People have different perceptions of space based on where they are. Growing up in California, other states were always a long way's away. Part of that is because we tended to vacation north-south, and California's a very long state that axis. But even east-west, it's four hours from LA to Vegas (and it's telling that I still think of it in terms of time, not space). Here in Colorado, it's hours to get to another state, in any direction.
But when I've been on business on the East Coast, you can completely miss driving through one state on your way to another. Everything's just jam-packed together, odd mixes of urban concentrations chock-a-block with relatively lush vegetation and towns and small cities and townships and so forth. It's compact, in a way that folks who've only lived in the West can't appreciate (and vice-versa).
(That spread-outness is a reason why Denver's taken so long to get some of the big retailers from either coast — it's just a long way to the next major city, and logistically that's a challenge to manage economically.)
Same is true from when I've visited Europe. The distance from Denver to the New Mexico border is the same as the distance from London to Liverpool. But that English distance is crammed with cities and villages and history of stuff that's gone on, so tightly compressed it boggles the mind, whereas we've got a couple of small cities and a lot of not-much-else over that distance.
Scale is a funny thing, but it also creates a mindset of how people can or should live together, what a "neighbor" is (in terms of states/countries or in terms of the next house over) and how you need to relate to them, and in terms of what a casual trip or day trip actually represents. I suspect it affects our thinking a lot more than we realize.
Reshared post from +Julie Caouette
Perspective… :)
I didn't really appreciate how big Michigan was until my daughter moved to Grand Rapids. We're far from the biggest state out there, but it'll take the better part of a work day to get from the bottom to the top.
The people of Alaska, tired of hearing the constant whining of how Texas was the largest state until Alaska came along, have agreed to split their state in half…so that Texas can be the third largest state.
I saw a map in which China, U.S., India and Europe all fit in Africa
+Rick Gary Yup. A lot of people have little idea how large — and diverse — Africa is.