Many Americans still burdened with constitutional rights

[james_davis_nicoll]

Using data provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, the ACLU has determined that nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders.

The government is assuming extraordinary powers to stop and search individuals within this zone. This is not just about the border: This " Constitution-Free Zone" includes most of the nation's largest metropolitan areas.

Is the claim that "nearly 2/3 of the entire US population (197.4 million people) live within 100 miles of the US land and coastal borders" correct? That would seem to require that the rest of the country contains slightly over 1/3rd of the population and since my incredibly untrustworthy eye thinks the first area is much smaller than the second, it implies even lower population densities than I expected for the interior regions.

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Argh! LJ ate my comment, with all my statistics in it!

Here's what I remember, though: Go to Wikipedia's table of the largest U.S. metropolitan areas. Of the largest 12, only one is more than 100 miles from a border; of the largest 120, only 53 are (and that's including dubious ones and ones only partly outside the area).

As for population, those 120 metropolitan areas have a population of 206 million. The 67 that are clearly within the 100-mile swath have a population of 146 million, and if we take away the ones that are on inland borders (including the Great Lakes, which is where most of the rest are), we're still left with 112 million people within 100 miles of an ocean coast.

So, yes, the claim sounds plausible, and we're a startlingly coastally-biased country.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

There's nothing new about this, though. As far back as prehistory, humans have gravitated toward coastlines and major waterways, both because they tend to be rich in the natural resources that make places habitable, and because the waters are easier/faster to travel than (many parts of) the land.

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

And there's a lot less water in the interior. Life gathers around water for obvious reasons. We drive across the Dakotas a lot, and I like to play "Why is this town here?" and see if I can figure out why a particular town is located where it is.

[dewline.livejournal.com]

Sovereignty. Denying it to the First Nations that used to hold it. Also, terraforming for agriculture. That explains most of'em.

[jennlk]

Railway re-supply depots. A spring somewhere 'over there' that provided enough water for the train. And then the railway towns grew, as that's where the consumer goods came off the train, and where the grain/cattle went back on the train.