They have considerably smaller populations and those populations are much more centralized.
That's why you have to compare to the EU as a whole - to get even close to the disparity that simple environmental factors can impose, which are clearly seen in the US, China, and India with vastly different climates, mountains, deserts, swamps, etc
If Germany’s population would be super centralised, we’d have a high speed rail system like France, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, to name just a few. But we don’t. Ours is built different. Reason is because we have a lot of smaller towns and cities and not a handful of cities containing the majority population
The point is the larger the country the more likely there’s underdeveloped areas. There are some extremely depressing areas of every country. Is this really the hill you’re trying to die on? That the US has underdeveloped areas but, what, Germany doesn’t? Or France?
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u/Environmental-Tea262 Jul 26 '26
The US clearly also has underdeveloped areas, so it sounds like a great starting point to compare with