Comment by kajaktum

Americans optimize for hyper-individualistic convenience. The average one-way commute in Dallas, Texas is under 30 minutes. The average in Tokyo is 48-50 minutes. And the guy in Dallas goes to work in a perfectly climate controlled bubble where he doesn’t have to interact with anyone else, while the person in Tokyo is crammed into a rush hour subway car.

I love Tokyo too (never been to Shanghai), because I’m an asian collectivist at heart. But you can’t really compare across cultures when they’re optimizing for different things. Americans are very wealthy and spend a lot of their wealth optimizing to never have to be near other people.

Paris has a metro station everywhere at least in what a tourist can assume to be an enlarged city center. Tokyo is another city with a lot of metro stations. Manhattan too, at least up to Central Park (but 20+ since my last visit.) I don't remember Shanghai to stand out positively or negatively, but 11 years can be a long time.