Why are American city boundaries so cluttered and nonsensical

Why are American city boundaries so cluttered and nonsensical.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois'_congressional_districts
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Los Angeles isn't your typically American city.

>/hm/ - Handsome Men
I see what you did there

You have picked an extreme (extra-retarded) example. Many American town/City limits are straightforward rectangle/blob things. They're just more rectangular than European city/town things in general.

Many European borders are historical, seemingly arbitrary to an outsider (Gibraltar), and horribly autistic (Llivia, that one Belgian(?)/Dutch town, etc). This is due to over a thousand years of tradition and history before modernization.

America, on the other hand, was conquered during modernization and industrialization itself. that is why we have rectangular states.

It is also true that we have many rectangular city-borders, and county-borders. These pieces of land were mapped out between about 1800 and 1900, and haven't changed too much since.

Another issue is congressional districts, and "gerrymandering", which is the process of changing physical districts to favor political parties. This explains certain retarded shapes (like in Chicago) like the shape of LA proper as in your OP.

What he's talking about still applies to most cities though.

To answer your question OP American cities have some of the worst urban sprawl ever known to man. Everything is built around the automobile and not the pedestrian and Los Angeles was the poster child of this phenomenon when it started to really take off after ww2.

Look at a old map of that area and you will see all those towns had plenty of rural area separating them, now it's all just suburban tracts.

Even NYC's city limits make lots more sense relative to LA, being an older thing. NYC's city limits are a sensible blob of a few islands and surrounding territory, staying mostly on one side of things.

Another angle to all of this is that there are suburbs, which in more planned areas can carve out and weirdly shape the Big City Proper. I know that even Europe has suburbs, though these are presumably historically more organic. If you want extra-autism, investigate the matter of England's current OFFICIAL administrative counties, versus their more de facto "ceromonial" counties.

it has to do with tax assessment and zoning as parts of the county falls into metropolitan government

>not Gay Sex With HATS on

>A euro talking about borders
o i am laffin

How long does it take for your chin to stop jiggling? Do you also clap when you laugh?

Kek

I slap my knee sometimes if it's really funny

>Another issue is congressional districts, and "gerrymandering", which is the process of changing physical districts to favor political parties. This explains certain retarded shapes (like in Chicago) like the shape of LA proper as in your OP.

No you mong, that process happens within a city's incorporated land. It's a process of distribution and partitioning, not expansion.

This is a perfectly normal spawl with the only aberration being in the northwest, and guess what, it's land for an airport. Go figure the city would want it under its jurisdiction, police force, and taxes, when it brings in a crapton of international traffic.

Gerrymandering happens after the city limits are settled.

You are deeply confused and retreating instinctively into an argumentative corner, in two ways: first, you confused my reference to "districts" (meaning congressional districts) with somehow changing city limits; these are two different things.

Secondly, your picture explicitly references Chicago, so here we go. Federal congressional physical districts are quite independent of municipalities, and can bend, morph and shift at will. That is the point of the Gerrymandering meme. Thus your thing about "a city's incorporated land" with respect to this other category (FEDERAL CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATION) is a misunderstanding on your part, as is the remainder of your post.

Here is the proof that you do not know what I was talking about: witness the arbitrary retarded borders of the Illinois federal congressional districts, which as I said, stretch every-which-way across city limits, blocks, and so on. Gerrymandering. Especially see district 4.

Pic related is the best (abstract) example of what the OP was getting at, though it's quite a different thing from city limits. This is the point that you've failed to grasp.

meant to include this link, which drives the point home:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illinois'_congressional_districts

>Pic related is the best (abstract) example of what the OP was getting at, though it's quite a different thing from city limits.

OP listed city limits you fucking retard.
Christ, why are you even bringing gerrymandering up? It's retarded everywhere.

Yes, and you are the more retarded person for not having the reading comprehension that you accuse me of not having (except I actually do, and you don't). Re-read what I wrote: I used softer language around this point: (abstract) in parentheses, "getting at", to distance the one thing from the other. Exactly because I was aware of the distinction, whereas you weren't. Because I'm doing a rhetorical thing that you've missed in plain sight. Or did you miss my qualifying clause that you yourself cited?

The sub-point in the argument right now is that in your original argumentative post , you presumably took me to mean that "changing physical districts" refers to city limits. You confused city limits with congressional districts. That's the point. The other point is that you sort-of confused congressional districts with (large) city limits themselves, in the sense that your language sort-of suggested that congressional districts are somehow coterminous with or strict subsets of large American city limits (they aren't).

I am also happy that you concede the point to me that gerrymandering is "retarded". This buttresses my argument, and is a very easy thing for an American to admit.

Top kek

>state boundaries are hundreds-km-spanning straight lines in the middle of nothing
>city boundaries are hell on Earth
Why
There shouldn't be this much difference

The state boundaries in the western part of the country were total afterthoughts. There are states less than 120 years old. The real point was to get the pacific, conquer the coast, and organize the rest later. that is why Idaho, Wyoming, Utah etc are irrelevant apart from local cultural memes.

The action takes place in cities (local politics), and although city borders are quite different from congressional districts as I've correctly explained in this thread, it's still also true that smaler, local geography is an ongoing turf war. Nobody cares to fight a turf war over Wyoming. But a turf war over parts of a city (say, any major city or its suburbs) makes total sense.

Also, you and Europeans in general are in absolutely no position whatsoever to complain about border retardation, as I've also correctly explained.

So where's CJ's house?

CJ : Carl Johnson and Franklin when he was poor
M : Michael
F : Franklin when he was rich
T : Trevor