It's a bit over 10 billion, actually. The 32 billion in BtC is an error. Mora's population multiplier in 1111 is 1, not 3.
"Mora’s population of over ten billion mostly live in huge selfcontained arcologies, about one-eleventh of which are built on dry land on to the continent of Batadis and the various islands, though most of the available arable land surface is dedicated to intensive agriculture. The remainder are spread across the sea floor, mainly in the equatorial regions and often have seabed farms around them. Arcologies may be home to tens or even hundreds of millions of inhabitants. Around 300 million people live in space habitats spread out across the star system."
[
Of Dustspice and Dewclaws, p. 4.]
More to the point, though, is that TL14 allows huge arcologies and arcologies allow you to really use the third dimension to get some serious living space. One such arcology is described in
Of Dustspice and Dewclaws. Fenrock houses a mere 33 million people, yet it spreads 2 by 3 kilometers and is up to 750 meters in height, which translates into about 90 levels. Some of those levels are industrial, of course, but there's plenty of residential living space too.
So if we take Fenrock as a typical arcology in more, there are only about 300 such arcologies in the whole Mora... a little less if you account for the people living in space habitats.
If it occupies about 6 square km, only about 1800 square km of th ewhole planet are inhabitated, so there's plenty of room for 'wilderness' (whatever is it on Mora) and agriculture.
Also, crime rates scale with population density; violent crimes and gangs rise proportionally with density and inversely with average income. Average education doesn't seem to factor directly (tho' it does link to average income with a contributory relationship). Also, studies of social interaction show that the same 2D density in a 3D space has about the same social effects as that same density in a 2D space; Areas of Tokyo with a density equal to that of downtown NYC have a similar rate of both crime and social distancing behaviors. (I can't vouch for how they measured social distancing, as I read the paper 4 years ago during my MAEd program; I recall it measured the number of social pleasantries per hour in a given area, but not how counted.)
I'm not sure this is always true. Most European cities are quite crowded, and violent crimes and gangs have not been (at least until now) a big problem in those cities.
Also there are many examples on our history of lightly populated areas with far more problem with those violent crimes and gangs. Medieval Europe had not this overpopulation problem (population density was quite low), and yet there were endemic problems with bandit gangas, and violence was too usual.
Same happened thoughout modern age, with banditry (and piracy on the seas, both violent crimes and gangs) being a real problem for trade and governments.
I don't know US situation nor history as well as I do about Europe, but the far west topic is not one without those violent crimes and gangs, and I guess overcrowding was not the problem there...
So I tink there are more causes to that (lack of government control, either due to technological incapabilities, as middle/modern ages were, inefficiencies, corruption, etc; economic causes, etc)
It's interesting to note that the densest pre-industrial populations also were among the most socially formal; Byzantium, Feudal Japan, Urban Rome... Even the Imperial City of China was said to be socially rigid in form.
The idea of social rigidity in custom is, in point of fact, one of those areas where lots of North Americans find the whole idea of formal interaction abhorrent; US cities, rather than formal interactions, tend towards non-interaction; Japanese tend to fall to rigid forms of limited interaction and "false privacy" (People willfully ignoring individuals until the correct social forms are followed).
The social rules needed where a 1km movement can bring one into contact with 10 million people are far more stringent than those where it can only bring 10,000, and those more so than when it's 500 people. As someone who's lived in range of about 5k, and now am in an area where it's about 2K, the social pleasantries are in fact far more common; it's only 16km distance, but the social environment is VERY different; 3km away, it drops even more, and people are FAR more friendly there.
I agree with you the society must be quite formal and rigid to allow any level of convivence in those overcrowded situation. Sure formality and ettiquete should be very important in such cities.
So I would expect that Fenrock, at 33M on 6km^2 (in 4.5km^2) would be 5M per km^2... 100 times that of Manilla, the most dense on the list on Wikipedia, and 100 times that of Mumbai... would be stiflingly formal. You can run into too many people. I would expect clear social indicators, and clear restrictions on who goes where. Even if not properly uniforms, I would expect clear social class dress modes. All things that make it horrific to me. And, from the corner, you've got 5 million people within a kilometer. Oh, and that's only 136.36 cubic meters per person... INCLUDING industrial space. Assuming a nice 3m ceiling, that's 45m^2 per person, or 6.75x6.75x3m each.
That's pretty damned cramped there, Hans. 22x22 feet each. That's my living room per person, counting work and accessway spaces. Using a general rate from MT, 10% will be LS and power to run it; and half the quarters space will be outside the quarters, that's 20m^2 per person in quarters, and 20m^2 per person in commons, presuming only LS is accounted for; if there's industrial space, it gets MUCH worse.
Well, my family (my wife, out two daughters and myself) live in n appartment of about 65 square metters (so, little more than 15 square metters/person in quarters), and that's not a unusual situation in Barcelona. Of course we have vast amounts of open sky places to go, and that's a lot more in commons, but if the habitability of the planet allows it, I guess people can go to picnic to wilderness with thier grav cars as people does in our time with their ground cars.
After all, as I told at the begining of the post, there could be vasta amounts of wilderness in Mora, and even if you must protect yourself from harmful effects of tainted atmosphere (if native people is not adapted to it, which, depending on the exact taint, may well happen), you needn't to stay always in the enclosure of the arcology.
Even though, it's posible that due to cultural factors, and being used to live in the arcologies, people in Mora (and most arcology living planets) have developed a 'cultural agoraphobia', and the idea of such a picnic (even if the atmosphere is more pleasant) is seen as silly for them, or even as a sign of mental unstability.
EDIT: BTW, Aramis, just for if you have not notticed it, your post I quote is duplicated. Perhaps you could fix that, if you think it is in order to do it END EDIT