Divided states of America. Is it time to create two countries?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Divided states of America. Is it time to create two countries?

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

The Oldest Man posted:

Strong suggest you and others read the first couple chapters of V.S. McAlester's A Field Guide to American Houses for baby-level information about the gestation of the American suburb and its physical forms before opining this. Suburbs were the de facto pattern of urban development before cars even existed, and long before 1920.

The US is absolutely not on its own in having exurbs. Many people in Japan do an exurban daily-multi-hour-each-way commute via train to be able to have a 'real' house with a yard and parallel patterns exists across Asia and Europe as well. I know a guy who commutes via bullet train from the outskirts of Nagano to Meguro (that's 2.5-3 hours each way, daily) so that he could have a big house and a yard. This is possible because of a commuter-friendly express bullet train that exists for this purpose, and it's not uncommon.

What's unique to the US are two things:
1) Massive public subsidies for car-based transport and car-centric low density development
2) No parallel public subsidies for other transit modes and development forms; in fact there are mostly incentives for the former and penalties for the latter (like parking minimums in downtown core development projects, for example)

You get rid of other of those things and our car-centric sprawl development form evaporates; either into clustered exurban enclaves (like clusters of mid-rises and houses centered around a train station, if there are public subsidies for rail) or straight up into urban agglomeration with a built up core surrounded by midrise, then townhouses, and then detached houses typically accompanied by private bus/shuttle or light rail/street car transit.

It�s not unique to the us in that Canada at least has all the same problems, even if it has a slightly better train system

# ¿ Nov 11, 2020 22:26

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mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

PT6A posted:

We have what now?

In what way is our train system better? If anything, it's worse.

i would argue it's much easier for a majority of canadians to take a train somewhere anywhere than a majority of americans. obviously there are scaling issues involved.

like the train was basically an impossibility where i lived in the states, here they have stops that aren't only at 3am on wednesdays

# ¿ Nov 11, 2020 22:45

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

PT6A posted:

Okay, and... why do you think this?

We have one main passenger rail corridor and a few smaller ones, none of which are even up to the standard of the Acela corridor in the US. The US is awful for train service but Canada is just as bad or worse.

because that's one of the only places in the US you can regularly take a train. i grew up in the US and live in canada now. you can theoretically take a train, without much difficulty or planning, across the entire country here along a route that passes through close to a huge percentage of the canadian population.

that's just not possible without a poo poo-ton of effort in most major american cities. i grew up in the hills, so that's an obvious no-go but the nearest city to me was an msa of millions and did not get any kind of daily train service.

# ¿ Nov 11, 2020 23:23

mediaphage: Mar 22, 2007; Excuse me, pardon me, sheer perfection coming through

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

It's not, speaking as someone who's lived in both bumfucks and hubs of both countries.

Canada: expensive and unable to reach the north
US: same cost as Halifax-Winnipeg to go from NYC to Boston, only rich people go further, not useable at all beyond one corridor

That roughly 90% of Canada lives along the corridor and the vast majority of that is between Montr�al and Toronto may colour your experience

this was my whole point, too, that it works for a majority of canadians, not that it's a completely pervasive service, thus a majority of the country benefits vs the US.

edit: it's not even relevant to the discussion at hand, it was just an aside, and i explicitly said "slightly." i don't know why you're reading so much into it (not you, EAH) but let's drop the ot

mediaphage fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Nov 12, 2020

# ¿ Nov 12, 2020 00:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Divided states of America. Is it time to create two countries?