our cities can be way more dense and populated. Asia builds up. LA, SF/Bay Area, Phoenix, Houston and Chicago would need to turn have at least a density of Hong Kong (about 2x more dense than LA) to get us half way to 1B
If you’ve ever been to Wyoming you’d understand why it has such a low population to begin with. If the population of the country triples, my guess is that Wyoming would see far less growth than that.
OP never indicated that the population tripled. Who’s to say that all the population got distributed equally and not all 700M people just got placed in Wyoming?
Ngari prefecture in Tibet is bigger than Wyoming and has way less people.
Aren't pretty vast swathes of Tibet completely uninhibited?
Same goes for Wyoming.
By “pretty vast swathes”, I meant areas of land larger than Wyoming
In both cases Major mountain ranges help keep the population down.
Rajasthan is populated?
Rajasthan has a population density of about 200/sq km or 500/sq mi. That makes it still more dense than Florida with a population density of \~163/sq km. The eastern parts of the state are still fairly humid. Like, take a look at Rajasthan on Google Street View and see how much of it is farmland. For sure it's still one of the least dense states in India, it's just population densities in India defy American logic.
Nice
it would still be rural as fuck. Just shows how empty that state currently really is
Don’t they say Wyoming has the most voting power per citizen? Or some thing like that because of the small population?
They don't just say that, it's true. Less than 600,000 people in Wyoming elect the same number of US senators as over 40 million Californias. They also of course have the fewest people per electoral vote so they have the most influence per person over the presidential election by a good margin.
There it is. I knew it was right but couldn’t word it like you did. Thanks!
Canada would build a wall.
And make Mexico pay for it
Not if the Americans can add to the one south on the Mexican border
How would that help?
Well they won’t have anything else to build in terms of wall so they will make another in the north
The central Texas aquifers would dry completely up
There would be a lot of Americans.
Americans would start naming their children like pharmaceuticals as the names supply ran out.
r/tragedeigh
This is so incredible thank you for sharing this sub lmao
Americans already use random words as first names tbh
. . . Mexico would actually pay for the wall.
Lol
Anything tied to labor would be much cheaper
Even more MFs trying to move to Nashville
I’m on my way as I type this comment
A billion people in the US would still mean it is pretty much empty, you could probably fit the whole world population in US while still keeping Montana empty
You could fit the entire world's population in Rhode Island, as long as you don't mind being crowded: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2M8Y0z9Rl0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2M8Y0z9Rl0)
Not with their zoning laws you can’t!
We’d get used to living in small spaces more densely packed. Both of those countries have a lot of rural areas. China and the US are about the same size (3.7 million sq. miles), and India is 1.4 million sq. miles. It’s entirely possible, but we’d have to give up our love of big houses with big yards.
China's cities are packed along their coastline. The US has more coastline and a better highway system connecting the center of the country. A ton of China's land is low density. America could still be much less dense, generally, than the Chinese cities are, assuming people don't all want to live in a few major cities.
but this is where the US would have to change urban development. We would have to assume that the population of 1bn would grow naturally. So there wouldn't just spawn multiple metro areas in the low populated areas of the country, that would allow for the current zoning laws. Instead the already exhisting Metro areas would just be a lot bigger and you can only build so much suburbs. So the cities would be forced to build more high density high rise residential areas and to invest heavily in public transportation. Otherwise traffic would just completly clog up with endless amounts of urban sprawl. Just look at the area of current US metro areas like LA, now imagine that with triple the population. It would be a nightmare when everyone has to get downtown in the mornings. And there is no reason why suddenly there would be big cities where currently no big cities are.
There are plenty of medium sized cities that aren’t built out, all across the Midwest and flyover states Building high rises in those empty spaces is the only way the population could possibly triple. Its much cheaper to build on farmland in a LCOL area than it is to tear down existing buildings and rebuild in a HCOL area
Matthew Iglesias wrote a book called One Billion Americans: the case for thinking bigger. I recommend it one interesting fact is that the lower 48 can accommodate 1bn Americans and have the population density of France
Would chinas be the same
1B… and yet still no-ones going to living in Wyoming
Qinghai you mean?
. . . pickup trucks might be less popular.
Depends on where you put them.
There is a line in the US where 80% of people live east of the Winnipeg/austin line. China has another line (don’t recall the cities in the top of my head) but it’s even more stark with 92%. Granted 8% is still >100mil.
out of some vague memory I believe its called the Heihe-Tenchong line which goes southwest to northeast
All 670 million of the new people would go to West Virginia, so it would develop significantly, but otherwise nothing would change.
