We have small pockets with high density like Santiago. It has 1/3 of the population of NYC but 150% of the population density. And NYC is by far the densest US city.

The result of this is wide swaths of nature, I grew up used to seeing no buildings or anything else man made all the way to the horizon. When approaching my hometown we would first see the city glow, because you get actual darkness out in the country. In the US' lower 48 only part of Oregon and Nevada get close to that.

Of course now US companies are once again trying to destroy our land with careless mining.

[–] DiagnosedADHD@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

I'm glad to hear that's not the case! I was speaking on my own experience living out west in the US where there is still a lot of public land. The attitude in the western US is unfortunately pretty bad. They want more and more public land to develop into low density single family home markets like Phoenix. It's pretty infuriating hearing the locals moan about BLM and concoct conspiracies about how they stole land from them and show zero interest in the health of the local wildlife.

There's still quite a bit of untouched land in Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Navajo, basically anywhere that has large amounts of BLM land, but this unfortunately is getting pushback from locals who want everything to be developed.