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re: Japan, I think it has to do with having higher density, meaning many things are within shorter walking distances.

I also think Japan is generally a lot more pleasant to walk in than the US

Correct. People in these EU countries never understand how large the US is. it has the 3rd highest population but is almost 10 times less dense than Japan, 9 times less dense than the UK. There's so much dang land here. And until modern industrialism so much of it sucks to build a proper community around. mountainous, extreme weather, disaster prone, simply infertile. Much of western US doesn't have hundreds of miles of view into the horizon; you're going to get cut off maybe 5, 10 miles off by some mountain (or you live in a valley). It's very hard to "just build denser cities" in the same way the EU could.

That's what makes China really impressive (losgistically speaking). it's really large AND very dense population wise (I don't know about the land quality).

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