4 ms·

America has plenty of cities that are just like cities everywhere else...we're a big country, we hardly have need to pack everyone in like sardines. I live in

America has plenty of cities that are just like cities everywhere else...we're a big country, we hardly have need to pack everyone in like sardines. I live in a major city, downtown. And I'm starting to hate it. No personal space, no yard, shared (or no) garage, and I'm a car enthusiast by the way, which I'm sure is practically a dirty word around most city-dwellers now. I'm seriously considering moving out to the suburbs even if it means a longer commute to the office. I like driving, and I have no problem driving places to get things done...after all, I can only carry so much shopping with me anyway.

wild_preference 8y ago
I don’t think so. American cities just aren’t dense enough to please compact-city lovers looking for a walkable experience like Prague. Even where I live in Guadalajara is better than every city I’ve lived in the States because of all the tiny shops near me. In the States I may have a 7/11 near me which doesn’t even carry coffee grounds or fruit/veg. It’s kind if a sad place to live.
- ghaff 8y ago
  Significant sections of a number of US cities are quite walkable: New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, parts of Denver, Chicago. As well as smaller cities like Boulder. It's certainly true that newer US cities tend to be more spread out but if city walkability is a priority for you, examples exist.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    Very, very few cities in America are walkable enough to enable the average household to not own a car without it being a hardship [1]. You can probably count them on one hand. So yes, Denver has a few walkable areas that are nice. But if you can only walk 80% of the time and still have to own a car for the other 20%, which has to sit in a parking spot somewhere all the time, then we're back to the subject of this article. 1. I'm not saying it can't be done, but if you have kids, or aren't able-bodied, or don't want to spend 3x - 5x more time on public transit than you would in a car, or live in an area with extreme weather conditions, or don't want to be weird-sweaty-bike-person all the time, etc, then you need a car in most of America.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Oh I agree. Maybe for a few years after school if I had a job in the city I could imagine a handful or two of cities that I might forgo owning given the various options like Zipcar and Uber available today. But long term? I'm not sure there's any US city other than NYC/Manhattan where I wouldn't. (And I wouldn't live there.)
  - jdietrich 8y ago
    This is what I saw when I randomly dropped the yellow man into the middle of Boulder, CO: https://goo.gl/maps/A9oKpnFQLpR2 https://goo.gl/maps/A9oKpnFQLpR2 Boulder has a city population of about 100,000 and a metro region population of about 300,000. Here are some random Street View locations from European towns and cities of a roughly similar size. Reading, England: https://goo.gl/maps/yQaTTaWQJav https://goo.gl/maps/yQaTTaWQJav Bonn, Germany: https://goo.gl/maps/Pu9Ro28F4UH2 https://goo.gl/maps/Pu9Ro28F4UH2 Caen, France: https://goo.gl/maps/ppgL2J8nsAJ2 https://goo.gl/maps/ppgL2J8nsAJ2 Vicenza, Italy: https://goo.gl/maps/rMtCBEqC7vr https://goo.gl/maps/rMtCBEqC7vr Click around a bit, explore the neighbourhood, get a sense for the place. Get the picture? American urban development happens on a scale that is simply incomprehensible to most Europeans. I spent a good ten minutes clicking around Boulder, looking for the city centre; it took me that long to realise that there wasn't one, at least not in the sense that I understand.
    - ghaff 8y ago
      Pearl Street is the main drag. It's essentially a college town although a fair bit of tech has moved in. It's actually pretty walkable but Boulder is very protective of open spaces and conservative about growth generally so you're not going to see anything like a dense urban core. Somewhere like Ithaca NY isn't that different. Of course, you wouldn't want to live in Boulder without a car. Pretty much the whole point of being there is to get into the mountains.
    - alain_gilbert 8y ago
      This is what I saw when I randomly dropped the yellow man into the middle of Boulder :P https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@40.0181872,-105.2785854,2a,75y,264.56h,87.13t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1siClGg233FjoBQLcoE3QJbA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DiClGg233FjoBQLcoE3QJbA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D148.46086%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@40.0181872,-105.2785854,2a,75...
  - adrianN 8y ago
    I've walked a couple hundred kilometers in San Francisco and I saw significantly less than when I did the same in Tokyo. I wouldn't call SF walkable at all.
- 2bitencryption 8y ago
