The Glade 4.0

This. Let me give you an example. Dallas has to be one of the most spread out sprawls I've ever seen. I worked right in downtown, and commuted 28 miles one way to get to work. In that drive, I went by at least 2 farms with cattle, interspersed between several developments. And I didn't even live as far out as some folks did. Dallas/Ft. Worth are "sister" cities, much like Minneapolis/St. Paul yet they were 50 miles apart from each other.

In short, there really is no reason why Dallas had to be that spread out. You could have had really nice residential neighborhoods with yards and sidewalks, etc. in a fraction of the space.

An acre is 66 x 660 or 43,560 square feet. It's smaller than a football field (U.S.).

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Admittedly it makes more sense in rods and chains.

1 mile = 80 chains
1 chain = 100 links
25 links = 1 rod (4 rods to the chain)
1 acre = 10 square chains
1 square mile = 80 x 80 chains
= 6400 square chains
= 640 acres

The roman mile was equivalent to 1000 paces. Latin mille = 1,000 -- hence the milli- SI prefix = 1/1000th, etc. A pace was 5 feet (Romans were tall, yo). So, 1 roman mile = 5000 roman feet.

For whatever reason, having 5000 feet to the mile - and thus 62.5 feet to the chain - wasn't "good enough", so the conversion was tweaked to 66 feet (or 22 yards) to the chain. This gives us our bizarre definition of 5,280 feet to the mile, and 43,560 feet to the acre.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Ya, know, I never knew this. Thank's, Stathol.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

Incidentally, sprawl has little to do with my area. It's been like this for over a century. We've actually gone backwards here in that time, I believe. There used to be a school and a bar in town. The school was closed a long time ago, and the school in the next town over closed about 15 years ago. I think the bar closed up shop a bit before that time.

If recent influx in immigration didn't bring a (relative) ton of violent crime to the local city here, I suspect we'd see population in all these outlying towns dwindle over time. Even if that were the case, it doesn't affect what the Department of Transportation would like to see done at a local level here in the meantime.

I am generally all for bicycling and walking. I would walk to class almost whenever possible (barring cold winter days! and even then I only drove when I could park nearer for free :p) and I would be thoroughly and extremely pleased to forever rid myself of the hassle and expense of car buying and maintenance. But these ideals simply do not work, period, in what I assume is a very vast percentage of this country.

In other words, you contributed to the problem by living 28 miles away from your worksite, and yet want to advocate that that practice/habit/trend be either disallowed or discouraged?

There's a word for that.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

What's the word for that? And more important still, is there an app for that?

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The Dude abides.

Nautical miles are no better at 6076 feet rather than an even 6000. Evidently they correspond to one minute of arc of latitude.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."