5 ms·
Isn't Boston's climate very similar to most of Germany's?
by mac01021 7y ago
Isn't Boston's climate very similar to most of Germany's?
- dspig 7y agoAnd maybe the street layout?
- ragebol 7y agoNothing special to see from an European point of view...
- TomMarius 7y agoHuh? Is Boston not the classic car-oriented USA city?
- msh 7y agono, too old for that (at least central boston). When I visited I found transport to be very european compared to other US cities I have visited.
- ghaff 7y agoYes and no. It's famously congested and challenging to drive in--one of the most expensive road infrastructure projects in the US ever (the "Big Dig") notwithstanding. But the downtown core as well as large parts of the adjacent Cambridge are actually pretty walkable and the public transit, subway in particular, is pretty decent. (Regular users rightly complain a lot about it, especially in winter, but then thats true of most cities including in Europe.) I live about an hour outside of Boston and have to go in for a few days later this week and I'll be taking public transit.
- TomMarius 7y agoThank you, I was sure I heard about these massive congestion. I'm happy that the situation there is different than in the rest of US.
- jefftk 7y agoNo, it's not. Most of the city, and close in suburbs like Cambridge and Somerville, were built before cars. This is one of the few places in the US where I'm happy living without a car.
- astura 7y agoNo... I've never took my car into Boston when I've visited, I've always dumped the car at the train station.
- msl 7y agoOne thing I have learned from reading (and occasionally taking part in) these discussions is that no, it is not. The US is different. It is too big, too small, too densely populated, too sparsely populated, too hot, too cold, too dry and too humid for anything to work. It does not matter if something appears to work most everywhere else. It will not work anywhere in the US.
- DavidHm 7y agoA bit cynical, but not unfair. Many people in the US persistently cling to the idea that solution implemented and working (albeit imperfectly) in other parts of the world will not work in the US due to XYZ. Which in a way, is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Solutions implemented in the rest of the world will not work in the US because most people don't believe they will, or that the US is not capable of radical change (that is, radical change not driven by an individual or a corporate desire for profit)
- rubber_duck 7y agoWell I mean comparing US to individual European countries usually ignores the fact that most of the countries quoted have homogenous population with numbers closer to large US cities like New York than the entire US. If you compare US to EU you see that EU is less rosy with it's own underdeveloped regions that and the difference between richest and poorest country in EU is probably worse than the difference between states in US, relocating between states in US is simpler, etc. etc. Also decision making at EU level Europe is waay harder than the US. So instead of talking US in aggregate why not do those changes state level where it makes sense - just like they are done in the Europe.
- dtwest 7y agoIronically, it is actually hotter, it is actually colder, it's all of those things you sarcastically point out. Except being too small or dense, who told you that? I'm from the American Midwest and I'm currently in Northern Europe. The difference is huge. The density issue of American suburbs is real, and the phenomenon is relatively rare globally. Go check out Google Earth. How do you not see it? The weather is also more extreme in most places of the US than Europe. When Europeans tell people in Wisconsin to "just take an electric scooter to the metro station" they understandably laugh it off as ridiculous.
- mattlutze 7y agoBoston is at 42.3601 N longitude, which is actually pretty far south-ish compared to Germany. For comparison, Munich, Germany is 48.1351° N, Barcelona, Spain is 41.3851° N
- seren 7y agoDue to the ocean currents, i.e. cold water coming from the North on the US East coast, and hot water coming back from the South on the European West coast, it does not make much sense to compare latitude on the 2 sides of the Atlantic. Famously(?) New York is at the same latitude that Naples, they definitely don't have the same climate.
- poooogles 7y agoLongitude in itself doesn't dictate weather. Labrador is the same longitude as London but we don't have similar climates. Köppen climate classification is probably the best indicator of where else is similar; which comes out as the same as most of northern Europe [1]. 1. https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weather-summary.php3?s=90527&cityname=Boston,+Massachusetts,+United+States+of+America https://www.weatherbase.com/weather/weather-summary.php3?s=9...
- umanwizard 7y agoYou mean latitude.
- mattlutze 7y agoYou're absolutely right (we both meant that)
- mattlutze 7y agoLatitude doesn't, you're right, though the map on the site you linked shows broad-strokes correlation, and I've found it helpful if I guess imprecise in illustrating general temperature differences. The difference in summers - cool summer vs hot summer - is a big one, and I'd suggest that it makes Boston's climate not really the same as most of northern Europe. We haven't traditionally needed air conditioning in Germany, for example, while I understand Boston and New England (the upper mid-Atlantic and New York, surely, when I lived and visited there) come to rely on it during the summer months to not just live in puddles of sweat.
- tom_mellior 7y agoIt does look rainier than Munich, say: https://www.weather2travel.com/weather-comparison/?placename1=Boston%2C+Massachusetts%2C+USA&p1=1452&placename2=Munich%2C+Germany&p2=3176#compare-weather https://www.weather2travel.com/weather-comparison/?placename...