  > I may have a 7/11 near me which doesn’t even carry coffee grounds or fruit/veg. It’s kind if a sad place to live. it's only sad because you went to a 7/11 expecting to get produce! I guarantee you there's a real grocery store within a few blocks.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    I guarantee you there's a real grocery store within a few blocks. Pretty good chance that's not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert "In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5% of Americans live in a food desert, meaning that they live more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas."
    - UncleEntity 8y ago
      > Pretty good chance that's not true Or a 23.5% chance that's not true...
      - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
        In response to a “guarantee”, that’s a lot. “I guarantee this plane won’t crash” = 23.5% chance of dying?
        UncleEntity 8y ago
        The real question one should be asking is how much of that is by choice? Plus the "within 1 mile" standard seem a little low, that would mean that every single urban grocery store would have multiple competitors within a 2 mile radius which is totally unrealistic though, apparently, is quite common.
- UncleEntity 8y ago
  That's more of a cultural thing methinks. In the predominantly hispanic areas around Phoenix there are tons of tiny shops serving the neighborhood -- it's a thing. Where I live now there used to be a few corner markets but now that gentrification is in full swing they are all gone and are being replaced with trendy restaurant/bars with the people presumably now shopping at the major supermarkets. There were probably more before they built the super-massive Ranch Market but I didn't live in this area then so can't really say. I'd venture to say it has more to do with the cost of owning/operating a car, in Mexico (and much of Europe) they are significantly more costly than the US so the convenience of "shopping local" is different.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    The supermarket test isn't really a very good one. If I'm standing in Chinatown in San Francisco or Boston I can easily imagine that I'm more than a mile away from the nearest supermarket. But I will in no way be lacking in non-packaged food options.
stale2002 8y ago
If ONLY your "distopian nightmare" of high density cities were true. In reality it is the opposite. The vast vast majority of space in the US is reserved for the low density living. Even the supposedly "high density" cities in the US are nothing compared to what they could be. Even places like New York have difficulty building enough housing to house everyone who wants to live there. I just want a single city, in the entire world, where everyone said "hey, let's just allow building to be as high as anyone wants, and not put a single building restriction on anything". The people who want low density living having an entire world to choose from. And yet that's apparently not enough for them.
ryanwaggoner 8y ago
America definitely doesn't have plenty of cities that are like cities in Europe and Asia in particular (where I've lived and traveled most outside of the US). As to your situation, it sounds like it's just not a good fit for your lifestyle. No one is saying that there's not pros / cons or that dense urban living is for everyone. If you want to grow all your own food and raise horses, NYC probably isn't going to be a great fit for you. Ditto if you want a garage full of cars that you work on and take out for leisurely drives all the time. The issue in America isn't that everyone needs to be forced to live in high-density urban areas. It's that we've spent decades enacting bad policies that heavily discourage urban density while encouraging and subsidizing suburban sprawl. And it turns out that suburban sprawl is bad for the majority of people, and carries huge externalities that we're discovering we can't really afford, but it'll take many decades to reverse the damage we've done. What makes it more difficult is that there's a lot of cultural value in America (some of it natural, some of it driven by anti-density propaganda) around being positive towards cars, driving, having lots of huge personal space, etc. And negative perceptions of density, public transit, etc. Not an expert, that's just my read on the situation :)
agoodthrowaway 8y ago
Yeah I used to love the city and all the action too. But I tired of the filth, noise, hassle. I just wanted peace and quiet so I moved to the country. Couldn’t believe how much I loved the quiet. Also I love how dark it is at night and being able to see stars. When I get home, the air is noticeably fresher too. I can more or less do what I want to do on my property without anyone telling me what to do. I would have never thought I’d have loved it as much as I do.
ebullientocelot 8y ago
Leaving the urban area of my city for the 'burbs was awesome, I highly recommend it.
adrianN 8y ago
"America is big enough for cities to spread out" is a terrible meme. It's not like cities in other countries are right next to each other and if you lowered the density by a factor of two or three there would be war between the cities over who gets to own that new parking lot.

