[gobbluth]

I'm sorry, but that's not how urban design works. We're not forced to develop proportionate to land mass. Your argument is seriously that the existence of the Dakotas prevents us from building decent cities? Are there so many people in Wyoming that we just don't have the population to build decent subways in Seattle?

We're trapped by a car-centric lifestyle, and it's absolutely poisonous.

[spullara]

Yes, basically. Though it more like the existence of twice as many twice as small cities. It also means that we devote huge amounts of infrastructure dollars to the middle of nowhere serving virtually no one. Look at the subsidies we give to "rural phone companies" or the postal service.