To be clear, the population of this Houston freeway interchange is zero. Is this a shocking comparison? Yep. Is it fair? Not even close, according to Texas Monthly, which points out that while living in a more compact space is obviously better for the environment and quality of life, we need to take history into account as well:

Siena’s history dates back millennia. Houston, meanwhile, was founded in 1836. Siena’s population has been stable for generations; the Houston area has ballooned in size by a factor of nearly twenty since 1940. Like many Sun Belt cities, Houston’s population boom coincided with the rise of the automobile. Highways followed cars followed people. Houston is also a genuinely massive place. Going from one end of Beltway 8 to the other is roughly the same distance as going from the middle of Staten Island past the Bronx and all the way up to Yonkers....But it wasn’t strictly an “everything is bigger in Texas” ethos that caused Houston to sprawl the way that it does. Rather, Cold War–era urban design philosophy in the U.S. prioritized sprawl because older cities that had urbanized pre–World War II—New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit—were seen as being susceptible to nuclear strikes. Less-dense cities such as Los Angeles and Houston were less likely to be targeted for a nuclear attack. Sprawl was a deterrent against Soviet aggression.

I had never heard of the concept of suburban sprawl as a nuclear deterrent, but apparently it was an urban planning strategy in the ‘50s when Houston was going through one of its population booms. Of course, other factors such as redlining and white flight significantly contributed to the sprawling network of American freeways, especially in cities that boomed before WWII.