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

[Frost]

Originally Posted by Daigoro

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.

True to a point but remember that the same the same tech could be used in marine aplications this will leave you with much the same trade offs as exist today. Based upon the speculations about the planetary environment those long coastlines are probably going to be the decisive factor. Although I wouldn't rule out both.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

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.

Probably not, the rationale for distributing you settlements is unaffected by the way you are organising the colony. First of all you don't want to put all your eggs in one basket. Two or more sites reduce the impact of human or natural disasters. Secondly you are going to be using resources drawn from a fairly wide area anyway, giving your mines and plantations permanent populations of workers makes sense. Placing these will be a matter of economics with transport as one of the major factors.

Originally Posted by Daigoro

Well, this is a possible Gaia planet, so there might be pleasant afternoon showers every day to refill the city's reservoirs.

Like the shipping example above it is a good point but natural reservoirs will still be cheaper. Now once you have a decent surplus built up this may be less of an issue but by then many of your major cities will already be established.