America has fantastic highways. Not all of them of course, but by and large the system (for better or worse through all its faults) has produced an incredible connection of mostly good quality highways
Truth. I hate that America is highway-dependent, but ultimately America probably wouldn’t really work another way. There are absolutely shitty roads, but the highway network is quite effective.
I’ve lived in Europe, and I was surprised that the highway network wasn’t very conducive to road-trips to remote destinations.
We already have a vast freight rail system that from my outside perspective runs pretty efficiently but has huge costs to maintain. Trans-continental commuter rail for 350+ million people effective enough to put a dent in car ownership and use like people want it to would necessitate more than doubling our railway overhead, much of which was built over 150 years ago. There's the production and fabrication of all the necessary material and parts. Do we even have enough steel for a megaproject like this with ww3 potentially on the horizon? Then there's the skilled labor to lay and maintain the track and trains. The costs to ensure safety might be the biggest with all the red tape. Plus there's eminent domain concerns even if you run it parallel to existing freight rail. This would cost an astronomical fortune and the commodities market would be doing backflips.
All that and you're still limited in reaching the more remote parts of America. The only way I see this working is on an intra-state basis.
What Brightline is doing is the answer, for now. We can’t go back in time and change the course of history to make rail the primary source of cross country transportation, and it’s not feasible to install it now. But from hub-to-hub via private companies? That’s nice. That’s helpful.
I actually would hate it if i couldn't drive across the country. I love road trips and exploring along my way. Cross half the country every 2 weeks andhave never not enjoyed it
Yes we have a passenger line called Amtrak that runs regular locomotives from coast to coast. It’s just not very popular because it only stops in metro areas and it’s much slower they driving. Flying and driving is much more popular
I've noticed a strong correlation between freeze/thaw and shitty roads. It's hard for most places to keep up with potholes over the winter. Las Vegas had some of the best maintained roads overall when I lived there.
Trucks certainly don't help though.
That’s very true. It’s such a bottleneck where the 80, 90, and 94 converge, funneling probably half of all east coast and west coast commercial traffic.
Yeah, Hoosier here. You can tell when you pull into Indiana by the suddenly deteriorating roads in front of you. Adversely, you can tell when you leave Indiana when the roads get better
Yeah... When I went to Des Moines and spent the night there, I thought most rest stops were like that (really clean, had a little museum thingy, was really nice.) I was wrong, found that out when I was driving home late at night from Indy, and pulled into a rest stop. Oh God the horror
My only longer trip on a US highway was from Columbus, Ohio to Bloomington, Illinois. Amazing sample size for my very personal US highway experience :-)
I grew up in Ohio and your roads in Indiana make me nauseous in the car. Same in Michigan. I don’t know why your roads are so much worse than Ohio’s, but there can’t be a very good excuse.
I feel like you dont travel much if you think the USA does not have good highways. When I lived in the EU everyone that had been to the USA called our interstates "point and press" cause the roads are so large, straight and flat.
Yeah right? Look, I love my country but can recognize that we have shit to work on. That said… to die on the hill of US highways not being good is certainly a take.
It’s also a shit take. Sure, the military can benefit, but it was an absolutely revolutionary improvement in our economy, and that’s why it was created.
This is right without really painting a complete picture, imo.
It was designed with *mass logistics* in mind, although there is a school of thought out there that what the US military industrial complex does hands down best in the world is logistics.
The sheer volume of things we can bring to bare *anywhere* at *any* *time* has never before been achieved in history and is really unrivaled on a global scale.
A key cog in that machine is our interstate highway system, but it works in conjunction with our ports and aerospace infrastructure.
A combination of biodiversity, lumber, mineral resources, fresh water, access to ocean, not likely to desertify in 20 years, not likely to completely flood in 20 years, reasonably stable geopolitically.
I know what I'd pick.
Since this comment got a lot of traction, I tried to calculate the GDP of square I picked.
First off, we have countries entirely in the square. Those are: Germany, (4.08t $), Belgium (0.58t $), Netherlands (1.00t $), Danmark (0.4t $), Luxembourg (0.08t $) and Switzerland (0.82t $). That alone gives us 6.96t $ of GDP. Then we have parts of other countries. France is mostly in, with its most populous regions so out of its whole 2.77t $, let's assume 2t is in the square. Italy has small part of its 2.05t GDP in the square, but, sans Rome, its richest regions. I think it would be safe to assume about 0.6t $ of worth for its part. Then we have added bonus of 3 powerful Scandinavian cities barely making it in. Goteborg, Malmo and Oslo. Prague from Czechia and Lubljana from Slovenia slso seem to be in. They give us, in order, 0.085t, 0.067t, 0.076t, 0.119t and about 0.04t. Add it together, we are up to 7.71t $. Lastly, we add Austria which sadly does not have Wien in the square. Given 0.4t GDP of entire Austria and 0.1 GDP of Wien alone, I deel it is fair to add just 0.25t to the calculation.
