[lbo-talk] authentically working class

[Andy F]

On Thu, Sep 11, 2008 at 5:49 AM, James Heartfield
<Heartfield at blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:
> Doug, corrects me on what America is like: "You really should spend some time here to get a full taste of it." Which is true. On the few visits I do make what surprises me is how small-town a lot of America is, coming from heavily urbanised Europe. So I read, for example, that 'slightly more than one-half of the nation's population lived in jurisdictions --- cities, towns, boroughs, villages and townships --- with fewer than 25,000 people or in rural areas.' http://www.newgeography.com/content/00242-america-more-small-town-we-think

Except that these jurisdictions (if they're simply talking about
anything under 25,000) are very often suburbs that are within an
hour's crowded drive of a metropolitan center.  I grew up in a
so-called village of 15,000 with express commuter trains to downtown
Chicago.

I don't know how Britain figures this, but any large city in
continental Europe I looked at had its official city limits out in the
fields, whereas US cities have them well within a belt of "small
towns".  I remember a German gazetteer listing Chicago's population as
9 million, but the actual number of people living within Chicago is
closer to 3 million.  The difference being made up by just plain
folks.

This is what Wikipedia says for Chicago -- the definition of urban is
country specific:

 - City 	2,873,790(US: 3rd)

 - Density 	12,649/sq mi (4,816/km²)

 - Urban 	8,711,000

 - Metro 	9,785,747

-- 
Andy