[LosAngelesSportsFan]

Originally Posted by Shawn

I'll give my normal disclaimer in threads like this: once you live in East Asia, your perspective necessarily changes.

In North America, only NYC and Mexico City on the whole feel on par with the big boys in the East. By this, I mean in scale, intensity, and overall size.

You can feel like you're in a mega-city in small, select areas of a few other North American cities, but the second you venture away from these bubbles, things feel noticeably smaller than what you'd find in a true mega-city. The sustained scale just isn't there. You can find this in Chicago, LA, SF, and Toronto. I'm presuming some other Mexican cities I've never been to as well.

Scale really matters here. For reference, think about this: mega-cities like Tokyo and Seoul see about 20 million daily riders in their public transit networks. The Yamanote Line alone sees more daily riders (4.2 million) than either the entire NYC subway system, or all daily rail riders (heavy, light, commuter train) in Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, San Francisco, and DC combined.

If you've never experienced the scale out here, it's hard to imagine. When you come back to a (by North American standards) large metro like Boston or Philly which used to feel impressive, things sadly feel a lot quainter than before.

Tokyo felt larger and more intense than LA and NY combined. Just insane and never ending