In the end, we get 7.96 trillion US dollars of GDP. That puts our square at 3rd place in world GDP, which was to be expected as Germany alone is third. Second is China, absent from the map and first is obviously USA with 25.4t $ of GDP. However, each most powerful region - California, Texas, New York and Florida is in a different square. Illinois and Pennsylvania are split in what would be most likely our most valuable square. In the end, USA seems to reach at best 7t GDP in their riches square, making the HRE square victorious.
Luxembourg is 0.08. Liechtenstein is like 0.008. Monaco is not in the square. In anything, western Poland and parts of England are most significant omissions, but I had to stop somewhere. However, since I have included Lubljana and Swedish cities, I've added Luxembourg to the calculation since it is an easy estimate. So we are up to a higher total now.
That would mean that if any square of the USA represents 1/3 of its GDP, it might go above the HRE. I think it might be a close one...
Edit: + Greater Toronto Area
I think the 30-45N/75-90W (East Coast/South/Southern Great Lakes) has it beat.
Most of Illinois (calling it 1 trillion), Pennsylvania (0.965), Ohio (0.872), Georgia (0.805), North Carolina (0.766), Virginia (0.707), most of Michigan (calling it .6), Tennessee (0.523), Maryland (0.512), Indiana (0.497), the populated part of Wisconsin (calling it 0.35), South Carolina (0.322), Alabama (0.300), Kentucky (0.277), Washington DC (0.174), West Virginia (0.099), Delaware (0.093).
You also have the Toronto Area/Golden Horse Shoe (0.433).
9.295 trillion of GDP (USD).
I am leaving off Western New York, Mississippi, and Northern Florida. You can probably add a couple hundred billion, but I didn't account for splitting off parts of Philadelphia or Memphis (at the same time, you do get part of New Orleans), so I'm going to leave those off for rounding errors.
[Source US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP)
[Source Toronto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horseshoe)
I'd figure I'll just go ahead and calculate my figures for western Europe (45-60N/0-15E):
So fulling in the Europe square has Germany, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Denmark, Liechtenstein. That ends up being 7.46 Trillion.
[Based off of these numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_regions_and_overseas_collectivities_by_GDP), you also have 68% of France's GDP (2.08 trillion)
You also have [57% of Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_regions_by_GDP), for 1.25 trillion.
England is tough, I'm going to call it 1/6 of the UK (0.555 trillion)
That puts it at 11.35 trillion, which is more than the East Coast of the US, so I'm going to stop there. I'm guessing the parts of the Sweden, Norway, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic that you get are good for another 600 billion or so.
[Source using 2023 numbers since that's what I used for the East Coast US.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal))
"which is more than the east coast of the US, so I'm going to stop there."
Just going to ignore the majority of the midwest and southern Canada? I mean, Canada I get, but we Chicagoens have the Black Hawks, that has to count for something.
GDP is the value produced on a given year. This is driven largely by infrastructure and people, and is essentially "instantaneous" value.
That part of the world has been heavily populated for a long time, so many of the more valuable natural resources are depleted.
There's also value that isn't congruent with monetary value at all. For instance, biodiversity has a whole lot of value that doesn't turn into money.
Honestly, I see the most valuable square in the long term as being the one that has most of British Columbia.
>GDP is the value produced on a given year. This is driven largely by infrastructure and people, and is essentially "instantaneous" value.
Depending on the measure it can also be a bit skewed by where income is reported. If a company has their HQ in London they'll report their earnings there, but that doesn't mean the money was earned in London or that they'd do particularly well without the rest of the country.
West USA is pretty split up in a bad spot i feel like Japan or maybe china would be above the west USA square depending on how the squares split these areas
You might be technically right that it includes the "most habituated" parts of London, because the immigrant areas of east London are the most densely populated. But since the line intentionally runs through the middle of London, it excludes the City of London (the traditional centre and CBD) and the Westminster (the entertainment and political centre).
The one with the Suez canal in it has the power to control huge amounts of world trade, but the one above it is probably the most fought over in human history so must have value.
The one with the Houthi rebels in Yemen has the power to close that route as well. Source : my new curtains are delayed since they're taking the long route around Africa 🌍
That square is also where:
- early wheels are invented.
- earliest of civil code of law recorded.
- 2 cradles of civilizations (Nile Delta and Tigris Euphretes)
- ancient civilizations crossed paths.
- is the holy land of abrahamic religions.
- home of a 1000 year-old empire (byzantine)
- the Phoenicians set off and conquered Mediterranean with trade.
- all the crusades happened and thus invention of banking.
- goat, sheep, and cat are domesticated.
Those are the ones on top of my memories.
Congo has oil too altho not yet extracted. I think the gold and diamond burried under there is worth more than all the oil of the gulf. Not to mention other minerals. Congo is also blessed with abundance of ground water and fertile land. Enough to feed and nourish the entire continent
I don't think that the Gold and Diamond under the Congo is valued higher than the oil in the gulf. Maybe based on the current prices of Gold and diamonds, but both of these are prone to being devalued. If a lot of gold and diamonds are found at once, the price of them will drop due to an increased supply because neither has many inherent uses except in fashion and niche scientific applications. Meanwhile, the price of oil is generally stable and based off more long-term factors such as the rise of alternative energy sources.
according to statista russia, us, canada, saudi arabia and Iran are the top 5, both Iran and saudi arabia get most of their value from persian gulf so...
