Mine Is Bigger Than Yours

Interesting size comparison. I tend to forget this, also how much further north Europe is than we are.

America exists at a scale I find difficult to get my head around.

Distance from Manchester to central London = Washington DC to New York City

I know right? J just shared an article where a guy writes about travelling by train from NYC to San Francisco. It takes four days, with no stopovers.

Yeah, I've driven across it over a dozen times and still can't quite absorb it. We talk about, and are pretty well versed on, different parts of the country like they're next door neighbors. In September I attended a rally in Springfield Illinois, no big deal, just throw my shit in the car and go. But it's 900 miles(1450km), a 12 hour trip, a third of the way across the country. I think from the Chunnel that would put me in Russia somewhere.

Psychologically, as well, despite the chunnel, I think we've always felt that sense of physical separation from mainland Europe - and with it a sense of physical boundary to our country. It really wouldn't take a terribly long time to travel on foot from one side, or one end of the island to the other. With modern transport you're talking hours. Everything is scaled down compared to America - mountains and valleys are smaller, major towns and cities are smaller, distances in between, everything.

The variety in landscape, rock types, even climate, is there, but in much smaller pockets.

Undertoad;944732 wrote:

Distance from Manchester to central London = Washington DC to New York City

I know right? J just shared an article where a guy writes about travelling by train from NYC to San Francisco. It takes four days, with no stopovers.

of course you'd stay overnight when travelling that far. maybe two. ;)

Strange. I was just idly wondering how Pennsylvania compares in size to England.

PA is 46k miles Sq. England is 50k Sq. Pretty close.

Great Britain is 88k.

But I bet the population density is FAR higher.

I've always wanted to travel across America by road or rail. Really see it.
Have done it in Europe.
I've been told by many Americans that it would not be worth it. Too long, too many similar landscapes lasting for too long (as in it takes so many miles for the dramatic changes to happen) and too much corporate hemogeneity.
Don't care. If I live long enough and can ever afford it, I want to do it anyway.

But Europe must seem like a little pocket treasure to Americans.

Yeah - travel by train from the north of England to London and you'll see several dramatic landscape changes in a journey of about 3 hours. I haven't travelled extensively in Europe but I've been to a couple of different parts of France, and saw similarly dramatic changes across a short distance.

Sundae;944788 wrote:

...
I've been told by many Americans that it would not be worth it.
Too long, too many similar landscapes lasting for too long
(as in it takes so many miles for the dramatic changes to happen)
and too much corporate hemogeneity.
...

One evening at a social gathering of prominent scientists in Boston,
during a similar discussion about traveling across the US,
there was a stunned silence when one remarked about Chicago:
"Once you've seen a cornfield, you've seen them all"

- It was not well received.

lumberjim;944768 wrote:

Strange. I was just idly wondering how Pennsylvania compares in size to England.

PA is 46k miles Sq. England is 50k Sq. Pretty close.

Great Britain is 88k.

I use Wyoming as a yardstick when making comparisons with the USA.

Wyoming: Area 97,814 sq mi. Population: 584,153 (2014 estimate)

UK: Area 93,628 sq mi. Population: 64,511,000 (2014 estimate)

As near as dammit the same size as Wyoming, but the UK has 110 times the population.

That is why I have treasured memories of my visits to the US. There's room to move!

England 400 ppl per square km

Pennsylvania 110 ppl per square km

New Jersey is the densest state at like 460/sq km. It's the only US state denser than England. New Jersey is 40% forest.

The thing is, quite a bit of Britain is not suitable for building on. So, the population centres tend to be small and dense.

Lamplighter;944795 wrote:

there was a stunned silence when one remarked about Chicago:
"Once you've seen a cornfield, you've seen them all"

I don't get it, what has Chicago have to do with corn fields? Or was that the point?

Carruthers;944798 wrote:

I use Wyoming as a yardstick when making comparisons with the USA.

Great place to visit but not exactly a good yardstick(meter-stick). It's #51 of 52 for density, and contains some of the country's best scenery.

DanaC;944801 wrote:

The thing is, quite a bit of Britain is not suitable for building on. So, the population centres tend to be small and dense.

Not suitable? Only because there is no employment. Not suitable for traditional self sufficient agriculture, but if someone built an office/factory needing employees, anywhere, certainly infrastructure for housing and services can be built. Hell, they're figuring out how to do it on Mars.

Yeah - well, we got really creative about where it's acceptable to build and threw up a bunch of stuff on the flood plains and that went really well.

