Greenland has so few people, yet so much land. I get that this is on account of the temperatures, but would it be possible to build large cities there if there were demand? Or are the geography and natural resources insufficient to support cities of scale?
If you're talking about building on the ice sheet, building on ice is very difficult, the snow is constantly drifting and requires a lot of maintenance (lifting or moving buildings every few years, etc.). And only the 109th national guard operates ski-equipped C-130's that can bring supplies. Smaller planes can come (Baslers or Twin Otters) but those can't carry nearly as much. They used to have a traverse from the air force base at Thule but they stopped due to difficulty getting on the ice sheet from there.
On the coast it would be more reasonable to build a city, though the topography is rough and getting enough food would be expensive. The only place I've been on the coast is Kangerlussuaq (the main commercial airport for Greenland, and also a base for the 109th ANG which is how I got to Greenland and to Summit). You can explore on street view what it looks like: https://www.google.com/maps/@67.0035567,-50.6859212,3a,75y,3... . It actually has the largest road network in Greenland and a seaport. But... there isn't that much room to build if you wanted to and I think that's more or less the story everywhere in Greenland. For example, ere is Nuuk, the capital and largest city: https://www.google.com/maps/@64.1770542,-51.7239805,3a,75y,4...
I mean, it's 98% ice, miles of it. It's certainly possible for people to live on ice if there's demand and energy, but there are a lot of other open areas of the earth for people to build cities on.
Greenland has so few people, yet so much land. I get that this is on account of the temperatures, but would it be possible to build large cities there if there were demand? Or are the geography and natural resources insufficient to support cities of scale?