8 ms·

I found that intriguing, so I looked into it a bit. The census defines 3 population area groups, urban areas (+50k), urban clusters (2.5k-50k), and rural (-2.5

I found that intriguing, so I looked into it a bit. The census defines 3 population area groups, urban areas (+50k), urban clusters (2.5k-50k), and rural (-2.5k). If you combine urban clusters and rural that’s still only 28% of the population, and you’ll be including a lot of people who don’t consider life very rural. https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/geo-areas/urban-rural/ua-facts.html https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/geography/guidance/g... https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/104wPPSJ_4CzutRK5Ypp_w0bXvooq0pY7tGDG1bhzRRE/edit https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/104wPPSJ_4CzutRK5Ypp_...

wand3r 6y ago
I don't fully know if this is the best way to approximate the original posit, which is basically people in the US have to drive super far. However, even in your approximation that is slightly over 92 Million people. Leaving aside the rest of the population that may have to travel in between urban areas and have no rail or reasonable public transit to supplement a car in most situations.
- alex_young 6y ago
  Fair enough. I do know that much of Europe is something less than urban by this measure, and they seem to get by fine with a lot fewer cars, and the cars they have are almost always much smaller than ours. Perhaps this is one of those self perpetuating problems.
  - waterheater 6y ago
    I could go into a lengthy explanation on this point, but it boils down to a difference in culture primarily rooted in (1) available space and (2) historical land usage. And what you're referring to is not a problem, because it is objectively useful to have a large truck in the middle of nowhere. I enjoy being able to move lots of things at once without asking another person for help. Also, have you ever had a tract of land in a rural part of the USA? It's quite nice. Europeans have a tendency to think they're superior to Americans, but that's just classist crap that needs to stop. The USA has cool things, and so do Germans and Austrians and Belgians and the French and so on. Why divide ourselves?
    - seibelj 6y ago
      I agree - the media constantly posts these “other countries look at USA in bewilderment” articles as if anyone in the US should care what others think. I’m constantly amazed that Europe has insanely high taxes, low growth, and tiny innovation yet no one every speaks of my bewilderment. Everyone has cool stuff, but there are bad things to say about every country in addition to good things.
      - ggm 6y ago
        as if anyone in the US should care what others think. American exceptionalism in one phrase.
        kortilla 6y ago
        Germans don’t care what New Yorkers think about Germany. A news article about Americans taking pity on Germany would never land in Der Spiegel but we don’t call that German exceptionalism.
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        Germans may not care specifically about New Yorkers' every thought about their country but they do compare their results internationally. Here's a Der Spiegel article about how the German PISA results are good but could be better: https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/pisa-studie-der-oecd-deutschland-landet-im-oberen-mittelfeld-a-1299249.html https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/pisa-studie-der...
        corty 6y ago
        Oh, there is plenty of German exceptionalism, it usually takes the form of moral, political or ethical snobbiness. Germany views itself as an exceptionally moral and civilized nation nowadays and strives to export that lesson from the past. Not only the Nazi past, mind you, the saying "Am Deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen" -German habit shall heal the world- is far older. Germans know they might be smaller or average in most things, but morally and ethically, we are Übermenschen...
  - austincheney 6y ago
    That is result of 4x fuel prices more than anything else.
    - hutzlibu 6y ago
      True, but big SUVs are more and more common (and also the bitching about it).
    - readarticle 6y ago
      And significantly lower incomes in ruralish areas where public transportation infrastructure is rubbish, vast swathes of Europe are still impressively poor. There are plenty of personal vehicles in rural southern Germany, SUVs and all, to the point I’d go so far as to call it the norm. Not the case in the Balkans, though.
- arrrg 6y ago
  So you need exceptions for those people. Something that has to be considered during implementation, but not a general showstopper. Sometimes in those discussions I’m extremely confused. It’s as though the concept of an exception doesn’t exist and any counter example prevents some policy suggestion, no matter how minor.
  - jayparth 6y ago
    Administering a policy with a ton of loopholes and exceptions almost always becomes a rotting, horrible thing. Look at tax codes. You need exceptions for 90 million people? How does that get enforced, generally? Even though no one has mentioned a specific policy that we can have a concrete discussion about, I see the abstract problem.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      I don’t know. It sounds like you’re just annoyed at the thought of some regulation getting in the way of you and your car, and will come up with random arguments against it.
