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The Dumbest Excuse for Bad Cities [VIDEO 11:36]

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See on www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes

I’ve always hated the “it’s too big” excuse as to why America can’t have good city design for a few reasons.

  1. The US was built on trains,
  2. they had more train service when there were less people in a sparser country,
  3. Most Americans don’t go between Coward, South Carolina and Placenta frequently if at all. Though I think rail fans do a disservice with insisting that HSR between NYC to LA should be a priority instead of a more sensible LA to SF they’re failing to do now. Also it would take a long time compared to flying unless they used a Shanghai maglev.
  4. The country is big but you can work within regions and even cities.

Jason does a great job critiquing the argument and unfortunately I share his skepticism that this can be fixed. It just seems like bad land use patterns are endemic and hard to change and we’ll have to wait to see the consequences. Would be better just to move to a place with sensible land usage.