The 30 miles on each side of most people in the US includes a lot of open space. NYC isn't 30 miles east of me. There are rural farms only a few miles west. Th

The 30 miles on each side of most people in the US includes a lot of open space. NYC isn't 30 miles east of me. There are rural farms only a few miles west. This is representative of the edge of the most dense metro region in the US. That's the density argument. Belgium and the Netherlands are 10X more dense than the US in aggregate. That 10X makes things wildly different and it tells you how relatively frequent cities and suburbs are there vs here. The US does optimize for our open space. We have car infrastructure. Again, give it a few centuries.