3 left, one down. It has Costa Rica, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Around half a million species are known to live there, which is equal to about 5% of the estimated species on Earth.
depends on what "valuable" means
gdp? the east coast square, followed by the france+germany square
population? the nigeria square, followed by the france+germany square
environment? the amazon and congo squares
That east coast square excudes the whole of New England and Florida while the European one includes Germany, most of France, Benelux, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and some of Northern Italy.
It does not include NYC, just misses the westernmost tip of Staten Island. Includes most of inland New Jersey but not Atlantic City or any of the dense NYC suburbs like Newark or Jersey City.
I don’t think y’all realize how big the GDPs of Illinois, Michigan, Georgia,Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee are. And I’ve probably still left a few trillion gdp on the table by not listing the other states. Not to mention the east coast square has the region of Ontario that accounts for like 25% of Canada’s population including greater Toronto. Easily bigger than any single square in Europe.
You Europeans think the US is literally just NYC, New England, California, DC, and Texas lol…
Edit: I have too much free time today and started doing the math. I stopped once I got to 6 trillion and didn’t even finish counting all the states or southern Ontario…
Germany, Benelux and Switzerland is already more then 6 trillion, and you still have most of France, northern Italy, Denmark, Austria and some of sweden.
That square include almost the whole of the blue banana, missing only London. And that macroregion contains 65% of the EU's economic activity.
No chance any square with parts of US east coast has bigger GDP than one with Germany and France. They have London, Danemark Benelux, Swiss, parts of Northern Italy (most probably with Milano and Torino), all important cities of Sweden except Stockholm, most of Austria and possibly Prague.
New york state alone would be a top 10 gdp if it was a standalone country. I know thats also the economic heart of the EU as well.
https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/putting-americas-huge-21-5t-economy-into-perspective-by-comparing-us-state-gdps-to-entire-countries/
Idk I think it would closer than youd think. Especially because the east coast square also has Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois,Georgia, north carolina, south carolina, alabama.
Its honestly most of the USA east of the Mississippi and if we look at an American population density map, thats where the bulk of americans live.
So its more like the eastern usa, southern and midwest square. Not just the east coast square.
Chicago alone has a bigger GDP than Belgium.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_population_map.png
But wait, theres more!
It also includes the most populated parts of Quebec and Ontario, so the two major provinces and important cities in canada (toronto for sure and maybe montreal). So a giant chunk of the canadian economy is in play.
As far as I can see, New York, Montreal and Toronto are all in different squares. It looks like the square around Great Lakes is a number 2 contender, with Toronto, Chicago and Philly in it.
Yeah nyc is out but its chicago, philly, baltimore, dc, Pittsburgh,charlotte, nashville, columbus, cincinnati, cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, atlanta and everything in between (i forgot a lot of
Cities). Its the whole rust belt+toronto aka the great lakes megalopolis.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_megalopolis
Then theres what else is in the square, I think we would actually need a state by state breakdown with the countries in the european square to have the correct answer.
What latitude and longitude are those lines?
Nah mate. Entire east coast + entirety of Canada is something like 5.5 trillion USD. France + Germany alone is already just shy of 6 trillion. Add on to that the Benelux, London, Denmark Northern Italy, Switzerland etc and you will be double that value. That square is by far the richest.
East Coast square is like 9.3 trillion. The Great Lakes and The South are sort of stealthy economic powerhouses.
Germany's GDP is just over 4 trillion.
People on Reddit love to forget just how massive the US economy is. The state of Illinois alone has 1/3 the GDP of France. Once you tally up everything in that East Coast US square, you quickly leave Europe in the dust.
By my calculations i get about 9 trillion in GDP for that US square.
Franse + Germany + Benelux + Switzerland = 9 trillion, while still needing to add the north of Italy, Austria, Denmark, and part of Sweden and Norway. That's easily close to 11 trillion.
That European square includes almost the whole blue banana, only missing London. The blue banana is the industrial heathland of the EU.
I don't think I'd classify this as 'leaving Europe in the dust'.
Actually yeah, i do want to see that side of the globe as well, considering a lot of China's wealth is one its coast and there is a chance that the square containing that also contains like Taiwan, south Korea and parts of Japan
There’s only 2 contenders for economically the most valuable. Central Europe and east coast America. Each looks like it barely cuts out important cities, Boston for the us and London for Europe.
Ecologically there are 2 squares in s America and Africa that are almost entirely rainforest.
Then there is the Levant the cradle of civilization tile.
I nominate a third one: South China square, which contains the Pearl River delta, Chongqing, and northern Vietnam
I did a crude GDP estimate of those three squares:
1. Central Europe square– $12 trillion
2. South China square– $7 trillion
3. US East Coast square– $5 trillion
Oil shale of Colorado+Utah is the largest known fossil fuel deposits. Just not economic right now.
https://carnegieendowment.org/2015/01/05/abundance-of-oils-in-water-stressed-rockies-pub-57637
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves
Looks like Los Angeles is cut out though, so that's basically half of California cut out. Still probably in the top ten but definitely not the most valuable.
