6 Aug
2007
6 Aug
'07
3:31 a.m.
On 06/08/07, Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com> wrote:
Yup. I've flown over a lot of it, but it's hard to grasp.
China, by comparison, is about the same size as the US, but has some
4.5 times as many people. So it's much more densely populated, but
only about half as much so as Britain!
But in my fairly extensive travels around Western Europe and sketchy
ones in the USA and China, European roads and cities tend to spread
out and sprawl much more widely than British ones, and American ones
more widely than continental European ones still.
China has thronged, amazingly dense cities, but also, these days, a
seriously impressively scaled mass transport system. /Huge/ roads and
bridges and railways and so on.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk ? GMail/GoogleTalk/Orkut: lproven at gmail.com
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 ? Cell: +44 7939-087884 ? Fax: + 44 870-9151419
AOL/AIM/iChat: liamproven at aol.com ? MSN/Messenger: lproven at hotmail.com
Yahoo: liamproven at yahoo.co.uk ? Skype: liamproven ? ICQ: 73187508
Liam Proven wrote:
I wish!
No. Millions do, but most use cars. The snag being that it's a
relatively tiny island and our biggest "freeways" are 4 lanes in each
direction; most major roads are just 1 or 2 lanes. Narrower than much
of Europe, let alone the States.
Ergo, horrific traffic congestion. 60 million people - one-fifth as
many as the USA - but in one-fortieth of the area, so around 8x the
population density.
(UK: 60M people, 244,000 sq km. USA: 300M people, 9,600,000 sq km.)
That would make more sense if the USA didn't have so many vast tracts
with nothing. No people, no buildings, no nothing. It's like China.
China is a big country, but most of the people live in a much smaller area.