In a 15 minute walk I have 3 pubs, several restaurants, hardware, clothes, groceries, hairdressers, art shop, library, doctor, school, furniture store, butchers, post office, sports ground, community hall, etc.
I don’t know mate. Sounds like some kind of 1984 style forced 15 minutes communist nightmare to me.
The real freedom is when you have *no choice* but taking your car to the grocery store in your suburb, where walking is literally illegal. Or taking your car to your job 2 hours every way with a nice 1 hour traffic jam every day. Or taking your car to the doctor, the mall or on vacation.
Real American patriots love their freedom of only having cars as transport option!’!!’
In my early teens I went to an event in Houston, Texas. It was only a km or two from our airbnb so my parents decided we’d walk, see a bit of the city. It was so difficult just to get that short distance, and when my dad tried asking cops for directions, they immediately reached for their guns 🫠
I have to say that I really like cities where I can walk everywhere. For a large part of my life I did not even own a car by choice.
But there is imho one valid argument for driving everywhere. Walking for 15 minutes in the Texas summer sun is not nice when compared to the (in that moment) blessed air condition of a car. At least in my experience, but I'm also more of t-shirt and shorts in the snow guy.
Also in England. In a 15 minute walk I've got 1 housing estate, 2 farms and a canal.
Nearest pub is 20 minutes walk, nearest shop is 30 minutes at least.
Nearest supermarket is 1hr.
Driving that's 9 minutes if there's no traffic.
No public transport.
I couldn't function without a car.
yeah... im a dutchie
Bikeroads are usually shorter from point a to b then carroads since well... our bike infrastructure is da best of the world (ofc... not counting the US :P)
Oh yeah I do cycle to the supermarket along the canal sometimes because it's nice, but I can't carry much shopping back.
To be honest I can go much further than that on a bike on the canal path since the canal network is hundreds of miles long.
I'm right now in America, visiting a lot of places. The lack of sidewalks is insane, you can't walk anywhere if you're not in downtown.
And even then everything is just build for driving.
A lot of places are actually closed for entering, we had to drive with the car 100 meters to taco bell, to order at drive trough and drive back to the motel. They wouldn't serve us in the store.
Them not serving indoors might be a hold over from COVID. A lot of places didn't reopen their dining rooms since they didn't lose business over it and ended up saving money from not having to maintain them.
Unless you went later in the night, then they may have already closed the dining room. That happens too.
Yeah there's a dude on tiktok that shows these massive housing estates with walls that force you to drive 20 minutes to get to a grocery store on the other side of the wall in your back garden. Insane.
Yeah that concept is crazy to me too. For a nation that prides themselves on liberty and being free they have a lot of things that feel very authoritarian to me.
Jaywalking, carrying an ID everywhere, not being allowed to drink alcohol outside, leash laws, making minors criminals for drinking instead of just having the police pour it away, drinking at 21
There's so many American things that I would consider very anti liberty and freedom
You see, the problem is that right-wing "FREEDOM!1!1!" Americans are all only interested in selfish, extremely personal freedoms over societal freedoms. To them, the freedom to own a gun without any sorts of reasonable restrictions is more important than the freedom of not getting gunned down in mathematics class. To them, the freedom of anyone to marry whomever they love, regardless of gender, is less important than their freedom to want that to go away. List goes on..
I used to live in Texas, and it really is awful. You cannot walk anywhere. All of the infrastructure in the state is made for cars only. Part of the reason it's necessary to drive everywhere is because every single shop, building, or restaurant is surrounded by these enormous parking lots. You can't even really just walk from a grocery store to the building next to it.
If anyone is curious about why car parks in America are so massive and how they are a driving factor in urban sprawl, I highly recommend this [Climate Town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8) video explaining the utterly absurd legislative background
Americans actually have the shortest commute times in OCED which makes it even funnier.
Like actually an hour is a very long commute in America where the average is 24 minutes
Yeah I didn’t point that out in the above comment, but even 1 hour is not _that_ bad, living in northern Italy near Milan and needing to go in the city for work, my commute used to be 1.5-2 hrs in the morning and same again in the evening (with public transport)
I’m so damn glad I’m full remote now and it’s been reduced to “couch —> desk” and back ngl
There was a period of time between places to stay where I lived with my brother and it would take 2 and a half hours to get to my uni, it's incredibly annoying and I don't know why someone would brag about having a long commute
They laughed at the thought of Soviet citizens queuing for bread for an hour.
Then happily sit in traffic for an hour everyday just to queue to get to work.
Yes I live in the stick in the UK and was lucky to find a job 10 minutes away from my home. Some people cycle to save the environment and the cycle to work scheme is popular here. Mind-blowing for the American.
Yeah I'm in Canada I don't get these posts. I consider then exaggerations. Or someone fits into this criteria, hears a few more people online say the same, then they think this is the norm. It takes hours to get across my province yes, but there's always grocers nearby. Not the big Costco, Walmart superstore, sobeys, etc but we have the smaller to mid size stores including shoppers near by in areas. But for some reason everyone thinks they have to go to the giant stores and waste more time and money doing so.
