Mine Is Bigger Than Yours

[xoxoxoBruce]

Interesting size comparison. I tend to forget this, also how much further north Europe is than we are.

[DanaC]

America exists at a scale I find difficult to get my head around.

[Undertoad]

Distance from Manchester to central London = Washington DC to New York City

I know right? J just shared an article where a guy writes about travelling by train from NYC to San Francisco. It takes four days, with no stopovers.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Yeah, I've driven across it over a dozen times and still can't quite absorb it. We talk about, and are pretty well versed on, different parts of the country like they're next door neighbors. In September I attended a rally in Springfield Illinois, no big deal, just throw my shit in the car and go. But it's 900 miles(1450km), a 12 hour trip, a third of the way across the country. I think from the Chunnel that would put me in Russia somewhere.

[DanaC]

Psychologically, as well, despite the chunnel, I think we've always felt that sense of physical separation from mainland Europe - and with it a sense of physical boundary to our country. It really wouldn't take a terribly long time to travel on foot from one side, or one end of the island to the other. With modern transport you're talking hours. Everything is scaled down compared to America - mountains and valleys are smaller, major towns and cities are smaller, distances in between, everything.

The variety in landscape, rock types, even climate, is there, but in much smaller pockets.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Distance from Manchester to central London = Washington DC to New York City

I know right? J just shared an article where a guy writes about travelling by train from NYC to San Francisco. It takes four days, with no stopovers.

of course you'd stay overnight when travelling that far. maybe two.

[lumberjim]

Strange. I was just idly wondering how Pennsylvania compares in size to England.

PA is 46k miles Sq. England is 50k Sq. Pretty close.

Great Britain is 88k.

[Sundae]

But I bet the population density is FAR higher.

I've always wanted to travel across America by road or rail. Really see it.
Have done it in Europe.
I've been told by many Americans that it would not be worth it. Too long, too many similar landscapes lasting for too long (as in it takes so many miles for the dramatic changes to happen) and too much corporate hemogeneity.
Don't care. If I live long enough and can ever afford it, I want to do it anyway.

But Europe must seem like a little pocket treasure to Americans.

[DanaC]

Yeah - travel by train from the north of England to London and you'll see several dramatic landscape changes in a journey of about 3 hours. I haven't travelled extensively in Europe but I've been to a couple of different parts of France, and saw similarly dramatic changes across a short distance.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Sundae

...
I've been told by many Americans that it would not be worth it.
Too long, too many similar landscapes lasting for too long
(as in it takes so many miles for the dramatic changes to happen)
and too much corporate hemogeneity.
...

One evening at a social gathering of prominent scientists in Boston,
during a similar discussion about traveling across the US,
there was a stunned silence when one remarked about Chicago:
"Once you've seen a cornfield, you've seen them all"

- It was not well received.

[Carruthers]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

Strange. I was just idly wondering how Pennsylvania compares in size to England.

PA is 46k miles Sq. England is 50k Sq. Pretty close.

Great Britain is 88k.

I use Wyoming as a yardstick when making comparisons with the USA.

Wyoming: Area 97,814 sq mi. Population: 584,153 (2014 estimate)

UK: Area 93,628 sq mi. Population: 64,511,000 (2014 estimate)

As near as dammit the same size as Wyoming, but the UK has 110 times the population.

That is why I have treasured memories of my visits to the US. There's room to move!

[Undertoad]

England 400 ppl per square km

Pennsylvania 110 ppl per square km

New Jersey is the densest state at like 460/sq km. It's the only US state denser than England. New Jersey is 40% forest.

[DanaC]

The thing is, quite a bit of Britain is not suitable for building on. So, the population centres tend to be small and dense.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

there was a stunned silence when one remarked about Chicago:
"Once you've seen a cornfield, you've seen them all"

I don't get it, what has Chicago have to do with corn fields? Or was that the point?

Originally Posted by Carruthers

I use Wyoming as a yardstick when making comparisons with the USA.

Great place to visit but not exactly a good yardstick(meter-stick). It's #51 of 52 for density, and contains some of the country's best scenery.

Originally Posted by DanaC

The thing is, quite a bit of Britain is not suitable for building on. So, the population centres tend to be small and dense.

Not suitable? Only because there is no employment. Not suitable for traditional self sufficient agriculture, but if someone built an office/factory needing employees, anywhere, certainly infrastructure for housing and services can be built. Hell, they're figuring out how to do it on Mars.

[DanaC]

Yeah - well, we got really creative about where it's acceptable to build and threw up a bunch of stuff on the flood plains and that went really well.

A lot of it is about where we allow building to preserve the countryside. But a lot of it is about where it becomes so difficult to build on that the cost of making it so would be prohibitive. Cherry and I live pretty near to the Pennines as well as moorlands. The whole region is undercut with ancient and medieval mining, a lot of it is of rock types that are highly prone to subsidence and sinkholes - lot of gypsum. The landscape of much of this region is pretty much concertinaed. Craggy hills and valleys in quick succession. Or swathes of moors, with pete bogs, marshland and occasional hidden quicksand. Not much good land for crops, and herds are smaller, more broken up than in the flatter places.

Water is a massive factor in where we can build. There are a lot of waterways.

You'll always find someone who managed to build in the most unlikely and inhospitable spot, but to build anything of scale in some of these places would just be folly.