The Dumbest Excuse for Bad Cities

“America is too big” is treated as a catch-all excuse for why trains, bike networks, and walkable neighborhoods supposedly can’t exist—but the real barrier is how cities are designed for short trips, not the size of the country. Most daily travel happens within cities over distances that are easily walkable or cyclable. In the United States, more than 45% of all trips are 3 miles or less (under 5 kilometers), yet those short trips are dominated by car use because walking and cycling are made unsafe and public transit is largely absent.

That mismatch—short trip distances paired with car dependency—explains why “country size” arguments miss the point. People do not commute from one end of a nation to the other every day. They travel locally. Even the commonly cited average commute length in the U.S. (about 20 miles, or 32 kilometers) is still a reasonable distance for rail if rail service existed. The focus should therefore be on whether a city provides safe, connected options for everyday errands and mobility, not on whether a map looks large.

The transcript also attacks the “too big for trains” claim by pointing to North America’s own history. In the 1800s, railroads shaped settlement patterns: companies acquired land, built rail lines and stations, and then sold nearby land to recoup investment. Nearly every town and city had train stations, and most places also had streetcar lines. Those communities were built to be walkable because automobiles were not yet dominant. What changed wasn’t geography—it was policy and infrastructure priorities. Stations and walkable downtowns were later demolished, often to make room for highways, leaving behind car-oriented street patterns and weaker transit networks.

Even if intercity travel were the main issue, the argument still doesn’t hold. Much of travel is regional, and there are many city pairs in the U.S. that fit the population and distance needed for high-speed or high-frequency rail. Canada’s population is also concentrated: about 50% of people live in a narrow corridor, making rail between major cities like Toronto and Montreal feasible. The comparison extends beyond North America, noting that Europe’s Schengen Zone enables border-free travel across many countries, and that bike lanes in Amsterdam wouldn’t be torn up just because new countries join—an analogy meant to show how “size” logic is inconsistent.

The deeper cause, according to the transcript, is bad land use. North American cities waste land through single-family sprawl, surface parking lots, low-density development, and excessively wide “stroads” (streets that function like both roads and arterials). Empty lots and underused commercial sites often remain as-is or decay until replaced by new big-box development farther out. This pattern spreads destinations too far apart for walking, makes transit inefficient, and creates dangerous conditions for cycling due to heavy car traffic.

The Netherlands is offered as a contrast: not because it is small, but because it has policies that enforce efficient land use while protecting farmland. The transcript frames this as a choice—North America’s sprawling suburbs come at the cost of large amounts of natural and agricultural land each year. In the end, the “too big” excuse is portrayed as a way of restating the problem rather than solving it: the real question is whether cities can be rebuilt around walkability and transit, and whether land-use decisions will change.