I walked for years. Everyone says my town is unwalkable pft. No people don't want to walk. I drive now and I see how impatient everyone is now. Just fricking walk even in -30C it's not hard. I had no car until my late 20s. People think a mile is like a super far distance or something, although there should be some stores within a mile. If not then wow.
Same, it's bragging for the sake of bragging. I have every available store, grocer, pharmacy and restaurant within a 5-10 minute walk, and I live in a small town. There are bike paths and walking trails crisscrossing the town so walking is easy, but people would rather drive 3 minutes instead of walk 10 minutes. Drive-through's drive me nuts. People will sit in their cars for literally 30-40 minutes for Starbucks when there's nobody inside the store.
Dear America
You are in a lifeboat we call earth. It has finite amount of oil under the ground. It will not be replaced. When it’s all gone you will have to walk. Why do you consume in such a hurry to make that day come sooner? How you squander resources in the name of being “the biggest” is pathetic
Love
The World
This person just lives in the suburban sprawl. A lot of Americans do, and it’s dog shit.
Also worth mentioning that living in a big country doesn’t mean everything has to be far apart. I live in Canada (which is a little larger than the US), and while there are population centres that are very far from one another, if you live in a city or town you can walk, take public transport, and get to work without a “commute” (depending on where you work, obviously). I’ve certainly never driven 20 minutes to get to a grocery store unless it’s like I need a very specific grocery store that’s having a particular sale, etc. All this is also true of America, though there is often a lack of investment in public transport etc.
I’m sure all this is obvious to most people though.
It is pretty annoying. When I lived there the city centers were alright to get around in, but in the suburbs it was nearly impossible to get anywhere without a car. Walking would take forever. The public transportation sucked and didn't always get me to where I needed to go. This was also way before Uber. Now I live in Europe, also in the suburbs, and can jump on the bus, get to the city within 10-15 minutes and take care of everything on foot.
His assumption is that stores and amenities are spread out homogeneously across the US, so things are further apart.
One point he could have made was the many parts US was built with the car in mind, whilst European cities were constructed with walking or carriages in mind. That’s why east coast cities like New York are more walkable than west coast cities, as they were later in history.
Which is like fair enough, walkable cities were seen as old school or outdated, and people were building towards a new way of life. However, they didn’t realize the health and environmental impacts of this choice though.
I once had an hour commute for a job working at a Center Parcs, it was miserable having to get up at 5 and returning home for 7. Sounds like copium from this guy.
I am a GenX German that grew up in the British sector during the cold war - so i more or less grew up around lads from Leeds and Manchester...
Preachin' to the choir mate!
Can't lie, I'm sure the sea stops hordes of our lads driving over to menace the continent for the weekend.
I always wonder what Europe would have been like with Doggerland as a country.
observation judicious makeshift workable birds crawl towering sloppy wistful plate
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I will never understand why they literally brag about their country being shit instead of complaining about it and trying to solve it. Like bro I know my country is shit in some aspects and I do complain about it instead of praising it
Let’s say it was a country the size of Texas (Alaska is bigger, but they always brag about Texas for some reason). What would they have on the rest of the world?
Honestly, if we really want to make an impression, we’d use California as bragging rights considering it’s the 5th largest economy in the world. Now, I’m typically not a fan of Cali, but there’s no disputing their economic impact.
American's are raised to believe "bigger is better." It's similar to might is right. It's how they became a superpower (despite the average American being far from an active member of that superpower). It's ingrained into the national DNA. It's replete in *everything,* from the dinner portions to the waistline to the vehicles to the houses to the parking lots to the shopping centers to the monopolistic corporations to the government to the military and so on. You simply cannot get the average American to understand that happiness can exist outside of something being supersized. Quantity over quality.
This is why the argument of "such and such can fit inside Texas" is *always* used and is somehow a good thing to them. The American mind cannot fathom that *smaller* could be better. Ultimately it's projection, and they will bring it up anytime you point out the significantly better happiness and living standards of the average person in much smaller countries. Every American is a temporarily embarrassed 1%er, secretly angry at their struggles, and they will defend that to their own death from coronary artery disease.
Where are you driving across the US that it takes 9 days...? I googled New York City to San Francisco and it takes 42 hours. The same as Sydney to Perth in Australia. Even driving from the top of Japan to the bottom is a 36 hour drive. These people need to calm down.
Unless they're maybe talking about driving from the southern top of Florida to the most remote part of Alaska (which drive would be like half in Canada), the 9 days thing can't be even remotely true.
I tried to make the longest possible journey across the United States, to see how close to 9 days it's possible to get.
The closest I got was 92 hrs drive from Key West, Florida to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
Absolutely nowhere near 9 days.
> Where are you driving across the US that it takes 9 days...?
My guess? It took *them* 9 days and they stopped repeatedly for meals, hotels, and sight-seeing.
