If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity

Re:If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity by alkonaut on Tuesday July 30, 2024 @12:37PM (#41111101)

The US is not large and not sparse compared to the rest of the world in general or compared to Europe in particular. This argument pops up every time but it just has no basis in reality. There are sparse (rural) and dense (city) areas everywhere. The ratio between this type of area is different in Finland compared to the UK, just as it differs between Alaska and New Jersey. The density of the US is roughly the same as Europe. (Around 100/sq km)

But walkable cities can be both 1M population or 10k population. What applies to a footpath in a city of 1M applies to a footpath in a city of 10k too.

Truly rural areas usually aren’t the topic of these discussions nor sites like strongtowns. For obvious reasons.

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Re:If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity by keybored on Tuesday July 30, 2024 @01:06PM (#41111512)

> The density of the US is roughly the same as Europe. (Around 100/sq km)

The population density of America is 33.6/square km according to Wikipedia. For comparison: Sweden up to the north is 25/square km.

There is a large difference in this regard.

EDIT: I added the part I was replying to out of concern of the downvoter’s who didn’t manage to catch that.

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Re:If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity by alkonaut on Tuesday July 30, 2024 @01:29PM (#41111835)

Oh sorry Google fooled me, when asking for US pop density it answered per sq. mi (96) and for EU it answered per sq km (106). The numbers are less similar with the same units then…. Some sparse countries like Ukraine aren’t counted in EU however.

But I think the point you make about Sweden also applies to anywhere. How much land a country has that isn’t a city isn’t very relevant to how its cities look. If the US had 10 more alaskas or the EU had 10 more Swedens wouldn’t matter for how cities are built.

In the debate about Covid there was a trope about Sweden being so sparsely populated that no lessons could be drawn from there. Yet looking more closely it’s obvious that this is merely because most areas of Sweden have almost no people, and it’s rather Urbanized. I.e it’s actually locally dense but mostly empty.

“Mean distance between humans” is a much better measure of population density, both for city design and epedemics. Australia is a prime example where on average, 3ppl per square kilometer live. A figure that says nothing about actual population density.

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Re:If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity by keybored on Tuesday July 30, 2024 @05:12PM (#41114184)

The fact check nerd snipe besides I agree with your argument. :)

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Re:If We Want a Shift to Walking, We Need to Prioritize Dignity by iggldiggl on Thursday August 01, 2024 @07:59AM (#41128273)

"Population weighted density" is the search term you want.

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