"Carlos that's totally alien to the spirit of the Bond mythos"

serious question: do you think it directly reflects the number of people with, well, parent issues in the US, or is it part of the culture past that?

yeah it shouldn't be surprising that a Disneyland-like service needs a Disneyland-like workforce behind the scenes to keep everything smooth.

as a form of goods distribution, it's super sweet, and less efficient than ordering Girl Scout cookies.

yeah I'm thinking about economies of scale today (not its bizarre caricature promoted by Silicon Valley toadies).

everyone loves Japan's cool-ass vending machines. but they're in decline, because restocking and maintenance are so labor-intensive, and thus they're becoming more expensive.

(the North Dakota data also suggest there should be a bar for every two hundred people in a town, North Dakota being settled by Wisconsin types who thought trees were too sinful.)

the population density of metro Boston is about 1100 people per square mile. a catchment area with a radius of half a mile is about 0.79 square miles; give or take, that would cover about 870 people.

yeah the concept's fine.

(the DSA currently claims 80 thousand members, about the size of Sioux City, Iowa or Hammond, Indiana, but this may be hype, since it was much lower in 2024. it's *vastly* overrepresented in American politics. for comparison purposes, Ducks Unlimited has 700 thousand members and you get a magazine.)

Joel Garreau. yes I am writing these things on cold medicine. I'm sure people can feel the love.

yes, and that's a big problem for public policy.

so much of our professional class is convinced that our transportation problems would be solved with cost-effective European-style solutions... but the US has a completely different type of economic geography that is not going to go away.

a much less influential book, even as metropolitan areas are pocked with these things like a case of the mumps.

about 45 years ago, the Washington Post reporter wrote an influential book about the new sectionalism called THE NINE NATIONS OF NORTH AMERICA. it's rewritten every few years for $/$/$/ a new audience.

same dude noticed the commuting trend (and, well, northern Virginia) and wrote EDGE CITY...

it hasn't been the case in forty years! suburb-to-suburb commuting has been the largest type of commuting since the 1980s!!!

a good third of car trips are to run errands. anything that requires more than a small bag is not mass-transit friendly.

I know: I'm the asshole who brings his big Lands End bag on the subway to carry groceries. THEY LOVE ME SO MUCH I GET A FUCKING PARADE.

of course they don't.

I don't think American transportation patterns are understood by their critics well enough to propose good alternatives.

take driving. commuter rail amirite? well, that presupposes a lot about the division of your area into workplace and residence... but it's still only 20% of car trips taken.