A lot of it is about where we allow building to preserve the countryside. But a lot of it is about where it becomes so difficult to build on that the cost of making it so would be prohibitive. Cherry and I live pretty near to the Pennines as well as moorlands. The whole region is undercut with ancient and medieval mining, a lot of it is of rock types that are highly prone to subsidence and sinkholes - lot of gypsum. The landscape of much of this region is pretty much concertinaed. Craggy hills and valleys in quick succession. Or swathes of moors, with pete bogs, marshland and occasional hidden quicksand. Not much good land for crops, and herds are smaller, more broken up than in the flatter places.

Water is a massive factor in where we can build. There are a lot of waterways.

You'll always find someone who managed to build in the most unlikely and inhospitable spot, but to build anything of scale in some of these places would just be folly.

Dealing with, this forest belongs to Sir Whatshisname, and that wildlife(+habitat) belongs to the Crown, doesn't help either. More a mater of cultural restrictions, than suitability. In the words of Alfred the Great, fuck off, peasants. ;)

There are definitely cultural factors too. But there are also historical factors. When a town or region developed and with what industry plays a major part in determining the kind of building that happened and still happens there.

In terms of planning restrictions - those are fairly modern. Mainly they were brought in as a response to some of the more negative results of unrestricted development. 'That wildlife belongs to the crown' is far less of a factor in building than the concerns of wildlife protection agencies. God help you if you haven't brought in a bat expert to do a bat report. I am not kidding.

It is also, generally, one of the most common reasons for large-scale public protests against developments. Protecting wildlife and preserving the land and ancient sites for future generations to enjoy. As with the infamous Twyford Down M3 development. That attitude is not shared by the conservative elite - who would prefer to monetise the land.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2012/sep/28/twyford-down-m3-protest-pictures

Doesn't cultural become historical and vise versa? Become intertwined in public perception? But, we've always done it/never done it, that way. :crone: To be fair, it's not just us old farts, most people, even kids, are skeptical of change... makes people uncomfortable.

Yes, the plant that gets built and the surrounding infrastructure to support it, is hard to change. One, because of the cost, and two, the longer it's there the more people don't want to see anything changed.

Here, because we have room, those places were usually on the outskirts of urban areas. Then it would be cheaper to abandon, and something new built further out in the sticks. The old place would either become a bedroom community for workers commuting to the new business site or back toward the city, or in some cases become a ghost town.

They say money talks, but the reality is money is a spoiled brat that will buy enough lawyers and politicians to crush anyone in the way. Especially after the supreme court decided in Kelo vs the City of New London, the politicians can take your land and hand it over to private developers. Most fucked up, anti-American, unconstitutional, oppressive development in out history.

travelled across both Europe and US. US is a lot of the same, but it's definitely interesting .......the first time. I'd plan to fly back ;). Nah go one way across the north and Canada, the other across the south and central in a zig zag and downs the coasts to connect, you'd be OK, they're different enough.

In response to that overlay of Texas on Europe, in the first post...

If you drive 45 minutes in the uk you're probably two or three towns from where you started.

DanaC;944981 wrote:

If you drive 45 minutes in the uk you're probably two or three towns from where you started.

as long as you didn't go on the M6

... or across Leeds.
It takes half an hour just to get out of Leeds on the X84 sometimes.

Just to clarify what Dani said - we don't need floods of Biblical proprtions to make areas unsuitable for building. A few days rain can do it.

Link to BBC website re flooding yesterday in Dani's and my part of the world.

A precis:

Over the weekend, a sinkhole opened up in Lindal near Whinfield, swallowing a 20ft (6m) cabin, a wagon and a Nissan Micra.
[...]
The River Wharfe burst its banks in a number of places as it surged through Ilkley, Otley and Pool, north of Leeds.
Northern Trains had to cancel a large number of services after lines were flooded in West Yorkshire, including in Hebden Bridge and Leeds.

These are all places I know now, and have been to.
The X84 usually runs from Skipton to Leeds, via Otley. Yesterday it was only running between Otley and Leeds - Ilkley was impassible. And "my" bridge - the one with my love locks on, the one I walk over pretty much on a daily basis, was closed to traffic.

I know it's not much, compared to some of the awful, cataclysmic floods I've seen on the news in America (and in fact the ones we had in 2007) but I've never lived in a flood prone area before. I'm safe, I'm on the second floor (third floor by American counting) but it shocked me just how little rain it seemed to take to create a flash flood. It rose and fell within a day, with what felt like no more rain than usual.

Closed the carboot sale though. Gutted.

We can get flooding here, but we haven't in a few years. Maybe it will flood next spring. Hope that the flood does not get any worse. Evacuating is a PITA.

I live on a flood plain. I ain't scairt.

If it floods my house...

...expect to hear about a man building a rather large boat, and gathering wildlife by twos.