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European here. That concept is really alien to me: if I drive 1h in some direction (assuming I’m not just stuck in traffic) I’m somewhere else, some other city, region, maybe even a different country.

Maybe the gaps between the towns/cities have closed, and it’s just buildings everywhere now, but they were separate at some point and that still shows in how streets, schools, etc are organized - like smaller hubs that expanded until they fused, but not like some tree where every year there’s more and more rings around the central core…

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recursivethinking@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Honestly it can take an hour just to get out of NYC from Manhattan, hitting the beginning of suburbs. It can then take another 30-60 to get through suburbs, depending on which direction youre headed.

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AmyAye@nord.pub ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
This is not a critisism on you, or Europe.

But if feels like people not from America, don’t quite get just how much land the US has (and frankly, Canada too). Especially in some things like “why don’t they all go protest their shitty leadership.” Because for some people its a 40 hour drive, or an expensive plane ticket.

Its also why we have no got “high speed rail”. Part of that is, we do have rail, but its still slow, becsuse its a lot of distance. And maintaining a high speed rail that long would be very difficult (I think we should still do it).

I live in a rural area, which is probably more comparable to your experience, it takes aroujd 45 min to an hour to get to one of several small-mid sized cities. But all are within the same state, and all another 60-90 min to the border at a minimum.

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