Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

While my preferences made a radical 180 about three or so years ago. Cold, damp, and dark to now I need it warm, dryish, and bright.

I do remember reading about how the U.S. population demographics changed greatly with the advent of affordable air conditioning.
That seems to suggest that on our own, most people don't like the heat 24/7 or year round.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

People base where they live on more than just the terrain. For instance, they may move to where the jobs are.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

Urbanization is terrain. However I also like beaches and temperate weather almost as much as like stuff that is open past six pm and busses that aren't hours apart and I gather beaches and temperate climates are pretty popular with other people.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

In a limited degree, yes. But few people are primarily influenced to move to cities by the desire for large areas without vegetation or soil, or for a locally higher temperature, or other geographic traits, I think. Not by comparison with relative social anonymity, or more specialized businesses, or a greater extent of the market, or cultural variety, or other features of city life, which, to be sure, not everyone likes, but which attract a significant number of people.

And to a large degree, the places that can become urbanized are geographically limited. The distribution of cities across the Earth is not random. One thing to consider might be the features that would make a planet likely to have lots of urbanization.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

Mainly, I find the thesis that most people really want to live in their hometown and only emigrated (or immigrated) for work to be dubious.

Most of the places I grew up were only there because nobody else wanted them.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

I'd say that whether people remember their home town fondly or not is more about how they felt about the other citizens than the local climate and ecosystem.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

This is true, but it should be noted that the historical factors for locating on rivers and harbours- access to shipping, water and fishing- may or may not be relevant to a space-faring civilisation that are free to choose their population centres from scratch.

For example, they might need to be clustered around a spaceport located on a wide, flat plain; or they might be free to locate in scenic waterside or mountain-side locales if they have easily accessible, high-speed transport.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

Like I said, there are many reasons people move. Not only homeland terrain, not only work.

Do you have data that show that they move because they prefer the terrain at the new place, not something else about it?

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

I am not sure how much this would change, once things are up and running the bulk of goods are going to be moving around on the planet and moving stuff around by water is still going to be one of the cheaper options.

Also I don't really buy the notion of colonies starting out as a single large city and a sparsely populated hinterland. Personally starting from a number of smaller town/ village sites located near strategic resources makes more sense. Water transport if it is possible is a logical way to tie these together.

Ditto water supply, early colonies are going to want to go where the water is (as far as is possible) rather than messing around building and maintaining long pipelines. Unless there is a life or death reason for using a specific site I would figure that colonists (or more likely advanced scouts) will pass over sites with severely restricted water supplies.

Placing a main space port might be an exception, it depends upon the technology in use, but I can still see planners prefering sites on either the coast or navegable rivers. Technology permitting I could even see spaceports being located offshore.

Re: [Space] What is the 'Gaia' type of garden worlds like? ('Habitability 9').
 

I think that completely depends on your tech assumptions. Given limitless cheap fusion energy for powering massive skyfreighters, they might be more economically priced than slower water transport. High tech cargo dirigibles (like this sexy beast), if cheap enough, could possibly also break the dependency on water transport. You'd need a detailed technological and economic model to determine which modes of transport are more viable and desirable before deciding on town placement.

This might be more of a political question. I could imagine a Chinese-style central government telling all the settlers where to settle after mapping out a detailed 100-year economic plan, then making the transport work around that.

Well, this is a possible Gaia planet, so there might be pleasant afternoon showers every day to refill the city's reservoirs. Or they might be high tech enough to effect complete moisture recovery and recycling, meaning an external water supply would only need to make up for inefficiencies in the system.