      - yostrovs 6y ago
        Well, when you decided it's your business to judge what car I should be buying, based on your perception of my needs and wants, it did feel a bit annoying.
      - salamander014 6y ago
        Just because 90 million is a minority doesn't make 90 million insignificant. This is a difficult problem to solve. Recognizing that first and foremost will bring you down the path of: 1. We need a solution for actual urban populations 2. We also need a solution for the 90 million that don't fall under solution 1 3. and finally, we shouldn't be forcing people to buy specific cars. Not saying EV are bad, just that the market needs to start being more competetive, and automakers need to care more. People tend to follow the crowd, if lawmakers were serious about the environment, automakers would have a harder time continuing selling new cars every year(waste), and even more so non electric vehicles. I think there will still be a niche market for ICE vehicles for a very long time, but people who are not "car people" would very easily be driving EVs if they were more popular. Most won't notice the difference.
woodpanel 6y ago
I was never a fan of meeting these monstrous F-150s in an urban setting as a pedestrian. However, linking "Rural" to the right to drive a pickup is still a bit cringeworthy IMO. Most NYC urbanites I know e.g. wouldn't describe Staten Island or most/all of New Jersey as densley populated. Yet, the workers/contractors that can't afford to live in the center or dumbo have to get their tools into the city somehow, if they are to fix my 150k+/year income earning friends condos. So now I found your stats intriguing and looking into it: That alledged 72% urban area inhabitants include non-dense areas like staten island and NJ, so I guess the stats are a bit misleading?
- bumby 6y ago
  >linking "Rural" to the right to drive a pickup is still a bit cringeworthy IMO. Can you please show where this point was stated? It seems like you are reading between the lines too much and straw manning. The point is that “urban” by the definition used to create the statistic in the argument is a very broad term and this makes it difficult to draw good generalizations. I don’t think a claim for “needing personal transportation with a large range” should be equated to “must be using pickups as commuter vehicles”
  - woodpanel 6y ago
    Can you please show where this point was stated? Sure: but smaller, lighter, and slower vehicles are a viable option for most American as a response to So much of what is toxic about cars and car culture could be fixed by downsizing and slowing them. […] I wish north america would fully get on board with these small EVs Not much of a strawman to me, rather good old urbanite-intellectual disregard for the life-styles/social classes driving these big vehicles. makes it difficult to draw good generalizations. Agreed, which is why I would refrain to claim that 80% of Americans live in areas with a density above 50k. As the census noted, this is clearly not the case if e.g. Staten Island has a density of 8k.
    - bumby 6y ago
      Ah ok, I think you meant to respond to the comment one level up. Regardless, thanks for clarifying
bumby 6y ago
This is a good point and appreciate the leg work. I think the issue still remains that these census definitions are almost too broad to be useful in this regard. Last year, I took a trip to Roswell NM. This is close to the population cut-off for “urban” at about 49k people. Would Roswell suddenly become NYC-like if 1500 people migrated there? The idea that Roswell and Manhattan can be in the same classification is not very useful in terms of defining policy. The lifestyle for each is widely divergent and I think they each have very different transportation needs.
- an_opabinia 6y ago
  I think it’s a little simpler than that. Cars are made for people who buy cars, not want or use cars. It could be 28%, or 60%, or whatever. But people who buy cars buy pickup trucks and not small EVs. What more is there to it? If you want to find out why, ask them, or convince people interested in small EVs to you know, actually buy some.
  - bumby 6y ago
    Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but I don’t think this take is particularly useful. The GP comment was about the toxic nature of car culture. The parent comment implies this culture is rooted in demographics and geography. If one believes this is a problem to be fixed, those causes need to be understood. As a professor once told me, “For every problem there is a solution that is simple, easy, and still wrong.” I don’t think saying “cars are made for people who buy cars” is helpful unless you are willing to elaborate on why they want those cars. If you don’t think the geography is a main driver, this forum is a good place to discuss counter-examples
    - imtringued 6y ago
      Aren't large cars status symbols in the USA? Gas is cheap so you buy the biggest and baddest car on the market as a sign of social standing.
      - 6y ago