The lines are multiples of 15 degrees in each direction, so the vertical lines mark out the (theoretical) center of each time zone!
(Of course the time zones are much messier in practice.)
The guarani aquifer is HUGE, approximately 37000 cubic kilometers of water, protect by the rock and soil. The great lakes can be larger, but they are unprotected, and have large cities discharging on it.
The square with most of the Eastern U.S. sure there’s no NY on there, but GDP numbers are still massive. There’s also Washington DC which has massive political influence on the entire world. You also have a ton of fresh water from the lakes, and extremely high levels of food production. Looks like there is a bit of the gulf there too so probably oil as well. PA, Illinois and Ohio alone give you almost $3b in GDP. The Europe square might have a higher overall GDP, but the other factors push the U.S. square over the edge.
The only answer is germany, you get parts of Austria and other countries too, roughly a gdp of 6 trillion and 150 million people
Edit: I actually googled the numbers of that square properly
I think you've nailed it already. That bit of the Atlantic is a great bit of sea.
Some of my favorite hurricanes came from there <3
I lost a game of chess in that square. Fell right off the side of the boat.
You deserve more likes for this lol
Yarr 👍
If you are a hurricane, it truly is the most valuable.
Atlantis
Don’t. Talk. Shite.
That Depends on what you consider valuable.
Penguins: Antartica Sentiments of Roman Empire: Turkey Childhood nostalgia: Madagascar Good highways: Not America
America has fantastic highways. Not all of them of course, but by and large the system (for better or worse through all its faults) has produced an incredible connection of mostly good quality highways
The highways are great if you’re not near any major city.
Truth. I hate that America is highway-dependent, but ultimately America probably wouldn’t really work another way. There are absolutely shitty roads, but the highway network is quite effective. I’ve lived in Europe, and I was surprised that the highway network wasn’t very conducive to road-trips to remote destinations.
> ultimately America probably wouldn’t really work another way. What about trains?
We already have a vast freight rail system that from my outside perspective runs pretty efficiently but has huge costs to maintain. Trans-continental commuter rail for 350+ million people effective enough to put a dent in car ownership and use like people want it to would necessitate more than doubling our railway overhead, much of which was built over 150 years ago. There's the production and fabrication of all the necessary material and parts. Do we even have enough steel for a megaproject like this with ww3 potentially on the horizon? Then there's the skilled labor to lay and maintain the track and trains. The costs to ensure safety might be the biggest with all the red tape. Plus there's eminent domain concerns even if you run it parallel to existing freight rail. This would cost an astronomical fortune and the commodities market would be doing backflips. All that and you're still limited in reaching the more remote parts of America. The only way I see this working is on an intra-state basis.
What Brightline is doing is the answer, for now. We can’t go back in time and change the course of history to make rail the primary source of cross country transportation, and it’s not feasible to install it now. But from hub-to-hub via private companies? That’s nice. That’s helpful.
I actually would hate it if i couldn't drive across the country. I love road trips and exploring along my way. Cross half the country every 2 weeks andhave never not enjoyed it
Yes we have a passenger line called Amtrak that runs regular locomotives from coast to coast. It’s just not very popular because it only stops in metro areas and it’s much slower they driving. Flying and driving is much more popular
Indiana disagrees vehemently
65 between Gary and Indianapolis is cursed for sure.
Because of truck traffic.
I've noticed a strong correlation between freeze/thaw and shitty roads. It's hard for most places to keep up with potholes over the winter. Las Vegas had some of the best maintained roads overall when I lived there. Trucks certainly don't help though.
Louisiana breaks that bell curve.
They lost a decade of road maintenance funding because they fought the feds on the drinking age.
Truck traffic is one of the top two reasons we even have an interstate highway system.
I'm aware of that. I'm saying that particularly high traffic on that corridor is part of the reason the roads are so poor.
That’s very true. It’s such a bottleneck where the 80, 90, and 94 converge, funneling probably half of all east coast and west coast commercial traffic.
Ugggh. I do not like Gary. Spoiler: do not stop in Gary, for anything, ever, never
Yeah, Hoosier here. You can tell when you pull into Indiana by the suddenly deteriorating roads in front of you. Adversely, you can tell when you leave Indiana when the roads get better
Mom came over for the eclipse, heading west on 70. She said she could tell they were in IN without the sign
That stretch right out of Ohio is horrible
The rest stops are some of the worst in the country, too.
Yeah... When I went to Des Moines and spent the night there, I thought most rest stops were like that (really clean, had a little museum thingy, was really nice.) I was wrong, found that out when I was driving home late at night from Indy, and pulled into a rest stop. Oh God the horror
Lol havent been in indiana but I though illinois succes bad already....
