With energy getting cheaper, in every sense, it makes sense to lock in the gains from tech, and for the "sling more stuff, faster" impetus to return. Although we've hyperoptimized so much in the last 60 years that we have no idea in which direction that impetus might take off.

AFAICT Poland has a fracking industry and concessions have been sold in that region, but they're inactive.

Strange answers that bring the methodology into question aside, you do realize that this survey raises the prospect of more than tripling the population of Los Angeles County.

We will live in such a *more interestingly* dysfunctional country, after the last railroad mergers go through.

Giant is just a rizzless Albert Heijn.

I'd be broader and say "destination sprawl", although the wordsmiths can roast me for it and come up with something better. What we want are neighborhood centers adjacent to the rail stations that add up to the aggregation economies of a city in themselves, not an infinite chain of park-n-rides.

Between all the civil wars, the snow golems, and the dragons, isn't it possible that enough of the nobility have died off to set off a slow-motion upheaval in society? Sort of the way that France was able to centralize (in a way that England could not), after its nobility was massacred at Agincourt?