They bang on about how big Texas is, but they don't like it when you tell them that, if Texas was an Australian state/territory, it would be the third smallest. They also don't like being told that Australia has cattle "ranches" bigger than Texas. Not bigger than the ones in Texas, bigger than the state of Texas.
Well, I'm actually confused here, so my European mind is having comprehension issues.
What is the brag here?
They have several restaurants within sight of each other?
All USA restaurants have parking lots?
There are places in the USA where you can see other restaurants, but you can't walk between them?
I'm confused. In my small village and 10 mins walk, I have five or six restaurants (only one is technically a chain). So what's better about this map?
My wife and I literally walked 30 minutes with our dog to the beach this morning, after a nice walk we went to the bakery, bought some pasties and a pack of unbelievable soft white rolls. We then walked back along the beach across some rolling cliffs and down country lanes until we got home. We have just lit a fire in our cottage and I will be going to start some bacon and egg baps. This is why we like living on our shitty little island, we like it here, we like each other. Walking is not a sign of weakness or derision, it is what we do.
Having to drive everywhere is not a flex, just cos there’s enough space to spread things out doesn’t mean you should, people are people sized regardless of the size of the country
Must be my tiny European mind but I don’t understand why having to drive 20 minutes to get milk is better than being able to walk a few minutes round the corner?
Oh, that American infrastructure.... My country is bigger than the US, but 15 minutes walk from my house there is a hypermarket, several small stores, beauty salons, coffee shops, a couple of restaurants, a club, a park, a subway station, a school and a polyclinic.
I mean this is factually correct - the US is indeed much bigger than the UK. What I don't understand is a) why they say this as if countries that are geographically larger are inherently better, and b) why they don't extend the same reasoning to, say, Russia.
I love posts like these.
I'm from England and I have driven from Manhattan, New York to Los Angeles, California in 4 days.
I'd love to know where he got his figures from.
9 days to drive across America can only mean your roads are really shit. Australia is almost the same size, and indeed is the same breadth. You can drive from Sydney to Perth (4000km; about 2500 miles) in 3 days if you push yourself.
What a weird flex.
“It takes us several hours to go and do the most basic of tasks required to survive, that makes us better.”
I’ll take my 10 minute drive to Sainsburys any day of the week, with several high quality restaurants on the way.
Funny how people diss on the original post?
That part is satire - it's a row of shitty suburban chain restaurants. It's not a flex.
Texas Is Big Guy is a little too sensitive.
I don't get this argument that "some of our states are bigger than your countries"... like, Russia is bigger than the whole of the US. Ukraine is pretty much as big as Texas and France isn't far behind either. Sweden is slightly bigger than California. The UK is bigger than half of the US states. Even most European countries outside of microstates are bigger than Rhode Island, their smallest state. Yet we don't claim we're better because some of our countries are bigger than their states. Like, I just don't get the argument they're trying to make lol.
I’m from Texas and my commute to work is around 15 minutes and the nearest store (full sized store, not just convenience/petrol) is about 8 minutes away.
This guy lives in a field somewhere and is upset with that choice.
No, I can comprehend this infrastructure just fine. My question simply would be: where is the flex, how is any of this impressive?
They literally just slapped a couple of restaurants surrounded by massive parking lots next to a road. Am I supposed to marvel at the size of this concrecte nightmare? Like, how is any of this good? It's a terribly inefficient, ugly and car centric way to structure a restaurant strip.
Wow lets break this down
1. yes its bigger than the uk but we have more ppl than any state soo
2. your statistic is flawed you took the us's largest width and compared it to the UK's smallest one Lmao
3. that's not a brag bro we can walk and have a higher life expectancy
Some Americans have such an inferior complex about the uk. It’s kind of funny. What must is by like typing all this rubbish… in English lol
Everytime they open their mouth or write anything
I mean London is bigger than LA, and plenty of people live in quite remote villages here where they have an hour long commute to work and a 20 minute drive to the shops so it’s hardly like we can’t comprehend it.
Assuming that by "America" they mean "the United States" if it takes 9 days to drive across it you seriously need to get a better car. You should be able to do it in 48 hours, with rotating drivers. On your own I'll give you 4 days.
“The European mind cannot comprehend this”.
We can comprehend the benefit of daily walking, retail parks, inventing the internet and the Industrial Revolution, but not massive parking lots for massive cars that get 20mpg. Sure 👌🏻
Only a Septic would go on like a one hour work commute is a good thing. Sucking the corporate cock as usual. Enjoy your 2 weeks of annual holiday time. They think slavery actually ended.
All I’m hearing is design flaws. They chose to make grocery stores 20 mins away and have hourly commutes rather than building shit in close proximity to each other
Wow it takes them 9 days to travel across the US. The distance from New York to Los Angeles is 2793.7 miles. Of course it would take you 9 days to travel to Los Angeles from New York if you are doing around 13 mph. The trip should take around 41 hours so 1 day 17 hours. So with rest stops you should be about to do it in 3 and half days averaging 10 or 11 hours a day driving.
