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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5892 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 21, 2026

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Yet, if you look at a random US "city" in Google Maps, you will see lots of single-family houses with their own backyards and limited access to mass transit.

I'm reminded of the recent discussion online about how the United States only has <10 "real" cities, the rest being urban-suburban car-dependent Frankenstein agglomerations. Most of the second tier US cities I've been to lack a continuous urban experience outside of their downtowns, instead consisting of a sparse network of walkable business districts separated by swathes of lower-density development.

This is somewhat addressed in my mega-city comment.

From a glance at the downloadable dataset, using the very-roughly-equivalent criterion "density ≥ 7500 per km2 and area ≥ 67 km2" (which is all that I feel like figuring out in QGIS—I used the "reclassify by table" and "polygonize" tools):

  • Mega-City One (393 km2) is the only US mega-city. Los Angeles (60) is not yet worthy of the title Mega-City Two.

  • Mega-Ciudad Mexico is gigantic, at 673 km2. Guadalajara (152) and León (72) also qualify, but Monterrey (56) does not.

  • If you keep going south, Tegucigalpa (92 km2) and Managua (86) qualify as mega-cities, but Panama City (53) does not.

  • London, 316 km2; Paris, 344; Brussels, 67; Berlin, 88; Istanbul, 230; Cairo, 593; Beijing, 537; Tokyo, 1498; Jakarta, 1865; Lagos, 463; et cetera.

We are well on our way to "Mega City One". I've seen plenty of joking commentary online about "Northeast Megalopolis Supremacy," suggesting a growing regional identity along the DC-Boston Corridor. I think this is also downstream of recent positive migration to Philadelphia and DC by young people, slowly reducing the dominance of NYC in the cultural machine.

the DC–Boston Corridor

That's under the looser US definition of "urban". Under the stricter UN definition, there is no continuous urban corridor, so in my comment I was referring only to New York City (along with Newark, Long Island, etc.).

Certainly, I'm just speaking colloquially. I'm impressed at a lot of this data, I wasn't aware it was tracked and visualized with such precision.

I do believe that eventually the corridor will become continuous, especially as NYC and Philly continue to cross-pollinate. In my eyes, it's just a question of how long it'll take. If any meaningful rail infrastructure is developed in the next 50 years, I'd expect it to accelerate dramatically.

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