destructdiscNobody takes a train from Germany to France
I had a US colleague stay with me in Ireland for a week and he was asking if it was possible to catch a train to England. It’s amazing the geographic ignorance of some people and Americans seem to be especially afflicted. Maybe it’s because the USA is so big and large cities so far apart it doesn’t occur to them that Europe is not the same.
Gsus4In their defense, I have no idea what the capital of Kentucky or Virginia is :/
this is starting to look like a conspiracy to make your largest city not the capital, lol
Usually this is because the capital doesn’t change over time while the relative size of cities often does, especially on the scale of a century or more.
Looking at China’s provincial capitals and EU’s capitals, they all look like they hoovered up all the population around them, why doesn’t that happen in the US? Lemme guess…car culture?
No its just completely wrong theory. Population centers are usually on the edge of the state and capitals are deliberately kept in the geographic center of the state. If the population center isn’t on the edge then its in the capitol.
That’s completely wrong. Many states moved their capital away from population centers on the coast into more geographically central locations inland. Other states deliberately planned their capitals to be in central locations when it was already clear where the population centers were going to be.
If anything the capital city only grows and becomes the population center. Population never drifts away from the capital.
Tell that to Albany, NY. Population is about 1.2% of NYC.
Or to Sacramento, CA which is the fourth largest city in the state.
Then there are states where the population doesn’t really concentrate like that, like WV. Biggest city is the capital, but that’s not saying much. That’s largely a result of the geography, where most of the state is forested mountains, with people wherever there’s a flat spot. It’s beautiful, but wildly impractical for large population centers. The only reason Charleston is still the biggest city is the three-way interstate junction that meets at it, and that’s thanks to Robert C Byrd using his influence to help his constituents.
I live in West Virginia and a recurring joke is that we should just give up and rename the state to Robert C Byrd. His name is on everything.
I do too, I’m in the greater Charleston area. And yeah, fucking everything is named for him, but to be fair much of the time it’s because he secured the funding to make it happen. Man was corrupt as hell, but he did a lot of good for the state.
I live in Charleston, nice to meet you. Yeah he wasn’t a pleasant man but nobody can deny what he accomplished. Even compared to him our politics is a total shit show. I do like the mayor, she’s pretty good for a Democrat.
What point of mine are you trying to refute here? Sacramento and Albany were never the population centers of their states as your theory suggests. They were selected because of their central geographic location as with the vast majority of US state capitals.
Its like your hung up on me saying “population drifts towards the capital” because it generally does but rarely overcomes any major metropol on the coast.