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This is off-topic, but I just wanted to say as a European how crazy it is to keep finding out the US is so large that even some third-tier city I ± never heard

• loftyal 2y ago
  Wait until you see China. There are multiple cities bigger than NYC or London that most people have never heard of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_China_by_pop...
  • cedilla 2y ago
    Many of those cities are compromised of enormously large areas though. Chongqing is larger than the country of Austria and has a population density of 390 people per square km. London has a population density of 15000 people per square km. There are still a lot of big cities and huge city centres but the Chinese meaning of city often includes the metropolitan area plus rural hinterland.
    • Ographer 2y ago
      It sounds like you may be comparing the population density of a large, diluted area and not the downtown areas alone. It doesn't get much denser than downtown Chinese cities, they have specialized in high-density mega-sized apartment buildings. Even large US downtowns are dwarfed by the average Chinese city downtown flush with LED skyscrapers. They have way more people and manufacturing than other countries so it shouldn't be too surprising.
• arethuza 2y ago
  Well Europe and the EU both have larger populations than the US and quite a bit higher population densities (even though the continent of Europe is slightly larger) so wouldn't you expect Europe to have more skyscrapers than the US?
  • WJW 2y ago
    Europe just seems to go for much more mid-rise high-density neighborhoods compared to the US with skyscrapers in the city center and then sprawling suburbs that are so low-density you can barely get out of them without a car.
    • arethuza 2y ago
      What I found most surprising about a lot of US city "downtowns" is how utterly dead they are in the evenings and at weekends.
      • fosk 2y ago
        They are also dangerous and that’s also a big reason why nobody hangs out there after a certain time. European downtowns are family friendly and actually nice and safe, unlike the US.
        • brnt 2y ago
          I think the comment about Kansas City shows that the big reason nobody hangs out there is that nobody actually lives there. And so since after 18:00 everybody these huge, built-up areas are suddenly available, you create excellent conditions for things that'll keep people from going there. The 'secret' of European downtowns is that they are not uninhabited.
      • nervousvarun 2y ago
        The answer is crime. It's always crime.
        • 2y ago
• keiferski 2y ago
  Europe seems to do a better job at constructing buildings that can be used in various use cases, though. So when the office use case goes away, making the building into apartments is fairly simple. This is unlike the office towers mentioned in the article, which don’t really lend themselves naturally to being apartments.
• tolien 2y ago
  All things considered, I wouldn't be surprised if a non-zero number of people have only heard of Kansas City because of Taylor Swift.
  • KptMarchewa 2y ago
    Wouldn't be that Nashville? IDK that much about Taylor Swift, but that's the only city that comes in mind.
    • ColonelBlimp 2y ago
      Lucky you. Search for Travis Kelce unless you prefer to keep your exposure to useless information under control.
• gizmo 2y ago
  A city doesn't need to be big to have skyscrapers. It's just a policy choice, like how wide roads are or public transportation. Many Americans are surprised that small European towns are big enough to justify a train station.
  • heroprotagonist 2y ago
    Small American towns used to have train stations, even in the middle of nowhere. They enabled factories and other industrial work. Then the trains would go away, and the factories would die, or it would happen the other way around. Then teenagers would go out to abandoned tressels to have bonfires and drink near the scenic decay every weekend, until the cops showed up to scatter them running into the woods.
    • gizmo 2y ago
      True, but only in the east coast and Midwest. Even at the peak of US rail (1916) the west coast was only sparsely connected.
      • waveBidder 2y ago
        … it was also only sparsely populated
        • gizmo 2y ago
          Have you ever looked at a rail map? California and Indiana both had a population of about 2.7 million in 1916. Indiana had a dense rail network and California didn't. Indiana is only ~5x smaller than California. This is what the rail network looked like in 1916: https://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/4400/4401/4401.htm https://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/4400/4401/4401.htm
          • fingerlocks 2y ago
            The less dense areas are impassable mountains or inhospitable desert
• JohnClark1337 2y ago
  Yeah, the US is big. Movies and TV shows usually only show like 2 or 3 cities which makes everything seem like it's close together. For instance I live on the east coast, and I've never been to LA California, which might seem weird but it's over 2500 miles away. Different regions have basically different sub-cultures that emerge because we're so spread out.
• Yeul 2y ago
  European cities didn't have skyscrapers until recently because of "muh monuments muh medieval skyline". It's changing though I'm seeing 40 story (luxury) apartment complexes go up all over Dutch cities.
• dnissley 2y ago
  Similarly it was strange to me when visiting Athens that there were essentially no skyscrapers!
• tylerFowler 2y ago
  The history of Kansas City is very interesting - it was well poised to be the size of Chicago until rail travel became less popular. So during the 20's & 30's it was a major landmark for Art Deco architecture.