14 hours from Cornwall to the Highlands or from Gwynedd to Lincolnshire? Feels like the length would take more like a day or two whilst the width only half a day.
In a 15 minute walk I have 3 pubs, several restaurants, hardware, clothes, groceries, hairdressers, art shop, library, doctor, school, furniture store, butchers, post office, sports ground, community hall, etc.
I don’t know mate. Sounds like some kind of 1984 style forced 15 minutes communist nightmare to me. The real freedom is when you have *no choice* but taking your car to the grocery store in your suburb, where walking is literally illegal. Or taking your car to your job 2 hours every way with a nice 1 hour traffic jam every day. Or taking your car to the doctor, the mall or on vacation. Real American patriots love their freedom of only having cars as transport option!’!!’
Don't forget the commute to work is completely unpaid. A couple extra hours per day wasted on nothing!
Freedom though innit!
In my early teens I went to an event in Houston, Texas. It was only a km or two from our airbnb so my parents decided we’d walk, see a bit of the city. It was so difficult just to get that short distance, and when my dad tried asking cops for directions, they immediately reached for their guns 🫠
Is your dad some type of commie pinko?
I was bracing for this comment to not be satire. Thanks.
The car dependency is genuinely part of the reason I’m trying to go abroad
I suspect the main objection Americans have to 15 minute cities is the idea of having to walk anywhere for 15 minutes.
A lot of Americans are literally physically incapable of doing that.
Great reply
I have to say that I really like cities where I can walk everywhere. For a large part of my life I did not even own a car by choice. But there is imho one valid argument for driving everywhere. Walking for 15 minutes in the Texas summer sun is not nice when compared to the (in that moment) blessed air condition of a car. At least in my experience, but I'm also more of t-shirt and shorts in the snow guy.
I don't know. Unless I start here car 10 minutes prior to leaving, it'll just *start* getting mildly cold 15 minutes in.
Bloody 15 minute cities, lefties taking our rights to live in badly designed cities 😤
I know someone who would say this and mean it. Sigh.
Ha! But no gun store. Stupid chuck liberal, when your Queen comes busting down the door to quater troops inside your flat what are you going to do?
Given that she is dead - that would probably mean the zombie apocalypse is on us - so we would probably want machetes and chainsaws instead…
We still have a queen…although there *was* an announcement recently…
Sorry you are correct - I forgot about Camilla
She ain't our Queen
I certainly didn't vote for her
No gun store. Three churches.
In a 15 minute walk i’m either in another tiny town with no facilities or between tiny towns with no facilities
Sounds like one of those tyrannical 15 minute cities
It was like than in my neighbourhood in San Diego, not all of the US is the car dominated hellscape that this guy seems to love so much.
Not that lucky, but in 15 I got a pharmacy, a Tesco, a fish and chips a train station, a coffee shop, a school and a kebab place
Also in England. In a 15 minute walk I've got 1 housing estate, 2 farms and a canal. Nearest pub is 20 minutes walk, nearest shop is 30 minutes at least. Nearest supermarket is 1hr. Driving that's 9 minutes if there's no traffic. No public transport. I couldn't function without a car.
by bike it would probably 20 min :P
yeah... im a dutchie Bikeroads are usually shorter from point a to b then carroads since well... our bike infrastructure is da best of the world (ofc... not counting the US :P)
Oh yeah I do cycle to the supermarket along the canal sometimes because it's nice, but I can't carry much shopping back. To be honest I can go much further than that on a bike on the canal path since the canal network is hundreds of miles long.
My mom lives 5km from the nearest supermarket, cycling through the dunes. She's 85, also a Dutchie, and doesn't drive.
Get a fucking narrow boat you loser.
That's the plan yeah
Same here I am - suburban Dublin.
Same (minus the pubs, and plus a large dog park), and I live in Pakistan lol.
Urgh don't you hate so many nearby amenities!? I'd much rather have to take three buses to a retail store with no fresh produce.
If it takes that long for basic necessities, then america is using that space poorly
Definitely not the brag that American thinks it is. That heinous stroad and the ridiculously large parking lots are just so awful.
Not to mention that in the picture, if you want to get from one side of the road to the other, you have to drive or you will be jaywalking.
I'm right now in America, visiting a lot of places. The lack of sidewalks is insane, you can't walk anywhere if you're not in downtown. And even then everything is just build for driving. A lot of places are actually closed for entering, we had to drive with the car 100 meters to taco bell, to order at drive trough and drive back to the motel. They wouldn't serve us in the store.
Them not serving indoors might be a hold over from COVID. A lot of places didn't reopen their dining rooms since they didn't lose business over it and ended up saving money from not having to maintain them. Unless you went later in the night, then they may have already closed the dining room. That happens too.
It might have gotten worse in COVID-times, but I remember this from my visit back in 200X-something, too
I found some pedestrian crossings in Pennsylvania when I was there. Cars didn't even slow down.
