Europe is relatively small but their towns are waaay more compact because they were built before cars came around so most towns are already in favor of walking/biking distances.
But yeah America is huuuge. The drive from Paris to central Switzerland is about 12 and a half hours and it’s a total change of scenery. For the US that’s just California to Utah. Or Washington DC to Charleston SC.
What the US needs badly is high speed rail from city to city
Yeah but you did just describe massive changes in scenery in America. You can do 12 hours of the same here for sure, the great plains are really big, but usually 12 hours of driving later the scenery has changed. It’s 14 hours from Duluth Minnesota which is on Lake Superior to Sundance Wyoming which has the devil’s tower monument and is past the great long stretches of nothing that makes up the bulk of the Dakotas. Des Moines is a city surrounded by nothing but corn and open road (with a distinct feel from the Dakotas) and is 12 hours from Memphis Tennessee which is adjacent to Appalachia. Baltimore Maryland, a coastal city on the Chesapeake Bay and near a bunch of swamps driving 12 hours west and north can get you into and out of the Appalachian Mountains (and not a short cut of them), barely dodging Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Toledo (with an optional roller coaster detour at Sandusky) while you hug Lake Erie, do the entire border of Michigan and Indiana before landing in Michigan City, Indiana on Lake Michigan, which looks like it’s just outside Chicagoland.
And out of curiosity I checked what a cross country trip looks like, NYC to Los Angeles is 50 hours, while the longest road trip between frequent destinations is Key West to Seattle at 63 hours. The latter of these begins on a tropical island, goes through swamps, deep south agricultural areas, Appalachia, Midwestern agriculture, the Mississippi River, Midwest agriculture, great plains, badlands, Rockies, pnw valleys, cascade mountains, and ends in a rainy ass wetlands, but this one has wild disparity between day length over the year.
Thaya got noting to do.withngorceey sjopping thoigh.
I just.saw the opening scene of Tomorrow War (Chris Pratt movie), it starts with a scene of a drone shot over a US suburb and I was horrofied, a literal shit hole of a place to live and this horror is normalized?
It would be so nice to live somewhere I could walk to the store. Or anywhere.
The non-American mind cannot conceive of living in a place so vast.
Europe is relatively small but their towns are waaay more compact because they were built before cars came around so most towns are already in favor of walking/biking distances.
But yeah America is huuuge. The drive from Paris to central Switzerland is about 12 and a half hours and it’s a total change of scenery. For the US that’s just California to Utah. Or Washington DC to Charleston SC.
What the US needs badly is high speed rail from city to city
Or California to California
Yeah but you did just describe massive changes in scenery in America. You can do 12 hours of the same here for sure, the great plains are really big, but usually 12 hours of driving later the scenery has changed. It’s 14 hours from Duluth Minnesota which is on Lake Superior to Sundance Wyoming which has the devil’s tower monument and is past the great long stretches of nothing that makes up the bulk of the Dakotas. Des Moines is a city surrounded by nothing but corn and open road (with a distinct feel from the Dakotas) and is 12 hours from Memphis Tennessee which is adjacent to Appalachia. Baltimore Maryland, a coastal city on the Chesapeake Bay and near a bunch of swamps driving 12 hours west and north can get you into and out of the Appalachian Mountains (and not a short cut of them), barely dodging Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Toledo (with an optional roller coaster detour at Sandusky) while you hug Lake Erie, do the entire border of Michigan and Indiana before landing in Michigan City, Indiana on Lake Michigan, which looks like it’s just outside Chicagoland.
And out of curiosity I checked what a cross country trip looks like, NYC to Los Angeles is 50 hours, while the longest road trip between frequent destinations is Key West to Seattle at 63 hours. The latter of these begins on a tropical island, goes through swamps, deep south agricultural areas, Appalachia, Midwestern agriculture, the Mississippi River, Midwest agriculture, great plains, badlands, Rockies, pnw valleys, cascade mountains, and ends in a rainy ass wetlands, but this one has wild disparity between day length over the year.
In, roughly, 12 hours I can get from pennsylvania to florida. DC to Charleston should not take that long.
Thaya got noting to do.withngorceey sjopping thoigh.
I just.saw the opening scene of Tomorrow War (Chris Pratt movie), it starts with a scene of a drone shot over a US suburb and I was horrofied, a literal shit hole of a place to live and this horror is normalized?
More like living in a place where it can be impossible to cross a short distance on foot when it wouldn’t be impossible to add a walking path.