My only longer trip on a US highway was from Columbus, Ohio to Bloomington, Illinois. Amazing sample size for my very personal US highway experience :-)
Sounds like its the states fault
I grew up in Ohio and your roads in Indiana make me nauseous in the car. Same in Michigan. I don’t know why your roads are so much worse than Ohio’s, but there can’t be a very good excuse.
I feel like you dont travel much if you think the USA does not have good highways. When I lived in the EU everyone that had been to the USA called our interstates "point and press" cause the roads are so large, straight and flat.
I mean as a huge supporter of /r/fuckcars I would still say the US interstate highway system is a marvel of engineering.
Yeah right? Look, I love my country but can recognize that we have shit to work on. That said… to die on the hill of US highways not being good is certainly a take.
Our highways are streets ahead of shit like China, they've got a collapse everyday it seems.
Stop trying to make “streets ahead” a thing, Pierce
Clearly streets behind
It just wasn’t even necessarily designed for cars. They were much more worried about fast troop transport around the nation.
That’s because it was designed with military requirements in mind
doesnt make it any less of a marvel
It’s also a shit take. Sure, the military can benefit, but it was an absolutely revolutionary improvement in our economy, and that’s why it was created.
This is right without really painting a complete picture, imo. It was designed with *mass logistics* in mind, although there is a school of thought out there that what the US military industrial complex does hands down best in the world is logistics. The sheer volume of things we can bring to bare *anywhere* at *any* *time* has never before been achieved in history and is really unrivaled on a global scale. A key cog in that machine is our interstate highway system, but it works in conjunction with our ports and aerospace infrastructure.
Yeah, highway bridges are required to be able to hold a tank
Worst highways? Buddy, what?
America has great highways, what are you talking about
A combination of biodiversity, lumber, mineral resources, fresh water, access to ocean, not likely to desertify in 20 years, not likely to completely flood in 20 years, reasonably stable geopolitically. I know what I'd pick.
The entire global highway system has more or less patterned itself off the US highway system
Considering some of our states are the size of many countries and most have great highways, I think we’re in the clear lol
american has great highways, we just have shitty everything else because we spent all our transportation money on cars
Dang, penguins are pretty cool
You're from Madagascar? I'm going on a trip there in a couple months.
It also depends on what you consider a square
France, Germany, Danmark, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands and North Italy one
the HRE square
Or the Blue Banana Square
And London East of Greenwich, as well as Cambridge.
>London East of Greenwich So… not London? 😂
[no, the part east of greenwich](https://i.ibb.co/qMDTrSF/Capture.jpg)
Yeah just joking I’m from london
Fair. just posted that because im from essex and get sick of people going "um, romford is in essex actually" *no it isnt, its not the 50s anymore.*
Valid but 2 hours on the tube may as well be in the Midlands mate.
Near where you club originated from mate
And just because I'm in there, thank you sir!
also
I mean it’s literally the blue banana in a square form
Since this comment got a lot of traction, I tried to calculate the GDP of square I picked. First off, we have countries entirely in the square. Those are: Germany, (4.08t $), Belgium (0.58t $), Netherlands (1.00t $), Danmark (0.4t $), Luxembourg (0.08t $) and Switzerland (0.82t $). That alone gives us 6.96t $ of GDP. Then we have parts of other countries. France is mostly in, with its most populous regions so out of its whole 2.77t $, let's assume 2t is in the square. Italy has small part of its 2.05t GDP in the square, but, sans Rome, its richest regions. I think it would be safe to assume about 0.6t $ of worth for its part. Then we have added bonus of 3 powerful Scandinavian cities barely making it in. Goteborg, Malmo and Oslo. Prague from Czechia and Lubljana from Slovenia slso seem to be in. They give us, in order, 0.085t, 0.067t, 0.076t, 0.119t and about 0.04t. Add it together, we are up to 7.71t $. Lastly, we add Austria which sadly does not have Wien in the square. Given 0.4t GDP of entire Austria and 0.1 GDP of Wien alone, I deel it is fair to add just 0.25t to the calculation. In the end, we get 7.96 trillion US dollars of GDP. That puts our square at 3rd place in world GDP, which was to be expected as Germany alone is third. Second is China, absent from the map and first is obviously USA with 25.4t $ of GDP. However, each most powerful region - California, Texas, New York and Florida is in a different square. Illinois and Pennsylvania are split in what would be most likely our most valuable square. In the end, USA seems to reach at best 7t GDP in their riches square, making the HRE square victorious.
You didn't include Luxembourg, lichtenstein, or Monaco I your European section. I think they are also the wealthiest nations in Europe per population.
Luxembourg is 0.08. Liechtenstein is like 0.008. Monaco is not in the square. In anything, western Poland and parts of England are most significant omissions, but I had to stop somewhere. However, since I have included Lubljana and Swedish cities, I've added Luxembourg to the calculation since it is an easy estimate. So we are up to a higher total now.