wild_preference 8y ago

I don’t think so. American cities just aren’t dense enough to please compact-city lovers looking for a walkable experience like Prague. Even where I live in Guadalajara is better than every city I’ve lived in the States because of all the tiny shops near me. In the States I may have a 7/11 near me which doesn’t even carry coffee grounds or fruit/veg. It’s kind if a sad place to live.

ghaff 8y ago
Significant sections of a number of US cities are quite walkable: New York, Boston, San Francisco, Seattle, parts of Denver, Chicago. As well as smaller cities like Boulder. It's certainly true that newer US cities tend to be more spread out but if city walkability is a priority for you, examples exist.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  Very, very few cities in America are walkable enough to enable the average household to not own a car without it being a hardship [1]. You can probably count them on one hand. So yes, Denver has a few walkable areas that are nice. But if you can only walk 80% of the time and still have to own a car for the other 20%, which has to sit in a parking spot somewhere all the time, then we're back to the subject of this article. 1. I'm not saying it can't be done, but if you have kids, or aren't able-bodied, or don't want to spend 3x - 5x more time on public transit than you would in a car, or live in an area with extreme weather conditions, or don't want to be weird-sweaty-bike-person all the time, etc, then you need a car in most of America.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Oh I agree. Maybe for a few years after school if I had a job in the city I could imagine a handful or two of cities that I might forgo owning given the various options like Zipcar and Uber available today. But long term? I'm not sure there's any US city other than NYC/Manhattan where I wouldn't. (And I wouldn't live there.)
- jdietrich 8y ago
  This is what I saw when I randomly dropped the yellow man into the middle of Boulder, CO: https://goo.gl/maps/A9oKpnFQLpR2 https://goo.gl/maps/A9oKpnFQLpR2 Boulder has a city population of about 100,000 and a metro region population of about 300,000. Here are some random Street View locations from European towns and cities of a roughly similar size. Reading, England: https://goo.gl/maps/yQaTTaWQJav https://goo.gl/maps/yQaTTaWQJav Bonn, Germany: https://goo.gl/maps/Pu9Ro28F4UH2 https://goo.gl/maps/Pu9Ro28F4UH2 Caen, France: https://goo.gl/maps/ppgL2J8nsAJ2 https://goo.gl/maps/ppgL2J8nsAJ2 Vicenza, Italy: https://goo.gl/maps/rMtCBEqC7vr https://goo.gl/maps/rMtCBEqC7vr Click around a bit, explore the neighbourhood, get a sense for the place. Get the picture? American urban development happens on a scale that is simply incomprehensible to most Europeans. I spent a good ten minutes clicking around Boulder, looking for the city centre; it took me that long to realise that there wasn't one, at least not in the sense that I understand.
  - ghaff 8y ago
    Pearl Street is the main drag. It's essentially a college town although a fair bit of tech has moved in. It's actually pretty walkable but Boulder is very protective of open spaces and conservative about growth generally so you're not going to see anything like a dense urban core. Somewhere like Ithaca NY isn't that different. Of course, you wouldn't want to live in Boulder without a car. Pretty much the whole point of being there is to get into the mountains.
  - alain_gilbert 8y ago
    This is what I saw when I randomly dropped the yellow man into the middle of Boulder :P https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@40.0181872,-105.2785854,2a,75y,264.56h,87.13t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1siClGg233FjoBQLcoE3QJbA!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo1.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3DiClGg233FjoBQLcoE3QJbA%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D148.46086%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656 https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@40.0181872,-105.2785854,2a,75...
- adrianN 8y ago
  I've walked a couple hundred kilometers in San Francisco and I saw significantly less than when I did the same in Tokyo. I wouldn't call SF walkable at all.
2bitencryption 8y ago
> I may have a 7/11 near me which doesn’t even carry coffee grounds or fruit/veg. It’s kind if a sad place to live. it's only sad because you went to a 7/11 expecting to get produce! I guarantee you there's a real grocery store within a few blocks.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  I guarantee you there's a real grocery store within a few blocks. Pretty good chance that's not true: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert "In 2010, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that 23.5% of Americans live in a food desert, meaning that they live more than one mile from a supermarket in urban or suburban areas, and more than 10 miles from a supermarket in rural areas."
  - UncleEntity 8y ago
    > Pretty good chance that's not true Or a 23.5% chance that's not true...
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      In response to a “guarantee”, that’s a lot. “I guarantee this plane won’t crash” = 23.5% chance of dying?
      - UncleEntity 8y ago
        The real question one should be asking is how much of that is by choice? Plus the "within 1 mile" standard seem a little low, that would mean that every single urban grocery store would have multiple competitors within a 2 mile radius which is totally unrealistic though, apparently, is quite common.
UncleEntity 8y ago
That's more of a cultural thing methinks. In the predominantly hispanic areas around Phoenix there are tons of tiny shops serving the neighborhood -- it's a thing. Where I live now there used to be a few corner markets but now that gentrification is in full swing they are all gone and are being replaced with trendy restaurant/bars with the people presumably now shopping at the major supermarkets. There were probably more before they built the super-massive Ranch Market but I didn't live in this area then so can't really say. I'd venture to say it has more to do with the cost of owning/operating a car, in Mexico (and much of Europe) they are significantly more costly than the US so the convenience of "shopping local" is different.
- ghaff 8y ago
  The supermarket test isn't really a very good one. If I'm standing in Chinatown in San Francisco or Boston I can easily imagine that I'm more than a mile away from the nearest supermarket. But I will in no way be lacking in non-packaged food options.

