Chris Johnson has his number from the U.S. census, I have mine. Wonder whyI'll once again admonish Gaarder to know what he is talking about before spouting useless statistics -- and then will no longer waste my time debating with him as I've got bigger fishes to fry than Gaarder.
the census bureau thought that my number was informative enough that it
bothered calculating it for all of those places...
Urban Areas are calculated by the Census Bureau for a number of reasons, but none of which have anything to do with transit. The Census Bureau has a number of mandates, and therefore has any number of reasons for dividing the county into units and calculating various demographics for those areas. Just because they do so does not mean each of their numbers is applicable to some specific question.
Urban Areas, by definition, specifically EXCLUDE areas with lower densities of population. Further, they do not respect natural boundaries nor patterns of living, working and travel. For example, the Twin Cities Urban Area does NOT include most of Maple Grove, a quarter of Plymouth, much of the northern side of Lake Minnetonka, none of the eastern shore of Lake Minnetonka, Mendota, Lilydale, St. Paul Park, Newport west of 61, most of Woodbury, a large portion of Mendota Heights, none of Sunfish Lake, North Oaks, much of Shoreview, pieces of Burnsville, Savage, Shakopee, and Prior Lake, etc. etc. Of course, nobody who lives in any of those areas ever needs transportation to a location inside the Twin Cities UA, do they?
In other words, the lines for the Urban Area have been specifically drawn around the high density residential areas, regardless of anything else.
In reality, the Twin Cities and Los Angeles are both good candidates for mass transit. What kinds and where placed are open to calculation, but to simply grab some mostly irrelevant at worst, too general at best numbers off a web site and claim transit does not make sense to implement is just plain silly.
Chris Johnson Fulton
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