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Anecdotal, but: I grew up on Long Island taking the commuter train into the city all the time. Today I live in Rhode Island and occasionally take the commuter train into Boston. I did just that today, in fact. Every time I do (and I do it seldom enough that it hasn't lost its novelty), it strikes me how different the experience is. When you take the Long Island Rail Road, almost all the trip is through dense areas with little tree cover, including the residential parts. The trip from Rhode Island to Boston includes vast swaths of woods, even when you get very close to the city. I remember how disappointed I was the first time I took that train, because I used to love looking out the window at all the neighborhoods on Long Island and in Queens -- it never really got old. The trip to Boston is boring because it's all trees.
Outer Boston suburbs are a lot less dense than most Long Island suburbs. But even so, the route between Providence and Boston covers lightly developed land; past Attleboro [which is part of the Providence urban area], it's conservation land with scattered subdivsions till about Norwood.
I am still amazed how Rhode Island can fit 1 million people in such a small space, yet still have a suburban/rural feel for a good part of the state. I swear Rhode Island has to be counting pets as people.
You should go to England. When you consider the size of the country and its overall population density you will be amazed how much countryside there is between cities. It is all pasture and farm, but wide open and beautiful. But then a small English city of 25,000 literally occupies a few compact city blocks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nei
No, roughly 55% treed [upstate NY] vs 85% or so [Massachusetts]. The New Jersey comparison sounds odd to me; maybe the eastern 1/3, but the western half of the state looks like little of New Jersey I've seen.
New York State is 63% forested
Massachusetts is 60% forested
Only the northern half of Western NY and the Mohawk Valley are heavily farmed. The latter being due west of Massachusetts might give someone leaving Mass towards New York the impression that New York is all open farmland (outside developed areas).
Only the northern half of Western NY and the Mohawk Valley are heavily farmed. The latter being due west of Massachusetts might give someone leaving Mass towards New York the impression that New York is all open farmland (outside developed areas).
In other words, another New England poster is full of **** and boosting New England.
You should go to England. When you consider the size of the country and its overall population density you will be amazed how much countryside there is between cities. It is all pasture and farm, but wide open and beautiful. But then a small English city of 25,000 literally occupies a few compact city blocks.
As long as I'm telling train stories, I was really struck on a trip to England when, about five minutes after leaving a station in central London, the train passed a huge open field with grazing sheep. You'd never see anything like that in an American city even a quarter of the size.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GarbanzoBeans
When I was in Rhode Island last May, I saw lots of open land, and lots of Trump signs. We camped out on the border.
You must have been in the northwest corner of the state. I spent a few days last summer driving my kid up to camp there. So many Trump signs. What I thought was particularly maddening was that many of the same houses also had signs protesting a fracked-gas power plant that had been proposed for the area, as if Trump wasn't the candidate who would have promoted that power plant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GarbanzoBeans
In other words, another New England poster is full of **** and boosting New England.
I have no idea which one of those statistics is correct, but what I do know is that you saw two different posters who each made a competing statistical claim, both of which were unsourced, and you immediately dismissed the one you didn't like and cited the one you did like as evidence that your opponents are full of asterisks. This is the very definition of confirmation bias, and even if you turn out to be correct on this point, it demonstrates that your point of view isn't credible.
Umm not really? If anything New England feels too open for me, in some cases you can drive for hours without running into a decent sized town. I wish New England was a bit denser and more built up
I have no idea which one of those statistics is correct, but what I do know is that you saw two different posters who each made a competing statistical claim, both of which were unsourced, and you immediately dismissed the one you didn't like and cited the one you did like as evidence that your opponents are full of asterisks. This is the very definition of confirmation bias, and even if you turn out to be correct on this point, it demonstrates that your point of view isn't credible.
Umm not really? If anything New England feels too open for me, in some cases you can drive for hours without running into a decent sized town. I wish New England was a bit denser and more built up
I am opposite.
I live in New England in a region with a population density less than 10 people per square mile. It is rural here, rural and dense forest, we love it
Home prices are low, taxes are low, crime rate is low, life is good
The white parts are the Mohawk Valley and upper Western NY, as he stated.
Any MA statistics range from 55-62% that I can find.
Move along.
Not false at all. You're moving the goalposts. I said it doesn't matter if you're right because you made up your mind before looking at the evidence, and therefore your interpretation is suspect. You're saying I should "move along" because you're right, when my whole point was that it doesn't matter if you're right on a particular issue when you demonstrate obvious bias and therefore can't be trusted.
Your refusal to concede that there are any positives about New England (at least compared to any other place) is similarly damning. If someone posted, with a citation, that New England had a 5 percent higher occurrence of beautiful rainbows than Upstate New York, you would surely either try to find a statistic that showed that more rainbows appeared in the Adirondacks, or claim it doesn't matter because New England rainbows are of lower quality and "beauty" is subjective, or say that rainbows in general are irrelevant and people in California laugh at Northeasterners' interest in rainbows. You wouldn't be able to concede the rainbow point, and I think on at least some level you probably know that.
I've had a rule of thumb for years, and it's served me very well, that if someone is advocating a position and can't admit any cons to the position, it's not worth my while to listen to that person at all.
I live in New England in a region with a population density less than 10 people per square mile. It is rural here, rural and dense forest, we love it
Home prices are low, taxes are low, crime rate is low, life is good
I guess you like it, but I do wish that the NYC Metro area would be more built up. It feels like if you go even a couple of miles north of the Bronx it starts to turn into the boonies. Would be nice if you could have Bronx-style density up into Connecticut
I have no idea which one of those statistics is correct, but what I do know is that you saw two different posters who each made a competing statistical claim, both of which were unsourced, and you immediately dismissed the one you didn't like and cited the one you did like as evidence that your opponents are full of asterisks. This is the very definition of confirmation bias, and even if you turn out to be correct on this point, it demonstrates that your point of view isn't credible.
I had actually posted the same statistics with sources earlier in the thread, post #78. The second time I did not go through the trouble of reiterating the sources but I will do so now for the record:
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