I have problems with the groupings here – America, Americans, Europe, Europeans? The places and people encompassed are far too diverse to draw any conclusions about differences and general opinion. I’m also not too convinced about how strong the connection is between architecture and political opinion.

Personally, I’ve always thought of there being a difference between “old” and “new” cities, rather than “American” and “European”. Cities that were built (and thriving) before mass transportation have a different kind of structure than newer cities. There seems to be a tighter integration of homes, business, culture, and shopping within “older” cities. Newer cities, on the other hand, seem to be more spread out. There are more distinct and separate areas for homes, business, culture, and shopping, and they are further apart.

I think that Europe has more “old” cities than America, not just because it is actually older, but because of differing cultural and economic opinions.

As an aside, I’ve never heard the suburbs spoken of in such a positive way before.

I disagree about American suburbs necessarily being nicer overall than European suburbs. I have friends and family living in Ireland, Germany, France, and Norway. I’ve visited them all. Their suburbs are just as nice as the American suburbs I grew up in. Not as much floor space in the houses on average, and the closets aren’t as full of clothes, and there are other differences, but as overall quality of life goes–I’d say we’re roughly the same in the end.

They’ve touted that Regional Jets were going to be extinct five years ago, yet they still continue to fly, and will continue to fly for the foreseeable future. They’re just dead wrong.

On the SCASD, he stated the program “is swimming with the fishes”, but the program lives. Another round just closed on August 28, 2009!

Where does this group get their information?

The Boyd group is like your local weather guy: Full of mistakes, but still get to keep their jobs at the end of the day. Who can figure that one out?

There are three popular rankings that come out every year that tend to get attention: the UN’s Human Development Index, the Institute for Management Development’s World Competitiveness Yearbook, and Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Comparing the three lists, there are six countries that stand out as being particularly well-run: Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway and Finland — namely the less populous, egalitarian societies.

The more populous countries tend to have bigger headaches.

Germany is, in my opinion, the better run of the big countries, though it needs labour reform to boost job creation.

France struggles with corruption and, in spite of “liberté, égalité, fraternité”, a society that can be oppressively hierarchical.

Britain, after 30 years of public policy experimentation, is now concerned with the “brain drain” of homegrown professionals voting with their one-way plane tickets for better lives in the U.S., Canada and Australia.

Spain has an economic mess on its hands. Italy copes with a national airline so dysfunctional that shareholders once called for an exorcism, and a 72-year-old prime minister whose wife objected to his cavorting with an 18-year-old — among other problems.

So, anyone looking for good ideas might be better off looking to Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Switzerland, and forget about the big countires.

Welcome back! You have been missed. I look forward to reading your posts again!!

It’s precisely the lack of that one level of Part 121 safety that caused so much of a stir in last week’s NTSB hearings on Buffalo.

I believe they might call that irony?