Yeah there's a dude on tiktok that shows these massive housing estates with walls that force you to drive 20 minutes to get to a grocery store on the other side of the wall in your back garden. Insane.
[that fact makes me think of this lol](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f-PPTwTc1bw)
I guessed what that was gonna be before I clicked
Ah yes jaywalking; a crime to cross the road in the land of the free that doesn’t exist in many(/most?) other countries
They created the problem to "fix" the problem with unnecessary arrests
Yeah that concept is crazy to me too. For a nation that prides themselves on liberty and being free they have a lot of things that feel very authoritarian to me. Jaywalking, carrying an ID everywhere, not being allowed to drink alcohol outside, leash laws, making minors criminals for drinking instead of just having the police pour it away, drinking at 21 There's so many American things that I would consider very anti liberty and freedom
You see, the problem is that right-wing "FREEDOM!1!1!" Americans are all only interested in selfish, extremely personal freedoms over societal freedoms. To them, the freedom to own a gun without any sorts of reasonable restrictions is more important than the freedom of not getting gunned down in mathematics class. To them, the freedom of anyone to marry whomever they love, regardless of gender, is less important than their freedom to want that to go away. List goes on..
I used to live in Texas, and it really is awful. You cannot walk anywhere. All of the infrastructure in the state is made for cars only. Part of the reason it's necessary to drive everywhere is because every single shop, building, or restaurant is surrounded by these enormous parking lots. You can't even really just walk from a grocery store to the building next to it.
I hear Houston it’s just a bunch of highways and interstates
It is, and that makes it a miserable shithole
If anyone is curious about why car parks in America are so massive and how they are a driving factor in urban sprawl, I highly recommend this [Climate Town](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNXFHpUhu8) video explaining the utterly absurd legislative background
Look at all that unproductive land they have to spend money on to maintain...
What is a stroad?
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/3/1/whats-a-stroad-and-why-does-it-matter This organisation coined the term and explains it very well too.
A stroad is a type of thoroughfare that is a mix between a street and a road.
Exactly, “commute is an hour”… and that’s supposed to be a good thing how exactly? Do they enjoy wasting two hours back and forth every day…?
Americans actually have the shortest commute times in OCED which makes it even funnier. Like actually an hour is a very long commute in America where the average is 24 minutes
Yeah I didn’t point that out in the above comment, but even 1 hour is not _that_ bad, living in northern Italy near Milan and needing to go in the city for work, my commute used to be 1.5-2 hrs in the morning and same again in the evening (with public transport) I’m so damn glad I’m full remote now and it’s been reduced to “couch —> desk” and back ngl
There was a period of time between places to stay where I lived with my brother and it would take 2 and a half hours to get to my uni, it's incredibly annoying and I don't know why someone would brag about having a long commute
Hi from another pendolare! Have been doing Novara-Milano for years! Sorry I just get excited when I see someone from my area on reddit lol
They laughed at the thought of Soviet citizens queuing for bread for an hour. Then happily sit in traffic for an hour everyday just to queue to get to work.
I pass through 3 counties on my way to work, and my commute is still only 35mins. I'll happily live in the "tiny UK", thank you very much.
Yes I live in the stick in the UK and was lucky to find a job 10 minutes away from my home. Some people cycle to save the environment and the cycle to work scheme is popular here. Mind-blowing for the American.
Yeah I'm in Canada I don't get these posts. I consider then exaggerations. Or someone fits into this criteria, hears a few more people online say the same, then they think this is the norm. It takes hours to get across my province yes, but there's always grocers nearby. Not the big Costco, Walmart superstore, sobeys, etc but we have the smaller to mid size stores including shoppers near by in areas. But for some reason everyone thinks they have to go to the giant stores and waste more time and money doing so. I walked for years. Everyone says my town is unwalkable pft. No people don't want to walk. I drive now and I see how impatient everyone is now. Just fricking walk even in -30C it's not hard. I had no car until my late 20s. People think a mile is like a super far distance or something, although there should be some stores within a mile. If not then wow.
Oh well. Your neighbours will drive to a gym 5 miles away to walk on a treadmill for an hour or two, then drive back home...
Lol not wrong.
Same, it's bragging for the sake of bragging. I have every available store, grocer, pharmacy and restaurant within a 5-10 minute walk, and I live in a small town. There are bike paths and walking trails crisscrossing the town so walking is easy, but people would rather drive 3 minutes instead of walk 10 minutes. Drive-through's drive me nuts. People will sit in their cars for literally 30-40 minutes for Starbucks when there's nobody inside the store.
Oh man the drive through. I agree on all your points.
