Statistics junkies like me might want to check out this series of web pages on major U.S. cities. The first page is a listing of the 50 most populous U.S. cities, and if you keep following the chain of "next" buttons at the bottom, you'll be taken to still more interesting numbers.

My comments: Auckland, New Zealand, with about a million people, is a LOT larger than I expected it to be in contrast with U.S. cities. Sure, NYC has 7.5 times as many people, but there aren't as many other U.S. cities that are bigger than Auckland as I thought. In particular, Boston only has half a million people, and this shocked me. I knew Boston wasn't a big city by U.S. standards, but somehow I figured it must still dwarf Auckland. It certainly LOOKS like it dwarfs Auckland if you compare the two at a glance.

At any rate, by this information I now understand that how convoluted and scary a city is has nothing to do with how many people live there. Brunnen-G drove us through the worst part of Auckland, and it was EASY. If we could get used to driving on the left side of the road, there isn't any part of Auckland that Darleen or I wouldn't be comfortable driving through alone, at night, and lost. By contrast, we'd still hesitate to drive through Boston if you put a knife to our throats. I've driven I-93 through Boston, and that's mildly terrifying. I wouldn't have gotten OFF the interstate to save my life (as doing so would be throwing it away anyway). Not only are all the roads twisted and convoluted, but the drivers themselves are among the worst in the world.

I don't understand how people can stand to live in cities. If I had free reign to live anywhere, without any constraints at all, I'd find some area that's an hour away from a big city, so it's accessible, yet out in the country where there are sparse 3000-8000 people towns nestled in little valleys. That's more or less the way it was when I lived in Virginia, an hour west of Washington, DC. Where I live now is pretty close to that ideal: 10-12K people towns an hour north of Boston. When you live in an area where rush hour stops traffic dead twice a day, or where you can turn a wrong corner and not have reasonable odds of getting out alive, or where you smell exhaust instead of freshly cut grass, something's just not right.

Nonetheless, cities are great places to visit, and so long as the view from the back yard is of snow-crested mountains, then occasionally gazing out at a neverending expanse of buildings and skyscrapers is an awe-inspiring sight.