wand3r 6y ago

I don't fully know if this is the best way to approximate the original posit, which is basically people in the US have to drive super far. However, even in your approximation that is slightly over 92 Million people. Leaving aside the rest of the population that may have to travel in between urban areas and have no rail or reasonable public transit to supplement a car in most situations.

alex_young 6y ago
Fair enough. I do know that much of Europe is something less than urban by this measure, and they seem to get by fine with a lot fewer cars, and the cars they have are almost always much smaller than ours. Perhaps this is one of those self perpetuating problems.
- waterheater 6y ago
  I could go into a lengthy explanation on this point, but it boils down to a difference in culture primarily rooted in (1) available space and (2) historical land usage. And what you're referring to is not a problem, because it is objectively useful to have a large truck in the middle of nowhere. I enjoy being able to move lots of things at once without asking another person for help. Also, have you ever had a tract of land in a rural part of the USA? It's quite nice. Europeans have a tendency to think they're superior to Americans, but that's just classist crap that needs to stop. The USA has cool things, and so do Germans and Austrians and Belgians and the French and so on. Why divide ourselves?
  - seibelj 6y ago
    I agree - the media constantly posts these “other countries look at USA in bewilderment” articles as if anyone in the US should care what others think. I’m constantly amazed that Europe has insanely high taxes, low growth, and tiny innovation yet no one every speaks of my bewilderment. Everyone has cool stuff, but there are bad things to say about every country in addition to good things.
    - ggm 6y ago
      as if anyone in the US should care what others think. American exceptionalism in one phrase.
      - kortilla 6y ago
        Germans don’t care what New Yorkers think about Germany. A news article about Americans taking pity on Germany would never land in Der Spiegel but we don’t call that German exceptionalism.
        bobthepanda 6y ago
        Germans may not care specifically about New Yorkers' every thought about their country but they do compare their results internationally. Here's a Der Spiegel article about how the German PISA results are good but could be better: https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/pisa-studie-der-oecd-deutschland-landet-im-oberen-mittelfeld-a-1299249.html https://www.spiegel.de/lebenundlernen/schule/pisa-studie-der...
        corty 6y ago
        Oh, there is plenty of German exceptionalism, it usually takes the form of moral, political or ethical snobbiness. Germany views itself as an exceptionally moral and civilized nation nowadays and strives to export that lesson from the past. Not only the Nazi past, mind you, the saying "Am Deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen" -German habit shall heal the world- is far older. Germans know they might be smaller or average in most things, but morally and ethically, we are Übermenschen...
- austincheney 6y ago
  That is result of 4x fuel prices more than anything else.
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    True, but big SUVs are more and more common (and also the bitching about it).
  - readarticle 6y ago
    And significantly lower incomes in ruralish areas where public transportation infrastructure is rubbish, vast swathes of Europe are still impressively poor. There are plenty of personal vehicles in rural southern Germany, SUVs and all, to the point I’d go so far as to call it the norm. Not the case in the Balkans, though.
arrrg 6y ago
So you need exceptions for those people. Something that has to be considered during implementation, but not a general showstopper. Sometimes in those discussions I’m extremely confused. It’s as though the concept of an exception doesn’t exist and any counter example prevents some policy suggestion, no matter how minor.
- jayparth 6y ago
  Administering a policy with a ton of loopholes and exceptions almost always becomes a rotting, horrible thing. Look at tax codes. You need exceptions for 90 million people? How does that get enforced, generally? Even though no one has mentioned a specific policy that we can have a concrete discussion about, I see the abstract problem.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    I don’t know. It sounds like you’re just annoyed at the thought of some regulation getting in the way of you and your car, and will come up with random arguments against it.
    - yostrovs 6y ago
      Well, when you decided it's your business to judge what car I should be buying, based on your perception of my needs and wants, it did feel a bit annoying.
    - salamander014 6y ago
      Just because 90 million is a minority doesn't make 90 million insignificant. This is a difficult problem to solve. Recognizing that first and foremost will bring you down the path of: 1. We need a solution for actual urban populations 2. We also need a solution for the 90 million that don't fall under solution 1 3. and finally, we shouldn't be forcing people to buy specific cars. Not saying EV are bad, just that the market needs to start being more competetive, and automakers need to care more. People tend to follow the crowd, if lawmakers were serious about the environment, automakers would have a harder time continuing selling new cars every year(waste), and even more so non electric vehicles. I think there will still be a niche market for ICE vehicles for a very long time, but people who are not "car people" would very easily be driving EVs if they were more popular. Most won't notice the difference.