stale2002 8y ago

If ONLY your "distopian nightmare" of high density cities were true. In reality it is the opposite. The vast vast majority of space in the US is reserved for the low density living. Even the supposedly "high density" cities in the US are nothing compared to what they could be. Even places like New York have difficulty building enough housing to house everyone who wants to live there. I just want a single city, in the entire world, where everyone said "hey, let's just allow building to be as high as anyone wants, and not put a single building restriction on anything". The people who want low density living having an entire world to choose from. And yet that's apparently not enough for them.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

America definitely doesn't have plenty of cities that are like cities in Europe and Asia in particular (where I've lived and traveled most outside of the US). As to your situation, it sounds like it's just not a good fit for your lifestyle. No one is saying that there's not pros / cons or that dense urban living is for everyone. If you want to grow all your own food and raise horses, NYC probably isn't going to be a great fit for you. Ditto if you want a garage full of cars that you work on and take out for leisurely drives all the time. The issue in America isn't that everyone needs to be forced to live in high-density urban areas. It's that we've spent decades enacting bad policies that heavily discourage urban density while encouraging and subsidizing suburban sprawl. And it turns out that suburban sprawl is bad for the majority of people, and carries huge externalities that we're discovering we can't really afford, but it'll take many decades to reverse the damage we've done. What makes it more difficult is that there's a lot of cultural value in America (some of it natural, some of it driven by anti-density propaganda) around being positive towards cars, driving, having lots of huge personal space, etc. And negative perceptions of density, public transit, etc. Not an expert, that's just my read on the situation :)

agoodthrowaway 8y ago

Yeah I used to love the city and all the action too. But I tired of the filth, noise, hassle. I just wanted peace and quiet so I moved to the country. Couldn’t believe how much I loved the quiet. Also I love how dark it is at night and being able to see stars. When I get home, the air is noticeably fresher too. I can more or less do what I want to do on my property without anyone telling me what to do. I would have never thought I’d have loved it as much as I do.

ebullientocelot 8y ago

Leaving the urban area of my city for the 'burbs was awesome, I highly recommend it.

adrianN 8y ago

"America is big enough for cities to spread out" is a terrible meme. It's not like cities in other countries are right next to each other and if you lowered the density by a factor of two or three there would be war between the cities over who gets to own that new parking lot.