Manny I. Fox Morone

The US only has one city. Los Angeles has 13 million people and no functioning transit system. Houston is the 4th largest metro in America and 93% of commuters drive alone. Phoenix built a sprawl for 5 million people and gave them one light rail line. Atlanta covers more land than the entire Netherlands and you still can't cross it without a car. Now look at New York. GDP of $2.1 trillion. That makes it a top-10 economy on earth, sitting between Italy and Brazil. Wall Street clears $1.5 trillion in securities transactions per day. The annual GDP of Spain runs through lower Manhattan every 24 hours. The MTA moves 1.9 billion trips a year. That's 25% of every public transit ride in the entire country happening inside a single metro. JFK and Newark together handle more international passengers than any airport system in the Western Hemisphere. LaGuardia exists purely as overflow and still handles more traffic than most countries' primary airports. Broadway's 15-block stretch generates $1.8 billion a year in ticket revenue. That's 20% of what every movie screen in America collects combined. The NYC school district enrolls 1.1 million students, more kids than the entire population of San Francisco. 40% of Fortune 500 headquarters sit in the New York metro. The city collects more in annual tax revenue than most US states generate in total GDP. Tokyo, London, Paris, Seoul, Berlin. Those countries all built multiple cities that function like cities. America looked at that model, built one, and then paved everything else.