> It seems a bit like you are just making stuff up without evidence to back this up.

Sorry for being rude, but you seems making just PR up without evidence... I have built a wood-frame home for myself few years ago, assessing all the techniques available at that time, witch happen to be the same for today. It's just a two levels home, and while WELL insulated for noise it's not in practice. Some others here who live in different wood buildings report similar issues and I think most of them are from USA so with far lighter and different structure than mine. The PRs claims to have solved all issues, but that's a claim I still have to see only one who actually really live in an wood based building agree with that.

Also you can't made "much better airtight" wood based buildings because they are not by nature, even massive XLam usage can't do better than concrete simply because it's NOT nor can't be a unique isotropic surfaces built locally. You can made airtight enough buildings, of course, but still less than equally new one in CA. That's not a big issue for small homes/homes in general where the "plastic" (steam-brakes coating) is small enough, but on a large building ensure airtightness not only the day you end the construction but after years is an issue. Nothing "exceptional", like the reduced thermal mass, but still a negative point.

The positive is that in LESS volume you can push more glass wool, so yes you can say that a 40cm wood-frame perimetral wall is better insulated than an equal 40cm CA wall. It's also easy to change them once built, pass conduits etc. These are their plus. Fire resistance is a marginal plus. But that's not a real win. The real win is IF they cost less than CA or if like me you want them for some reasons (miscalculations included).

> What is your point? you can always grew more trees if the demand is higher.

You can't forests do not grow up in a finger snap. The actual demand is a thing, if you switch from CA to wood it's a very different one. My point is that if we SLOWLY push single-family homes wood made we can effectively get ecological benefits because the overall wood demand do not skyrocket and the slow growth today means a slow rebuild rate in the future. Something actually sustainable since you do not remade a home after few years, so trees have time to grow up again. If we push it at a schizophrenic speed instead of an environmental benefit and a new way of life we only made a mess with very few who profit and all others, environment included who loose.

> I don't know why you're bringing this up in this context, nobody is proposing to tear down cities and rebuild with timber.

That's the actual trend. UN New Urban Agenda admit we need to rebuild our cities, and we should not rebuild them as today, one of the new characteristic is the massive use of wood. Of course is an UN agenda, not a thing all the world blindly follow at warp seep, but that's is.

> ? how about the people living in the apartment buildings. Building cities from single family homes is completely unsustainable. the land use, transport cost and building costs are extremely high.

Are you really sure or you just imaging that? I know veeeery little studies on that topic, like http://www.newgeography.com/content/006840-high-density-and-... or casual news like https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... but in general terms is see far much more expensive constructions sites in towns than outside. Not only. I came from a big south-EU town, now living in the French Alps and well... My transportation costs are now LOWER than before. No traffic, a distributed local economy, "local buffers" (like mass usage of freezers vs buy ready-made foods as habit etc) do the trick.

People living in apartments? Well... Just this very year they are a little bit upset due to the skyrocketed energy prices and they have no choice. While people living in individual homes have little but still some choices, like room for p.v., wood stove etc...

> We have build cities for hundreds of years, this is a solved issue.

The very contrary: very old cities (who happen to be far little than modern ones) was built mostly with rocks. When you destroy a home the old rocks are ready at your disposal to build a new one. Wood based cities was far little in the history and source woods in the surroundings. CA or modern wood/steel structure can't be recycled as they are.

> you completely omit the fact that we can't have modern rural living without cars, so the costs are much higher (both in terms of energy and money).

I do not omit, I APPLAUD car's need. Really. Public transport is a CAP-like theorem solution: or you get efficient public transport or you get economically sustainable one. Pick one only. If public transport is good to serve ALL Citizens ALL the time is terribly inefficient in energy and economic terms. If you try maximize "very used" transit than the service is terrible for Citizen and as a result citizens need cars. There is NO way to have effective public transit. Car's are not that efficient, but serve a purpose and in the New Deal setup are NEEDED because you can't live alone on renewables and you can't have an electricity grid on renewables the load vary so much no network can keep the frequency. To have a grid with big p.v./wind you need batteries, since they do not last longer and are not cheap... Well cars have casually a very similar lifecycle than cars using car's batteries makes the grid stable enough and casual blackouts a non-issues for homes who run on their batteries for a short period of time and the p.v. usage compensate another bit of the costs. If you think we can have a new deal without cars, you are just dreaming nuclear fusion or something else who is not there.

> Funny, what you describe is largely suburbia, which has lots of sustainability issues

Suburbs was a failure because was done in USA for cars. EU rivieras where single-families homes are mixed with workplaces on contrary prove in EU that they works better than cities in all terms.

> So how would this work, how are you proposing to spread out cities like New York, Tokyo or London?

I propose a SLOW de-urbanization following WFH and retirees who are the first two cohort who can leave a city. Behind them a small local service industry can spring to life and behind it more. So the economy can work. Only few productions still need density and for them we can build districts, they tend to be also polluting industries so having them apart is good anyway.

Public transport MUST NOT be done there, only private one.

Land use must be regulated with the sustainability principle: we allow as much homes as they can source water and subsistence food locally. This create also a resilient society in all terms, natural disasters, attacks etc. Transports are not an issue either because a local-centric economy lower the need for them and more important push the need of many smaller routes instead of big ones. You travel less because you need to travel less.

To visualize of course you need to really start thinking about a new society, otherwise you clearly fail but not differently than those from the past who say "fly? Ah, no, mans can't fly! They have no wings". Remember that at their times they have perfectly reasonable objections for their statements. not differently than those before against steel-made ships.