Assuming current trends in population distribution in the US. It would be a lot like China! Very similar in size, the east coast would still be home to over 2/3 of the population. There would probably be a lot more cities with 1 million+ and currentblarge cities being mega cities like NYC and LA. I see west of the Mississippi River still being less populated overall but there would be a lot more folks living in Texas and weather coast states. NYC would probably have the population of Tokyo, with LA,Chicago, Houston having 20 million + metro areas.
. . . there would be fewer guns than people.
Don’t think so.
Local communities would probably have a lot more stake in beliefs and customs than the large regional divide we currently see. Also, the geopolitical world order would probably have the US seated much further at the top with an even more huge GDP, better infrastructure with more people to work construction, and the world’s culture would be even more US centric. We would likely be the sole superpower far into the future
There are over 100 cities in China that have a population of one million or more. The US does not currently have ten cities of one million or more people. However, if the 100 largest cities in the US were to swell to having at least one million each, the US would be well on its way to reaching one billion people. Canada is roughly the same size as Europe. Europe has a population of about 800 million while Canada has a population of around 40 million. The largest city in Canada is just under 3 million people. Obviously much of Canada has a climate that's far more extreme than that of Europe, so there are vast sections of the country where it would be very difficult to build cities that large, but Canada has an immense area of relatively temperate land where many more large cities could be built - and by land area the US is actually larger than Canada. The US would not be anywhere near as rural as it is now in parts, but I've travelled extensively through China and there are vast sections of wilderness to be found. This is because the wide majority of the population is concentrated in tremendously large cities, some of them approaching 30 million people. 30 cities of 30,000,000 would equal 900,000,000. There are currently only two US states with a population greater than 30 million - California and Texas, so obviously the overall population density in the US would need to go up considerably; however, it's not a guarantee that the rural character of the country overall would be lost. Alaska comprises nearly 20% of the land area of the US. Imagine that Alaska doesn't change in character while the population of the contiguous US jumps up 670,000,000... The US would still have a LOT of undeveloped land. Far, far more than most countries.
You'd have to use MSA populations in the US for a more accurate comparison as Chinese city populations are less skewed by arbitrary city limits. DFW, for example, would be counted as a city of 8 million in China rather than one city of 1m+ and a whole bunch of smaller ones
Keep in mind that Alaska has land about the same size as Missouri with a climate that’s not drastically different from the Pacific Northwest. Alaska could easily house 10-million people without asking anyone to live in an extreme climate.
Where in Alaska is the weather like PNW?
Overnight lows throughout the panhandle of Alaska are nearly identical to areas west of the Coast Range in BC, WA, and OR. Precipitation patterns are also not drastically different from significant portions of BC, WA, and OR west of the Cascades.
Eh, there’s 52 American cities with metropolitan populations over 1 million. Lots of massive cities out there with tiny city propers and sprawling suburbs.
Those suburbs are gonna be real tall with 700 million new people.
If the open border policy remained then Chinese Americans would probably be the plurality of Americans and the cities would be much denser
All of America would be one big suburb
With 50 US states vs half the number of Chinese provinces, surprisingly, the population numbers wouldn’t be too staggering except for the top US states if we simply multiply everything by 3. California would be a behemoth at 120 million people, similar to Guangdong, and Texas would have 90 million people. Washington State for example though with 18 million people doesn’t sound too crazy, or Colorado with around 15 milllion.
there would still be plenty of room and resources
More suburban sprawl and denser cities
our sheer inefficiency with everything would lead to insane levels of habitat destruction and pollution and traffic at ports and airports. some cities would do better bc of how many people wanna live there in the limited space they have but most would be enormous suburban blobs. imagine a houston of twice its current diameter, or denver nearly reaching wyoming and kansas, or a mostly urbanized central valley that'll tank california's economy (we grow cool valuable crops), or las vegas abruply ending when the nttr starts the same way scottsdale does with the reservation. it would be really bad
I feel like it would eventually force the Feds to take a more active role. They would probably have to go on a huge infrastructure building tear and take on more debt. More highways, public transportation to account for the needed increase in density, and upgrades to the electric grid to account for the increased demand. They would probably do some shit that hasn't been done in the modern era, like works programs where recent immigrants are assigned to some part of the country to help build a rail line. It would be absolutely bonkers.
We'd probably become third world
the american continent is still the new world in terms of population, so it will take centuries before it reaches the population density of india, china and europe. consider that the european standard of living is not far from the american one and yet they have almost double the population with 1/3 of the surface of the usa. so a north america of 1 billion people by 2200 could be feasible. https://images.app.goo.gl/pA9mK2WpZKSbT1mN8
my comments would have 3x as many downvotes as they usually do
B-but I can downvote you (I don't) and I'm not in the US 🧐
So you just say anti American things on Reddit? … weird
no, it's just that some people have fragile egos and whenever i mention something from their country that i don't like, they downvote it. 80% of americans are completely fine though
We’d be fucked
Please no.