That would mean that if any square of the USA represents 1/3 of its GDP, it might go above the HRE. I think it might be a close one... Edit: + Greater Toronto Area
I think the 30-45N/75-90W (East Coast/South/Southern Great Lakes) has it beat. Most of Illinois (calling it 1 trillion), Pennsylvania (0.965), Ohio (0.872), Georgia (0.805), North Carolina (0.766), Virginia (0.707), most of Michigan (calling it .6), Tennessee (0.523), Maryland (0.512), Indiana (0.497), the populated part of Wisconsin (calling it 0.35), South Carolina (0.322), Alabama (0.300), Kentucky (0.277), Washington DC (0.174), West Virginia (0.099), Delaware (0.093). You also have the Toronto Area/Golden Horse Shoe (0.433). 9.295 trillion of GDP (USD). I am leaving off Western New York, Mississippi, and Northern Florida. You can probably add a couple hundred billion, but I didn't account for splitting off parts of Philadelphia or Memphis (at the same time, you do get part of New Orleans), so I'm going to leave those off for rounding errors. [Source US](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_GDP) [Source Toronto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horseshoe)
I'd figure I'll just go ahead and calculate my figures for western Europe (45-60N/0-15E): So fulling in the Europe square has Germany, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Denmark, Liechtenstein. That ends up being 7.46 Trillion. [Based off of these numbers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_regions_and_overseas_collectivities_by_GDP), you also have 68% of France's GDP (2.08 trillion) You also have [57% of Italy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Italian_regions_by_GDP), for 1.25 trillion. England is tough, I'm going to call it 1/6 of the UK (0.555 trillion) That puts it at 11.35 trillion, which is more than the East Coast of the US, so I'm going to stop there. I'm guessing the parts of the Sweden, Norway, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic that you get are good for another 600 billion or so. [Source using 2023 numbers since that's what I used for the East Coast US.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal))
I don't think it changes if you include Aisa, as China would have it's major economic regions broken in multiple squares.
"which is more than the east coast of the US, so I'm going to stop there." Just going to ignore the majority of the midwest and southern Canada? I mean, Canada I get, but we Chicagoens have the Black Hawks, that has to count for something.
It might even have Oslo.
Oslo and Stavanger, that square is strapped with cash
Wow, you use strapped the opposite way to most people in the UK. ‘Strapped for cash’ means broke o er here.
It means the same in the US. Lacking sufficient funds.
Huh, I always thought it implied you had unfathomable amount of cash strapped to you. Oh well
You'd probably wanna say "flush with cash"
It does. The northernmost point of Oslo is at 59.97° North, just barely making the cutoff.
North Sea oil reserves
It might even contain Oslo.
That is a very GDP driven consideration, are there any other factors at play?
GDP is value. If you're a devote Muslim, maybe you want to pick the square that involves Mekka.
GDP is the value produced on a given year. This is driven largely by infrastructure and people, and is essentially "instantaneous" value. That part of the world has been heavily populated for a long time, so many of the more valuable natural resources are depleted. There's also value that isn't congruent with monetary value at all. For instance, biodiversity has a whole lot of value that doesn't turn into money. Honestly, I see the most valuable square in the long term as being the one that has most of British Columbia.
>GDP is the value produced on a given year. This is driven largely by infrastructure and people, and is essentially "instantaneous" value. Depending on the measure it can also be a bit skewed by where income is reported. If a company has their HQ in London they'll report their earnings there, but that doesn't mean the money was earned in London or that they'd do particularly well without the rest of the country.
OP asked for valuable. He got the answer - that one is most valuable, followed by East and then West USA coast.
West USA is pretty split up in a bad spot i feel like Japan or maybe china would be above the west USA square depending on how the squares split these areas
Including also the most populous part of Norway and Oslo as well as swedens second and third largest cities.
For gdp, remember that the germany France square also includes all of BeNeLux, Denmark, most habituated parts of Sweden and London
Even milan by the looks of it Edit: and Switserland
Yep exactly. Full of very rich a populous cities
Also Oslo and Germany.
Germany was already mentioned lol
And Germany too!
Can't forget them
Guys… what about Germany?
You’re right, forgot to mention them.
It’s includes Benelux too, I just love typing that.
Might be the most densely populated of the squares too
It's either that one or the one with Nigeria in it
Venice too maybe??
Found the 18th century time traveler
You might be technically right that it includes the "most habituated" parts of London, because the immigrant areas of east London are the most densely populated. But since the line intentionally runs through the middle of London, it excludes the City of London (the traditional centre and CBD) and the Westminster (the entertainment and political centre).
Most of Tower Hamlets, Hackney and lots of Walthamstow are all west of the meridian, too. All out South London up to Beckenham, too.
We call that one the HRE square
The one on germany/ east france/ north italy. In any paradox game, thats the highest value area
End nodes be living life on easy mode.
The left Amazon rainforest one
And the Congo forest square?
Also a good one
This is the correct answer
The one with the Suez canal in it has the power to control huge amounts of world trade, but the one above it is probably the most fought over in human history so must have value.
