It’s a bad idea to make generalizations about “cities” in America based on thinking about New York, which is an extreme outlier in almost every dimension.

The other big dense traditional American cities — Boston, Philadelphia, DC, Chicago, and San Francisco — are all dramatically less dense than Queens.

And then of course most American cities aren’t big dense traditional cities at all.

The only good metro area to make wild generalizations based on is DC because it has a small northeastern-style urban core but most of the MSA is a sunbelt-style built environment in Virginia.