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Which doesn’t mean much as a comparison point in the US because much of that land has zero or approximately zero residents, and nobody’s talking about building
by ryukafalz 4y ago
Which doesn’t mean much as a comparison point in the US because much of that land has zero or approximately zero residents, and nobody’s talking about building high-density housing in the middle of nowhere anyway. Upwards of 80% of the US population lives in urban areas and those places certainly are comparable to much of Europe.
- ghaff 4y ago>Upwards of 80% of the US population lives in urban areas Look up the US Census definition of "urban." In the town where I live, three houses around me are on 100 acres collectively--not to mention even more adjacent conservation land and that's classified as urban because it's near a smaller old mill town and only about 50 miles from a major city.
- ryukafalz 4y agoWithout knowing exactly which town you’re talking about, I would posit that that’s likely still dense enough to have some pretty direct comparison points somewhere in Western Europe. It’s not like all of Western Europe is a city. Which doesn’t mean that the same infrastructure you’d see in a dense European city would make sense in your town, mind you. I just think that Europe and America aren’t as incomparable as some people seem to think.
- ghaff 4y agoWell, it's a typical more rural New England town. There is zero public transit of any sort. Essentially no businesses in town except barely when they merge with an adjacent small old mill city. So even in the town center where there are some sidewalks basically nowhere to walk to other than the library or post office. About 7K population total. About an hour drive from a major city. Though not that different really from small English countryside towns I've walked through.
- ethbr0 4y agoThat's one thing that fascinated me about CT when I was up there. It seemed bizarre that even "one strip mall" towns didn't have certain categories of business. Down in the south, you can't measure a mile without hitting two serviceable Tex-Mex restaurants. Up north? The nearest Tex-Mex is often 30 minutes away, and the nearest pizza place (which often isn't great) is 20 minutes.
- ghaff 4y agoI'm not sure how much decent Tex-Mex I've seen in the Northeast generally. I do have a few decent pizza places around where I live west of Boston. But generally speaking I find I'm on my own with respect to food. Which is a reasonable tradeoff I make.
- bombcar 4y agoApparently the new "urban" definition is something like: >Adopting 500 persons per square mile (PPSM) as the minimum density criterion for recognizing some types of urban territory. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/03/24/2022-06180/urban-area-criteria-for-the-2020-census-final-criteria https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/03/24/2022-06... Which basically means anything "town-like" or higher is "urban". So most Americans live in urban areas even if they are in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.
- ghaff 4y agoYes. Most people see urban and imagine at least a 2nd or 3rd tier city in terms of population. Not a 5K person town that may or may not be within a not too long a drive of some sort of population center. Urban in the sense of "don't need to own a car" is a much smaller slice--especially if you aren't adjusting your expectations.
- bombcar 4y agoYeah the census counts urban as “a cop or ambulance will show up in decent time” and rural as “you could detonate a cow and nobody would be around to notice”.