Alaska would have, like, 3 dozen more people maybe
We couldn't fit the extra 6 million if we kept standard USA building practices of single family homes and car-dependent infrastructure. We could easily fit them if we adopted Paris style building practices.
US would I assume would change from a ‘spend first’ thinking to a ‘save/invest first’ mindset!
No immigrants needed
California would be like Guangdong and slums everywhere like Kowloon
I’d move to the boonies.
There’d be a lot less boonie left if the population tripled
Nah, there'd still be plenty of empty space. China's has over a billion people and takes up the same land as the US and there's still plenty of rural and empty land.
I would leave
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I see no biases here 😂. Medical and university costs would definitely be two pretty big concerns. Demand would go up massively, and I'm not sure we have enough supply right now to keep up. I guess it depends on how the 1 billion population is achieved. We'd definitely have to import medical professionals from other countries that we didn't train. Housing would also be an issue but wouldn't have to be if we were just allowed to scale up production accordingly. Massive population increase would probably force that to happen. It's kind of happening right now.
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Wow, one billion guns
One billion proud ACs users with guns 🦅🦅🦅rahhhhh
Unrionically, the rust belt would probably recover. It's one of the few places in the US with enough fresh water to handle a tripling of its population.
It will someday lol
Highly unlikely
Yeah, world population’s gonna hit it’s peak in just a few billion people and the vast majority of them will be from Africa and Asia
Yep, very possible that the US never hits 500 mil, perhaps even 400 mil
Not into the far future lol
Have you taken a look at the birthrate in the US lately? Steadily decreasing past replacement level. Immigration is the only thing buoying the population
What is the purpose of the map on this post?
Wouldn't change this map
Can understand why in general rural areas /red states are more heavily towards pro birth - they have low population.
There'd need be at least two more Dakotas
absolutely not, it's time consolidate the dakotas and the carolinas and the virginias should stay vigilant
Fine, Dems will rule the House forever. While 3/4 of a billion people stay hostage to the Senate magas and the 2 spots per state nonsense without the population to justify holding us back a century.
It would be like suk ton dong
I would assume massive, modern cities would be built in the Midwest. Plenty of space, plenty of agriculture to feed the population.
The cities that already exist there would probably just become mega cities.
There would be even more Marlins fans to disappoint every year.
I can't imagine it unless there's open unenforced borders for a very long time. Even if these new migrants benefited from the social programs, it would take a massive population boom to get to 1 billion. As far what would happen? The Americans who own property prosper in wealth , and the newer "boomed" will grow up penniless. You'd have super concentrated mega cities where the native white Americans would avoid/despise, but the land they'll own, and the entire government would be on the precipice of change (at least in my mind). The political government would much resemble today with massive gridlock, but the populism from the major centers would have much much greater sway. More demagogues. I could see mega centers in Southern California, Northern California, Texas, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta/Florida. I don't think it will be like China. There's too much developed in the Chinese culture to preserve social order whereas there's too much ingrained in US culture to preserve individual liberty.
The world will never survive 100M Floridans
Matt Yglesias wrote “1 Billion Americans” for precisely this question. Though it was more of an argument for it, rather than an explanation of what would happen
Bidens open borders have gone too far.
Wyoming would have a couple million people.
Each Hawaiian island would have over 100 thousand inhabitants. Big island of Hawaii would have around a million people.
Less farmland in the Midwest
A lot of medium cities would be come larger cities. Hopefully, there would be more of a federal approach to zoning and construction.
Less car centric, not as much suburban sprawl or cities would just be massive. Probably certain states like California, Texas, Florida, New York are even more dominant in the House than usual
There might finally be people living in the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming and Texas (outside of the few cities)
Somebody wrote a book about this https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Billion_Americans
A lot more poverty
If everyone lived in the major metropolitan cities, we’d never have a “republican” president again, so I’m ok with that, but WW3 or another more serious pandemic are more likely than a billion+ people living in the US.
I think it's in cards more than century from now. There are a bunch of estimates for population change in the future. The US usually ranges from 400 million on the low end and 700 million on the very high end.
The Earth's resources would have run out sooner given that it's 1 billion living identically to Americans now.
Currently a work in progress
The US would have been forced to seriously overhaul their urban development politics. It would have a lot more high rise residential buildings and a lot more public transportation.
Then US would have similar population density to Europe.
