The United States has about 330 million people — but they are spread out very unevenly. Fly over the country at night and the coasts blaze with light, while huge stretches of the interior stay almost dark. Understanding why people cluster where they do is one of the great puzzles of geography — and the answers usually come down to water, work and transport.
The great cities — and why they grew where they did
Almost every big American city sits where it does for a transport reason. Cities grow where goods and people can move easily.
| City | Approx. city population | Why it grew there |
|---|---|---|
| New York City | about 8 million | A superb natural harbour where the Hudson River meets the Atlantic — the gateway for trade and for millions of immigrants |
| Los Angeles | about 4 million | Mild sunny climate, a busy Pacific port, and 20th-century industries from film to aerospace |
| Chicago | about 2.7 million | On Lake Michigan at the meeting point of Great Lakes shipping and the railways — the crossroads between east and west |
| Houston | about 2.3 million | A Gulf Coast port that boomed on oil, energy and, later, NASA's Johnson Space Center |
Notice the pattern: harbour, lake, river or railway. Before lorries and motorways, water and rail were the cheapest ways to move heavy goods, so cities sprouted at the best loading points and never stopped growing.
Suburbs and the car
After the Second World War, America built motorways and cars became affordable for ordinary families. Millions moved out of crowded city centres to suburbs — neighbourhoods of houses with gardens on the edge of cities. Suburban life is built around the car: people typically drive to work, to school and to giant shopping centres, and many suburbs have no pavements on quieter roads because so few people walk far. Today more Americans live in suburbs than in city centres or the countryside.
The farming heartland
Between the coasts lies some of the most productive farmland on Earth. The Corn Belt — Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Nebraska and their neighbours — grows enormous quantities of corn (what the British call maize) and soybeans on deep, dark prairie soil. Further west, the drier Great Plains of Kansas, North Dakota and Montana are wheat country, sometimes called America's breadbasket. American farms are often huge — hundreds or thousands of hectares run by a single family with satellite-guided machinery — and they produce far more food than Americans can eat, so the surplus is exported and helps feed the world.
Movement and connection
A country this large only works because it is stitched together. The Interstate Highway System, begun in 1956 under President Eisenhower, is a network of about 78,000 kilometres of motorways linking every corner of the country. Freight railways haul grain, coal and containers across the plains in trains that can be over a mile long. And because flying coast-to-coast beats days of driving, airlines run hub airports — giant connecting stations such as Atlanta, which handles more passengers than any other airport in the world — where travellers change planes for smaller cities.
City life and country life — a fair comparison
Neither way of living is "better"; they simply trade different advantages. City dwellers get museums, big hospitals, public transport and endless variety of food and work — along with higher rents, traffic and noise. Rural Americans get space, quiet, lower costs and tight-knit communities — along with longer drives to shops, doctors and airports. Suburbs sit in between, which is exactly why so many families choose them.
Neighbourhoods of every background
Walk through an American city and you will pass churches, mosques, synagogues and temples, often within a few streets of each other. The USA has been settled by people from almost every country on Earth, and its neighbourhoods show it — Dearborn in Michigan is famous for its large Arab-American and Muslim community, New York has historic Jewish, Italian, Chinese and Caribbean districts, and cities like Houston and Chicago are home to thriving communities from South Asia, Africa and Latin America. This mix of faiths and backgrounds, living side by side, is one of the most distinctive features of American geography.