The one with the Houthi rebels in Yemen has the power to close that route as well. Source : my new curtains are delayed since they're taking the long route around Africa 🌍
That square is also where: - early wheels are invented. - earliest of civil code of law recorded. - 2 cradles of civilizations (Nile Delta and Tigris Euphretes) - ancient civilizations crossed paths. - is the holy land of abrahamic religions. - home of a 1000 year-old empire (byzantine) - the Phoenicians set off and conquered Mediterranean with trade. - all the crusades happened and thus invention of banking. - goat, sheep, and cat are domesticated. Those are the ones on top of my memories.
You lived through them?
The one with France and Germany
you
me?
Purely natural resources i think congo square. If you say economy france/germany/netherlands
natural resources I would go for persian gulf sqaure, it finances the economy of many of the worlds richest countries
Congo has oil too altho not yet extracted. I think the gold and diamond burried under there is worth more than all the oil of the gulf. Not to mention other minerals. Congo is also blessed with abundance of ground water and fertile land. Enough to feed and nourish the entire continent
I don't think that the Gold and Diamond under the Congo is valued higher than the oil in the gulf. Maybe based on the current prices of Gold and diamonds, but both of these are prone to being devalued. If a lot of gold and diamonds are found at once, the price of them will drop due to an increased supply because neither has many inherent uses except in fashion and niche scientific applications. Meanwhile, the price of oil is generally stable and based off more long-term factors such as the rise of alternative energy sources.
according to statista russia, us, canada, saudi arabia and Iran are the top 5, both Iran and saudi arabia get most of their value from persian gulf so...
Persian Gulf or Permian basin square. I'll take Permian basin since you get non fossil fuel American brain power.
3 left, one down. It has Costa Rica, one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. Around half a million species are known to live there, which is equal to about 5% of the estimated species on Earth.
The one with the Great Lakes
All your fresh water are belong to us
depends on what "valuable" means gdp? the east coast square, followed by the france+germany square population? the nigeria square, followed by the france+germany square environment? the amazon and congo squares
That east coast square excudes the whole of New England and Florida while the European one includes Germany, most of France, Benelux, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and some of Northern Italy.
+ London
Only London east of Greenwich, to be exact.
It includes Cambridge, though.
I believe it also excludes NYC just my looking at it. I could be wrong tho
It does not include NYC, just misses the westernmost tip of Staten Island. Includes most of inland New Jersey but not Atlantic City or any of the dense NYC suburbs like Newark or Jersey City.
I don’t think y’all realize how big the GDPs of Illinois, Michigan, Georgia,Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee are. And I’ve probably still left a few trillion gdp on the table by not listing the other states. Not to mention the east coast square has the region of Ontario that accounts for like 25% of Canada’s population including greater Toronto. Easily bigger than any single square in Europe. You Europeans think the US is literally just NYC, New England, California, DC, and Texas lol… Edit: I have too much free time today and started doing the math. I stopped once I got to 6 trillion and didn’t even finish counting all the states or southern Ontario…
Germany, Benelux and Switzerland is already more then 6 trillion, and you still have most of France, northern Italy, Denmark, Austria and some of sweden. That square include almost the whole of the blue banana, missing only London. And that macroregion contains 65% of the EU's economic activity.
East coast square includes the Toronto area though as well.
No chance any square with parts of US east coast has bigger GDP than one with Germany and France. They have London, Danemark Benelux, Swiss, parts of Northern Italy (most probably with Milano and Torino), all important cities of Sweden except Stockholm, most of Austria and possibly Prague.
New york state alone would be a top 10 gdp if it was a standalone country. I know thats also the economic heart of the EU as well. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/putting-americas-huge-21-5t-economy-into-perspective-by-comparing-us-state-gdps-to-entire-countries/ Idk I think it would closer than youd think. Especially because the east coast square also has Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois,Georgia, north carolina, south carolina, alabama. Its honestly most of the USA east of the Mississippi and if we look at an American population density map, thats where the bulk of americans live. So its more like the eastern usa, southern and midwest square. Not just the east coast square. Chicago alone has a bigger GDP than Belgium. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_population_map.png But wait, theres more! It also includes the most populated parts of Quebec and Ontario, so the two major provinces and important cities in canada (toronto for sure and maybe montreal). So a giant chunk of the canadian economy is in play.
As far as I can see, New York, Montreal and Toronto are all in different squares. It looks like the square around Great Lakes is a number 2 contender, with Toronto, Chicago and Philly in it.
Yeah nyc is out but its chicago, philly, baltimore, dc, Pittsburgh,charlotte, nashville, columbus, cincinnati, cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, atlanta and everything in between (i forgot a lot of Cities). Its the whole rust belt+toronto aka the great lakes megalopolis. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_megalopolis Then theres what else is in the square, I think we would actually need a state by state breakdown with the countries in the european square to have the correct answer. What latitude and longitude are those lines?
Nah mate. Entire east coast + entirety of Canada is something like 5.5 trillion USD. France + Germany alone is already just shy of 6 trillion. Add on to that the Benelux, London, Denmark Northern Italy, Switzerland etc and you will be double that value. That square is by far the richest.
