New York is a better city than the Netherlands, a whole 25 more rail stations in just the New York Subway. We aren't even counting PATH, NJ Transit, LIRR, Metro North and the Staten Island Railroad
Okay but viewing the Netherlands as a city by focusing on the interconnected urban area of the Randstad or Rim City, which is agreed to be the combined urban areas of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht is one of the best ways to look at Dutch urbanism. If you chose to view it the way we would view New York, one connected urban area with many governments, it explains a lot about how the trademark Dutch Urbanism came to be because it's successes and failures are much more aligned with those of a city than those of a country. The intercity trains are scheduled like metros because they are effectively a large metro, the density is like that of a large city because it is one, there are rural parts of the Netherlands, but this one city contains 46% of the Dutch population.
Anyways because of the Randstad, I feel like it is better to compare the Netherlands to New York than it is to The US as a whole. Both are large urban areas with a population of about 8 million people, and the New York Metro and the Dutch population are similar to at around 20 million people. Additionally while both have very urban areas in them, there are also very rural areas near these city centers of the Randstad and NYC. Basically both function of some of the largest and wealthiest cities int the world so we should compare them as such