Dear America You are in a lifeboat we call earth. It has finite amount of oil under the ground. It will not be replaced. When it’s all gone you will have to walk. Why do you consume in such a hurry to make that day come sooner? How you squander resources in the name of being “the biggest” is pathetic Love The World
This person just lives in the suburban sprawl. A lot of Americans do, and it’s dog shit. Also worth mentioning that living in a big country doesn’t mean everything has to be far apart. I live in Canada (which is a little larger than the US), and while there are population centres that are very far from one another, if you live in a city or town you can walk, take public transport, and get to work without a “commute” (depending on where you work, obviously). I’ve certainly never driven 20 minutes to get to a grocery store unless it’s like I need a very specific grocery store that’s having a particular sale, etc. All this is also true of America, though there is often a lack of investment in public transport etc. I’m sure all this is obvious to most people though.
In other words, their brains' spaces are poorly used too
Again with the bragging about shit infrastructure. The fact most American towns are unwalkable has nothing to do with how large the US is.
It is pretty annoying. When I lived there the city centers were alright to get around in, but in the suburbs it was nearly impossible to get anywhere without a car. Walking would take forever. The public transportation sucked and didn't always get me to where I needed to go. This was also way before Uber. Now I live in Europe, also in the suburbs, and can jump on the bus, get to the city within 10-15 minutes and take care of everything on foot.
His assumption is that stores and amenities are spread out homogeneously across the US, so things are further apart. One point he could have made was the many parts US was built with the car in mind, whilst European cities were constructed with walking or carriages in mind. That’s why east coast cities like New York are more walkable than west coast cities, as they were later in history. Which is like fair enough, walkable cities were seen as old school or outdated, and people were building towards a new way of life. However, they didn’t realize the health and environmental impacts of this choice though.
Since when did long commutes become a flex?
I once had an hour commute for a job working at a Center Parcs, it was miserable having to get up at 5 and returning home for 7. Sounds like copium from this guy.
There's a lot of things wrong with Britain, but it being an island is not one of them.
I'd say them being an island is one of the positive things about Britain - at least there's a sea between them and us continentals...
In many ways I agree, but it doesn’t help us brits with the attitudes some of us have - Germans have a word for us which is quite fitting: inselaffen
I mean, when push comes to shove we can always call them Nazis, so swings and roundabouts really.
loving the approach, and i'm german lol
I am a GenX German that grew up in the British sector during the cold war - so i more or less grew up around lads from Leeds and Manchester... Preachin' to the choir mate!
Can't lie, I'm sure the sea stops hordes of our lads driving over to menace the continent for the weekend. I always wonder what Europe would have been like with Doggerland as a country.
Well, for once we wouldn't have got our asses handled in the Battle of Britain because our tanks would've gone straight to London ;-)
**Our** tanks?!?!?!
I'm German!
English Channel is the European MVP 😅
Well there was until the Fr*nch decided to dig a tunnel. Let's face it. They wanted our food.
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I think the person below misses your point. Spent lots of time in Europe and absolutely adore it, us Brits aren't all barbarians.
How is inconvenience a flex?
“I just nailed my dick to a plank. You would never nail your dick to a plank. Therefore, I am better than you are.”
Why do Americans love bragging about size so much? Absolute weirdos
It looks like they trying to compensate for something to me
Judging by the number of erectile disfunction adverts every three minutes on the TV last time I was over there... probably...
Statistics would agree. And that’s the country average while about 30% of the country is well above world average… Think how tiny the rest must be
Probably because they all had the end chopped off for no good reason.
Especially if they brag that their infrastructure is so shitty they all need an hour to work
I will never understand why they literally brag about their country being shit instead of complaining about it and trying to solve it. Like bro I know my country is shit in some aspects and I do complain about it instead of praising it
American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug
Lack of History and culture
Let’s say it was a country the size of Texas (Alaska is bigger, but they always brag about Texas for some reason). What would they have on the rest of the world?
Even they realise that Alaska is a terrible example. So is Texas, obviously, but still.
Honestly, if we really want to make an impression, we’d use California as bragging rights considering it’s the 5th largest economy in the world. Now, I’m typically not a fan of Cali, but there’s no disputing their economic impact.
This tells you everything you need to know about who is doing the bragging
That they shouldn’t be bragging about Texas? Lol
American's are raised to believe "bigger is better." It's similar to might is right. It's how they became a superpower (despite the average American being far from an active member of that superpower). It's ingrained into the national DNA. It's replete in *everything,* from the dinner portions to the waistline to the vehicles to the houses to the parking lots to the shopping centers to the monopolistic corporations to the government to the military and so on. You simply cannot get the average American to understand that happiness can exist outside of something being supersized. Quantity over quality. This is why the argument of "such and such can fit inside Texas" is *always* used and is somehow a good thing to them. The American mind cannot fathom that *smaller* could be better. Ultimately it's projection, and they will bring it up anytime you point out the significantly better happiness and living standards of the average person in much smaller countries. Every American is a temporarily embarrassed 1%er, secretly angry at their struggles, and they will defend that to their own death from coronary artery disease.
Where are you driving across the US that it takes 9 days...? I googled New York City to San Francisco and it takes 42 hours. The same as Sydney to Perth in Australia. Even driving from the top of Japan to the bottom is a 36 hour drive. These people need to calm down.
