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Comment by nonethewiser

11 hours ago

>If I could get around by bus, light rail, bike, and all of the wasted city space devoted to parking could be turned into more housing and amenities, that would be great.

I guess it depends on where we're talking about. The majority of the US is not inside a city. So just diverting all resources into public transportation is only serving the metros.

If we're talking about a small country then sure.

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nonethewiser

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Tinned_Tuna  10 hours ago

> The majority of the US is not inside a city.

I think this isn't true for the US any more, maybe it hasn't been true for decades?

WorldBank seems to have the ubranisation rate at around 80% for the US: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locat...

There is a bit of a definitional problem, with people living in suburbs identifying as rural, as do folks in exurbs. I don't think they're considered rural, and they're concentrated enough that well-designed public transit could serve them quite well. A decent public transit system means that families in sub/exurbs can go from 2 cars to 1 car without a major drop in quality of life, but they'd save $5k - $10k per year.

  • rrr_oh_man  4 hours ago

    It's much simpler than that.

    UN urbanization rate is based on the national definition.

    The U.S. definition of urban area is based on population (and has been changed recently):

      Under the old criteria, an urbanized area needed to have at least 50,000 residents. An urban cluster was defined as having at least 2,500 people, a threshold that had been around since 1910. Under this definition, almost 81 percent of the U.S. was urban and 19 percent was rural over the past decade.

  Under the new definition, hammered out after the 2020 census, the minimum population required for an area to be considered urban doubled to 5,000 people. Originally, the Census Bureau proposed raising the threshold to 10,000 people but pulled back amid opposition. The new criteria for urban areas shift the urban-rural ratio slightly, to 79.6 percent and 20.4 percent, respectively.

    Source: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/u-s-census-bureau-rede... ("U.S. Census Bureau redefines the meaning of urban areas in America", PBS, Dec 29, 2022)