You're omitting a very important point: the heat sources themselves. The heat for the entire city doesn't come from a single power plant. It is distributed over many heat generation plants throughout the city, some dedicated solely to district heating. I don't think any spot on that map is more than a few km from a heat source.

To be fair, the vast majority of Helsinki's district heating system is powered by three combined heat and power (CHP) generation plants in Vuosaari, Hanasaari and Salmisaari. You're right that there is also 11 dedicated water heating plants to supplement the CHP supply in very cold weather or times of high demand, but they are supplementary.

More people live in New York than in the whole of Finland.

You can sort of tell from the other responses, but really the core of this argument is not the one you think it is: You think this means it is less appropriate for New York because of this fact. It is the opposite. Your population density is higher, so these types of solutions are easier and more cost-effective. This makes the fact that you don't already have it seem even more incompetent, which is the opposite of what you wanted to achieve.

Consider it's a nation that reinvented a crappy version of a metro with bunch of teslas in a very unsafe tunnel, I don't think you can expect reasonable answers. /sarcasm

I know it's hard to develop actual efficient solutions due to the cost of buying land, creating new infra. So you go for the cost efficient route instead of the practical efficiency.

I believe the parent was responding to “seems small” in regards to NYC’s steam heating system, which is the largest in the world.

Which only makes more sense for the New York to be heated by a network of pipes.

Portions of NYC are heated by pipes. ConEd operates the largest commercial steam system in the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_steam_system

>Today, Consolidated Edison operates the largest commercial steam system in the world (larger than the next nine combined).

Huh, neat.

A series of tubes, you say?

I never understood why it was so funny. For me it was good first order of approximation of how internet works.

We actually do pipe some stuff around and it flows from one place to another.

Is the series of tubes so hilariously unimaginable for Americans?

It’s not a truck.