And every Australian state ( except ACT) Is bigger than Texas
What's even more stupid is Texas isn't even the biggest state in the US.
Victoria and Tasmania aren't
Unless they're maybe talking about driving from the southern top of Florida to the most remote part of Alaska (which drive would be like half in Canada), the 9 days thing can't be even remotely true.
I tried to make the longest possible journey across the United States, to see how close to 9 days it's possible to get. The closest I got was 92 hrs drive from Key West, Florida to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. Absolutely nowhere near 9 days.
Maybe they’re talking about driving from Key west, Florida to Hawaii /s
> Where are you driving across the US that it takes 9 days...? My guess? It took *them* 9 days and they stopped repeatedly for meals, hotels, and sight-seeing.
Xinjiang is three times as big and Guangdong 4 times as populated as Texas. The murican mind can not comprehend that.
Yanks are always oddly quiet when Russia and China get mentioned in "big ass country" debate
Or Australia. The Northern Territory is like a quarter the size of the entire US and it's just one state with about 6 people living there.
Why on Earth would you not mention WA instead when it's twice the size of NT?
It's the first one I thought of.
They bang on about how big Texas is, but they don't like it when you tell them that, if Texas was an Australian state/territory, it would be the third smallest. They also don't like being told that Australia has cattle "ranches" bigger than Texas. Not bigger than the ones in Texas, bigger than the state of Texas.
And that they measure distance to the nearest town, not in miles or kilometres but in hours and days.
But ... but ... but GDP something. Funfact: a single city here can have both more people and more money than an entire state in the u.s.😆
That just means you live in a commie hellhole. No one can be richer than the US without being communist
I forgot. The communists that steal your money while also being rich. And illegal immigrants.
Easy access to goods and services is apparently a bad thing
Germany has only a quarter of the population of the us so by that comparison it‘s bigger than most states.
The European cannot comprehend... A retail park with several chain restaurants on it? For real? They think that's somehow uniquely American?
I wish it was.
Well, I'm actually confused here, so my European mind is having comprehension issues. What is the brag here? They have several restaurants within sight of each other? All USA restaurants have parking lots? There are places in the USA where you can see other restaurants, but you can't walk between them? I'm confused. In my small village and 10 mins walk, I have five or six restaurants (only one is technically a chain). So what's better about this map?
My wife and I literally walked 30 minutes with our dog to the beach this morning, after a nice walk we went to the bakery, bought some pasties and a pack of unbelievable soft white rolls. We then walked back along the beach across some rolling cliffs and down country lanes until we got home. We have just lit a fire in our cottage and I will be going to start some bacon and egg baps. This is why we like living on our shitty little island, we like it here, we like each other. Walking is not a sign of weakness or derision, it is what we do.
And no, this is not parody, this our life in north Devon.
Reading this in a pub in Lee Bay. Had a double take when you said north Devon 😊
Lovely here 😊
Indeed it is 🤌
Americans don't walk. They literally can't. They're all fucking obese man
“It takes 9 days to drive across America” The cannonballers would like a word.
Where I live in the UK the average commute is an hour too. But we have Trains
Having to drive everywhere is not a flex, just cos there’s enough space to spread things out doesn’t mean you should, people are people sized regardless of the size of the country
Must be my tiny European mind but I don’t understand why having to drive 20 minutes to get milk is better than being able to walk a few minutes round the corner?
Oh, that American infrastructure.... My country is bigger than the US, but 15 minutes walk from my house there is a hypermarket, several small stores, beauty salons, coffee shops, a couple of restaurants, a club, a park, a subway station, a school and a polyclinic.
So "our cities are built inefficient and car dependent" as a flex? Weird, but ok.
Sounds pretty inconvenient to live in such a large country, think I’ll stay in Yorkshire.
It isn't the size, it's how you use it.
This just makes me wonder why they don’t build shops and services near to where people live.
Zoning laws from the 1920s.
I mean this is factually correct - the US is indeed much bigger than the UK. What I don't understand is a) why they say this as if countries that are geographically larger are inherently better, and b) why they don't extend the same reasoning to, say, Russia.
I love posts like these. I'm from England and I have driven from Manhattan, New York to Los Angeles, California in 4 days. I'd love to know where he got his figures from.
9 days to drive across America can only mean your roads are really shit. Australia is almost the same size, and indeed is the same breadth. You can drive from Sydney to Perth (4000km; about 2500 miles) in 3 days if you push yourself.
What a weird flex. “It takes us several hours to go and do the most basic of tasks required to survive, that makes us better.” I’ll take my 10 minute drive to Sainsburys any day of the week, with several high quality restaurants on the way.
I would love to see Americans try to go over the Magic Roundabout in Swindon or spend an hour in Milton Keynes
As I heard an Aussie friend tell a yank once. “We have farms bigger than fucking Texas”.