Its not like we dont have enough land just dont use most of it. If the whole country were flooded with cities im sure we could house 1B population. Would i like that, no. Too many people on the road, many lacking brain cells to feel safe cranking the population to 1B...
How would a population of that number accumulate? Spread out the growth from 1776 to now? Bigger population boosts through industrialization? Much higher immigration?
That’s a good point, China and India are the way they are because they got a 2000 year head start. Maybe in 1000 years the US will be that populated.
Easy there, Matt Yglesiss
Utah is F’d
So it's "only" 4x the current population , so not as big a change as you might think. Freehold homes, even rowhouses would be rare in every major metros, the vast vast majority of the population would live in flats. Public transit would dominate in those regions. "Rural" regions would be denser, liikely with some major metros emerging in places you'd never expect, but it would not scale up equally (look at Japan and Korea, those countries have massive, dense, and still growing core cities, but shrinking rural areas) but overall, they probably wouldn't look dramatically different. Birth rates would be lower. There'd be far less immigration, the population would almost certainly be shrinking. France is actually probably a good example to look at, it has roughly the equivalent population density, and the US would need a population of close to 2b to reach Germany's present density, although obviously both those countries don't have big chunks of difficult to inhabit territory like Alaska or the western mountain and desert regions.
This is only tangentially related to your second point, but I remember going to Tokyo and being shocked at how many single family homes there were. Obviously nowhere near as numerous as the US but shockingly abundant for the most populous city in the world. They just had a few small changes that made fit better in dense cities. Like not having much space outside of the home itself. Instead of a 2 car garage with a 2 car driveway, you get a 1 car garage or a 1 car driveway that parallels the house instead of pointing at it. The house isn't surrounded by only other single family homes but by other housing types like stacked triplexes and small apartments and, of course, shops like pharmacies, produce stores, convenience stores, salons etc. It was very different from what I expected, I thought it would just be tall towers endlessly.
Yeah, I'm always amazed at how "low" Japan is (although even there, about half the population lives in flats, and rising). It has very few tall towers, although lots of midrise buildings. It is a bit of an oddball. I think earthquakes have a lot to do with it, and it's odd attitude to buildings, namely that they are disposable (although less odd when you consider earthquakes). But anyhoo, that's why I emphasized the split between major metros and rural. Outside the major metros, things won't change too much, although perhaps I shouldn't quite gone so far as to say freehold row hosuing would be rare in major metros, they'd just be in the distant suburbs. I'm in Toronto right now (a rapidly growing metro), and the "build up" is very obvious. We've got a core that's tall, old low density suburbs surrounding it, and high densitiy new exurbs around that. Highrises exist in pockets over the entire area. There is some inner suburb redevelopment, with rich people spending multiple millions to get detached lots with little post war homes and rebuild on them, and some smaller amount of rowhousing (still costing million+) where a developer can pick up a decent sized tract. But far and away new housing in the inner suburbs is high rises. Even edge of metro development is "medium" density, either rowhouses or detached homes so close together they look like row houses. Low density is now solely the preserve of the rich, and even semi-detached anywhere near the city is heading that way.
That would be awesome
We could handle it unless they all decided to live in an area that's already overstressed like Arizona or the California coast. The Midwest and the Plains (and even the northern Rockies) have the land and the water necessary to sustain that kind of population. But we already have a sustainability problem because approximately 20% of Americans insist on living in a desert. It would be impossible to triple the population with that same dispersal pattern.
Then things would suck even more than they already do.
We’d be fine. We have plenty of room to grow. I’d recommend the book “1 Billion Americans” by Matthew Yglesias for a deeper dive on how that would work
Single family homes would not be a thing. The suburban sprawl would be so insane, the average worker would need to commute for 6h a day. Maybe mass transit would be more implemented as higher density would lead to more profitable mass transit peers.
The US could support a population of at least 10 Billion in the lower 48. In theory. However the overall infrastructure and family support systems are appalling to say the least coupled with the egregious expense of having children or even one child largely render the possibility highly remote from happening.
I'm not even sure it would feel crowded, unlike china and india where their population centers are on their riverways, our major internal riverways are largely undeveloped. The fact that the city at the intersection of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers has a population of 300k (saint louis) is a testament to just how unpopulated and under developed the american interior is. The Mississippi basin is comparable to the Himalayan front range, and has a population like 1/10th the size. I think you could add a few hundred million to the US interior and north west and it would still feel empty. Hell new york alone could double or triple in population and it wouldn't strain it at all.
a lot of poverty probably, we have seen that countries with very high population tend to struggle with stability, and money. its might not be the same with the US but i dont think the current US can support that many people,
They’d all be Chinese and Indian.