woodpanel 6y ago

I was never a fan of meeting these monstrous F-150s in an urban setting as a pedestrian. However, linking "Rural" to the right to drive a pickup is still a bit cringeworthy IMO. Most NYC urbanites I know e.g. wouldn't describe Staten Island or most/all of New Jersey as densley populated. Yet, the workers/contractors that can't afford to live in the center or dumbo have to get their tools into the city somehow, if they are to fix my 150k+/year income earning friends condos. So now I found your stats intriguing and looking into it: That alledged 72% urban area inhabitants include non-dense areas like staten island and NJ, so I guess the stats are a bit misleading?

bumby 6y ago
>linking "Rural" to the right to drive a pickup is still a bit cringeworthy IMO. Can you please show where this point was stated? It seems like you are reading between the lines too much and straw manning. The point is that “urban” by the definition used to create the statistic in the argument is a very broad term and this makes it difficult to draw good generalizations. I don’t think a claim for “needing personal transportation with a large range” should be equated to “must be using pickups as commuter vehicles”
- woodpanel 6y ago
  Can you please show where this point was stated? Sure: but smaller, lighter, and slower vehicles are a viable option for most American as a response to So much of what is toxic about cars and car culture could be fixed by downsizing and slowing them. […] I wish north america would fully get on board with these small EVs Not much of a strawman to me, rather good old urbanite-intellectual disregard for the life-styles/social classes driving these big vehicles. makes it difficult to draw good generalizations. Agreed, which is why I would refrain to claim that 80% of Americans live in areas with a density above 50k. As the census noted, this is clearly not the case if e.g. Staten Island has a density of 8k.
  - bumby 6y ago
    Ah ok, I think you meant to respond to the comment one level up. Regardless, thanks for clarifying

bumby 6y ago

This is a good point and appreciate the leg work. I think the issue still remains that these census definitions are almost too broad to be useful in this regard. Last year, I took a trip to Roswell NM. This is close to the population cut-off for “urban” at about 49k people. Would Roswell suddenly become NYC-like if 1500 people migrated there? The idea that Roswell and Manhattan can be in the same classification is not very useful in terms of defining policy. The lifestyle for each is widely divergent and I think they each have very different transportation needs.

an_opabinia 6y ago
I think it’s a little simpler than that. Cars are made for people who buy cars, not want or use cars. It could be 28%, or 60%, or whatever. But people who buy cars buy pickup trucks and not small EVs. What more is there to it? If you want to find out why, ask them, or convince people interested in small EVs to you know, actually buy some.
- bumby 6y ago
  Maybe I’m misunderstanding your point, but I don’t think this take is particularly useful. The GP comment was about the toxic nature of car culture. The parent comment implies this culture is rooted in demographics and geography. If one believes this is a problem to be fixed, those causes need to be understood. As a professor once told me, “For every problem there is a solution that is simple, easy, and still wrong.” I don’t think saying “cars are made for people who buy cars” is helpful unless you are willing to elaborate on why they want those cars. If you don’t think the geography is a main driver, this forum is a good place to discuss counter-examples
  - imtringued 6y ago
    Aren't large cars status symbols in the USA? Gas is cheap so you buy the biggest and baddest car on the market as a sign of social standing.
    - 6y ago