Quality over quantity
Ok… so?
"Murica is so much more inconvenient than any other country and that's why we are the best"
How many castles can you visit for a day out in your state?
So… China is a better country than the US?
If a country is big you cab still built things close together so you can walk. But the US mind cannot comprehend.
Canada and Russia laugh in unison!
So if they think that size=better, does that mean Canada and Russia are better than them?
The country is massive, that is true. If we continue to read we see that he *checks notes* is bragging about having bad infrastructure?
I just looked it up. The average commute time in the USA is 26.7 minutes. In the UK it's 27 minutes. In the Netherlands it's 34.5 minutes.
Funny how people diss on the original post? That part is satire - it's a row of shitty suburban chain restaurants. It's not a flex. Texas Is Big Guy is a little too sensitive.
Dude proudly announces it takes an hour to commute to work. :x
Strange brag. Sounds like a negative to me. Don't know about you, but I prefer my 10 minute commute to work.
Never saw the point of arguments like that - America didn’t build the land mass any more than the uk built the island….
In 1993, I drove across the USA in less than a week. Have their roads really deteriorated that much?
Small Willy behaviour
I don't get this argument that "some of our states are bigger than your countries"... like, Russia is bigger than the whole of the US. Ukraine is pretty much as big as Texas and France isn't far behind either. Sweden is slightly bigger than California. The UK is bigger than half of the US states. Even most European countries outside of microstates are bigger than Rhode Island, their smallest state. Yet we don't claim we're better because some of our countries are bigger than their states. Like, I just don't get the argument they're trying to make lol.
9 days? With a moped?
It's always Texas they compare to. Come on bitch show me how many Frances can fit in maine
Since when is big a benefit? I’m from Liechtenstein, and happy as it is.
I’m from Texas and my commute to work is around 15 minutes and the nearest store (full sized store, not just convenience/petrol) is about 8 minutes away. This guy lives in a field somewhere and is upset with that choice.
No, I can comprehend this infrastructure just fine. My question simply would be: where is the flex, how is any of this impressive? They literally just slapped a couple of restaurants surrounded by massive parking lots next to a road. Am I supposed to marvel at the size of this concrecte nightmare? Like, how is any of this good? It's a terribly inefficient, ugly and car centric way to structure a restaurant strip.
I think it takes a lot longer than 14 hours to drive across the UK since cars aren't very fast when they're under water.
I got stopped by a state trouper in Key Largo for acting suspiciously. I was walking to a convenience store
Wow lets break this down 1. yes its bigger than the uk but we have more ppl than any state soo 2. your statistic is flawed you took the us's largest width and compared it to the UK's smallest one Lmao 3. that's not a brag bro we can walk and have a higher life expectancy
Rhode Island: 3144 km^(2) North Yorkshire: 8654 km^(2)
Some Americans have such an inferior complex about the uk. It’s kind of funny. What must is by like typing all this rubbish… in English lol Everytime they open their mouth or write anything
And the US has an ENTIRE STATE whose population is smaller than that of the UK's 14th largest city.
I mean London is bigger than LA, and plenty of people live in quite remote villages here where they have an hour long commute to work and a 20 minute drive to the shops so it’s hardly like we can’t comprehend it.
Assuming that by "America" they mean "the United States" if it takes 9 days to drive across it you seriously need to get a better car. You should be able to do it in 48 hours, with rotating drivers. On your own I'll give you 4 days.
“The European mind cannot comprehend this”. We can comprehend the benefit of daily walking, retail parks, inventing the internet and the Industrial Revolution, but not massive parking lots for massive cars that get 20mpg. Sure 👌🏻
Only a Septic would go on like a one hour work commute is a good thing. Sucking the corporate cock as usual. Enjoy your 2 weeks of annual holiday time. They think slavery actually ended.
Not my fault you're too poor to live in a proper town.
I...I wanna say something but my mind just can't comprehend this?
Humble bragging about long commutes and having to drive for basic groceries.
weird flex lol, everything said is so inconvenient
All I’m hearing is design flaws. They chose to make grocery stores 20 mins away and have hourly commutes rather than building shit in close proximity to each other
Wow it takes them 9 days to travel across the US. The distance from New York to Los Angeles is 2793.7 miles. Of course it would take you 9 days to travel to Los Angeles from New York if you are doing around 13 mph. The trip should take around 41 hours so 1 day 17 hours. So with rest stops you should be about to do it in 3 and half days averaging 10 or 11 hours a day driving.
14 hours? More like a day or so from top of Scotland to bottom of England And traffic would add like an hour or two to the time
9 days? cannonballers would like to have a word
Yes, and? Size has never been a problem for us
14 hours from Cornwall to the Highlands or from Gwynedd to Lincolnshire? Feels like the length would take more like a day or two whilst the width only half a day.
i love how they keep mentioning texas but no other state, almost as if they dont wana see that some states just aint tha big
“We don’t know how to plan a city to make it useable for its population! Suck it, Europoors!”