3 ms·

There is still a serious linguistic disconnect here. You’re talking about what are essentially suburbs. Big cities are mostly apartments and condos. This is tru

There is still a serious linguistic disconnect here. You’re talking about what are essentially suburbs. Big cities are mostly apartments and condos. This is true throughout the developed world including in the US, but for some reason in the US we ended up calling every group of houses and a general store “city”.

bobthepanda 7y ago
I mean, if you want to split hairs, then yes most Americans live in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, which is because of and also the reason for shitty American infra. If you are looking for Berlin+ levels of density that would be the 7th percentile of American zip codes. The person you are responding to never even used the word cities.
- throwawaycert 7y ago
  Yes. It’s not splitting hairs, it’s looking at the root of the problem: Americans live inefficiently and in our bubble it seems “normal” because we have normalized severe deviance from good social, economic, and environmental practices and lifestyles.
tialaramex 7y ago
Yeah. In the UK a city needs central government paperwork (notionally through the Queen). They hold competitions to pick new ones. If a million people go live somewhere that's a really big town, but it only becomes a city when the Queen says so. Being a city makes no direct practical difference to anything, it's like being elected homecoming king. In the US city status makes an important practical difference to how an area is run and what the people running it can do independently of the State they're in. So it makes sense every settlement with a general store and a paved road would want that status.
- vonmoltke 7y ago
  > n the US city status makes an important practical difference to how an area is run and what the people running it can do independently of the State they're in. The status of various municipal designations varies greatly based on state laws. Generally, government levels go state->county->municipality. The type and form of a municipality generally only affects how it is organized, not its level of independence from higher levels of government. Some states restrict types and forms based on size, though.

bobthepanda 7y ago

I mean, if you want to split hairs, then yes most Americans live in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, which is because of and also the reason for shitty American infra. If you are looking for Berlin+ levels of density that would be the 7th percentile of American zip codes. The person you are responding to never even used the word cities.

throwawaycert 7y ago
Yes. It’s not splitting hairs, it’s looking at the root of the problem: Americans live inefficiently and in our bubble it seems “normal” because we have normalized severe deviance from good social, economic, and environmental practices and lifestyles.

tialaramex 7y ago

Yeah. In the UK a city needs central government paperwork (notionally through the Queen). They hold competitions to pick new ones. If a million people go live somewhere that's a really big town, but it only becomes a city when the Queen says so. Being a city makes no direct practical difference to anything, it's like being elected homecoming king. In the US city status makes an important practical difference to how an area is run and what the people running it can do independently of the State they're in. So it makes sense every settlement with a general store and a paved road would want that status.

vonmoltke 7y ago
> n the US city status makes an important practical difference to how an area is run and what the people running it can do independently of the State they're in. The status of various municipal designations varies greatly based on state laws. Generally, government levels go state->county->municipality. The type and form of a municipality generally only affects how it is organized, not its level of independence from higher levels of government. Some states restrict types and forms based on size, though.