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Comment by concerned_user | Hacker News Reader

I think you are wrong here, what you said is mostly about how it is in big cities versus the rural areas, same thing is in Europe. You will not find a lot of mass transit in European countryside, sure there are buses and trains probably more abundant than in USA but be prepared to walk a few kilometers to the nearest station.

Your point would make sense if USA had high-speed trains linking big cities but it doesn't, and the train routes that do exist experience all sorts of delays which makes people choose planes even for shorter distances under 500 km which would take ~2 hr on high speed train.

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Where did I say that it's about rural areas vs big cities ? In most US metro areas majority of people of people live in houses. In US people either drive or fly. There is good infra for long range driving. This has nothing to do with large cities vs rural areas for the most part.

There is still a serious linguistic disconnect here. You’re talking about what are essentially suburbs. Big cities are mostly apartments and condos. This is true throughout the developed world including in the US, but for some reason in the US we ended up calling every group of houses and a general store “city”.

Yeah. In the UK a city needs central government paperwork (notionally through the Queen). They hold competitions to pick new ones. If a million people go live somewhere that's a really big town, but it only becomes a city when the Queen says so. Being a city makes no direct practical difference to anything, it's like being elected homecoming king.

In the US city status makes an important practical difference to how an area is run and what the people running it can do independently of the State they're in. So it makes sense every settlement with a general store and a paved road would want that status.

> n the US city status makes an important practical difference to how an area is run and what the people running it can do independently of the State they're in.

The status of various municipal designations varies greatly based on state laws. Generally, government levels go state->county->municipality. The type and form of a municipality generally only affects how it is organized, not its level of independence from higher levels of government. Some states restrict types and forms based on size, though.

I mean, if you want to split hairs, then yes most Americans live in the suburbs of metropolitan areas, which is because of and also the reason for shitty American infra. If you are looking for Berlin+ levels of density that would be the 7th percentile of American zip codes.

The person you are responding to never even used the word cities.

Yes. It’s not splitting hairs, it’s looking at the root of the problem: Americans live inefficiently and in our bubble it seems “normal” because we have normalized severe deviance from good social, economic, and environmental practices and lifestyles.

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