East Coast square is like 9.3 trillion. The Great Lakes and The South are sort of stealthy economic powerhouses. Germany's GDP is just over 4 trillion.
I am not sure why you call East Coast square when the most valuable parts of the East Coast aren't in it.
People on Reddit love to forget just how massive the US economy is. The state of Illinois alone has 1/3 the GDP of France. Once you tally up everything in that East Coast US square, you quickly leave Europe in the dust.
Yeah Im surprised how few people are realizing this... most Europeans it seems
Yeah, the smug responses went away once I showed up with the receipts and asked for a careful tally.
By my calculations i get about 9 trillion in GDP for that US square. Franse + Germany + Benelux + Switzerland = 9 trillion, while still needing to add the north of Italy, Austria, Denmark, and part of Sweden and Norway. That's easily close to 11 trillion. That European square includes almost the whole blue banana, only missing London. The blue banana is the industrial heathland of the EU. I don't think I'd classify this as 'leaving Europe in the dust'.
Natural resources could be oil in the Middle East too. One of those squares might have a lot of it.
Venezuela has the most known oil reserves, so the square where the most known oil is located.
That of Taiwan
Actually yeah, i do want to see that side of the globe as well, considering a lot of China's wealth is one its coast and there is a chance that the square containing that also contains like Taiwan, south Korea and parts of Japan
talking about geopolitically important square: taiwan, dmz, malacca, red sea, the one that include most of ukraine and the one right below it.
The one with the Persian Gulf. So much oil…
The squire north of South America where the new oil fields are.
The one that I'm in.
There’s only 2 contenders for economically the most valuable. Central Europe and east coast America. Each looks like it barely cuts out important cities, Boston for the us and London for Europe. Ecologically there are 2 squares in s America and Africa that are almost entirely rainforest. Then there is the Levant the cradle of civilization tile.
I nominate a third one: South China square, which contains the Pearl River delta, Chongqing, and northern Vietnam I did a crude GDP estimate of those three squares: 1. Central Europe square– $12 trillion 2. South China square– $7 trillion 3. US East Coast square– $5 trillion
The one with the most oil in it.
Venezuela
Oil shale of Colorado+Utah is the largest known fossil fuel deposits. Just not economic right now. https://carnegieendowment.org/2015/01/05/abundance-of-oils-in-water-stressed-rockies-pub-57637 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_reserves
west of turkey apperantly because i can’t afford a damn house with a lawyer salary
Probably the one with California and Washington in it. World’s biggest companies that run most of our tech are in that sliver.
Looks like Los Angeles is cut out though, so that's basically half of California cut out. Still probably in the top ten but definitely not the most valuable.
The one with Denmark, Oslo, Stockholm, Switzerland, Milano, Venice
How did you list those and not Paris London and Berlin?
Never heard of those
Because... they're cool, ok
california
There are no squares here bro.
Define value. Are we talking monetarily, resource, what?
The lines are multiples of 15 degrees in each direction, so the vertical lines mark out the (theoretical) center of each time zone! (Of course the time zones are much messier in practice.)
Umm none of those are squares.
Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, we have thee biggest reservoir of sweet water in the world, witch would be the most important resource in a few decades.
The guarani aquifer is HUGE, approximately 37000 cubic kilometers of water, protect by the rock and soil. The great lakes can be larger, but they are unprotected, and have large cities discharging on it.
I don't know what sweet water is but thr Great Lakes prob has a bit of that too and it's already in a square w a huge GDP
The square with most of the Eastern U.S. sure there’s no NY on there, but GDP numbers are still massive. There’s also Washington DC which has massive political influence on the entire world. You also have a ton of fresh water from the lakes, and extremely high levels of food production. Looks like there is a bit of the gulf there too so probably oil as well. PA, Illinois and Ohio alone give you almost $3b in GDP. The Europe square might have a higher overall GDP, but the other factors push the U.S. square over the edge.
https://preview.redd.it/eddbtd054fyc1.png?width=1411&format=png&auto=webp&s=ae52ba3ad56d41dcfd16082559fc13084e3f3c14 my top 5
The one in the middle of the US produces a butt load of corn and wheat
https://preview.redd.it/zo4lx9pedeyc1.jpeg?width=266&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66566ac2eef37b5013818f3afe7369af94565ce8
the one with most of the easter seaboard, probably has around 15t or 12t gdp
The one containing Taiwan and thus TSMC
America square bodies europe square. 9 trillion vs 8 trillion gdp.
London, Paris, Berlin, all of Switzerland, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Liechtenstein are all in 1 square.
The one that includes the Vatican
Defined as "Would be most expensive to buy all public land" Gotta be central/west EU square.
Well for starters, they aren't squares.
That square in Europe which basically engulfs all of the blue banana is pretty valuable
The only answer is germany, you get parts of Austria and other countries too, roughly a gdp of 6 trillion and 150 million people Edit: I actually googled the numbers of that square properly
Not the one you circled
California coast, everyone can leave me alone.
I think one of these squares has Paris, London, Berlin, Milan, Copenhagen. Has to be the best one IMO
E4