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> The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them No they don't. Tax breaks aren'

> The rest of the country desperately needs real industry and good paying jobs - and will go to huge lengths to try to get them No they don't. Tax breaks aren't enough. One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. NYC is urbanist in a way that relatively few American cities are (and most of the other cities in this category are also big economic winners, like SF and Boston). How many of those more conservative/cheaper US cities actually take walking/biking/transit over driving as a serious issue? Virtually none of them that I've seen, they put in token efforts at best; an unprotected bike lane here, a "technically counts as transit" bus stop there, but very little that really moves the needle or challenges the status quo. Name one of these cities, and I'll show you how they're failing miserably on at least this front just by a quick look at Google Maps.

bun_at_work 8y ago
Seattle?
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Is this a serious reply? Seattle has no shortage of high-paying tech jobs, and it's certainly not a cheap place to live, nor is it in any way conservative.
- Majestic121 8y ago
  I think we can consider Seattle part of the "Big Economic Winners"
christophilus 8y ago
Portland?
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  I wouldn't consider Portland to be a cheaper or more conservative US city, and it's still one of the better US cities at urbanism, sad as that is, but okay. * The MAX has decent reach, but it's severely handicapped in capacity and speed by running at-grade. The Portland metro cheaped out there, and the result is a train system that's only good by American standards. * Many of the MAX stops, you can go a block or three and hit single-family homes (mandatory single-family homes, I think). To spend billions on a transit system, and then intentionally handicap its usage by strictly limiting how many people can live nearby around its stations...that's just completely insane. What are they thinking? "Better make sure as few people as possible can actually use this enormous investment"? * No bus lanes that I'm aware of, or at least few enough that a multiple-time visitor didn't see them, so buses are stuck in general traffic. * Very few physically protected bike lanes, in spite of its reputation as a bike-friendly city. The sum total value of bike improvements prior to the Orange Line was I believe estimated at around 60m, which is probably like a hundredth of one percent of the value of the roads and other stuff built for cars. * Despite ostensibly being a major city, most of the residential areas are zoned very low density. * Those very low density areas also generally have no commercial/retail activity allowed, which particularly hurts walkability: part of walkability is being able to, y'know, walk to things. Most of what I wrote here, you could apply in some form to nearly every US city.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    > Most of what I wrote here, you could apply in some form to nearly every US city. Also every Canadian city, with some very rare exception to the bus lanes bit (there are like... two in Toronto). > Those very low density areas also generally have no commercial/retail activity allowed, which particularly hurts walkability: part of walkability is being able to, y'know, walk to things. The other things are more a matter of preference, while I think zoning insanity is the clear leader in making North America's cities and towns tend to be so tedious and isolating. > Very few physically protected bike lanes, in spite of its reputation as a bike-friendly city. The sum total value of bike improvements prior to the Orange Line was I believe estimated at around 60m, which is probably like a hundredth of one percent of the value of the roads and other stuff built for cars. For all the investments of Dutch urban centres in bicycle infrastructure, it seems to me that it is the culture which makes or breaks this. As a more-than-commuter cyclist, I can say with confidence that a clumsy protected bicycle lane is more dangerous for cyclists (but quicker for motorists) than none at all. Most protected bicycle lanes are clumsy. Here in Hamilton (mid-tier city in Ontario), a lot of the roads are one-way (which has some benefits and drawbacks, the bus routes look funny), but on these one-way roads, the city of hamilton has installed protected two-way cycle paths. Now, these are convenient, to be sure, but you can imagine that when you get on a one way road, you do not expect oncoming traffic, this leads to all kinds of precarious situations, and (among other factors here) probably some deaths.
    - deleted 8y ago
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  - nsnick 8y ago
    MAX is not that handicapped by being at grade because it has dedicated roads/lanes everywhere it goes. Portland will eventually ban cars downtown anyway (they are close). Zoning laws are changing and have changed to allow infill. Plus, there is an urban growth boundary which will force higher density. The bottlenecks in Portland are the bridges and there is at least one bridge that cars can't drive on, only busses and transit and there will be more in the future. There are entire streets where vehicle through traffic has been blocked in favor of bicycles. There are still bike lanes on the major roads a block away too which is why you probably didn't notice the dedicated streets. Portland is being upzoned all over the place. look at any major street west of 82nd and you will see new apartment buildings on almost every block. The suburbs of Portland haven't caught up, but in 20 years if trends continue in both places I could see Portland being more dense than San Francisco and the suburban sprawl not ending till the sierras.
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
You greatly over-estimate how much those things influences people's decisions. People move for jobs. SF is pretty much the poster child for a terrible place to live (transit clusterfuck, aggressive homeless, high rents, no hope of owning property for most, increasing crime) that people keep moving to for the economic opportunity (good jobs).
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > SF is pretty much the poster child for a terrible place to live That depends on what you value. * SF's transit, while indeed bad, is still superior to all but a handful of other US cities. * Similarly, SF is top tier for walkability and bikeability. * SF has more cultural and ethnic diversity than most cities, especially since it's the principal city of a metro with a ton of immigration. * SF has a LOT of interesting stuff that goes on (partially as a result of the previous point). Concerts and walks and other cultural events. * Also as a result of the diversity, SF's food scene is really excellent. * I'm not personally much of a fan, but a lot of people actually like SF's weather. * SF is very left wing, and a lot of people in tech like that. Not everyone, but a lot of people. The things you listed as problems largely are real problems of course, but there's a reason so many techies still choose to live in SF even if they work in Mountain View, and that's something your theory here doesn't explain: why not live in the closer, somewhat cheaper, and less crime/homeless-filled South Bay? Your list of problems just reveals your own preferences: you prefer the advantages of the suburbs to the advantages of the city. Nothing wrong with that, but not everyone shares your preferences.
- harimau777 8y ago
  Personally, I think SF is a great place to live. It has great weather, lots going on, decent public transportation, lots of tech, and more open mindedness about how people want to live their lives. Other than issues that are pretty much inherent to living in a city (less access to large grocery stores, inability to setup a workshop in my home) the only big complaints I can think of are the cost of living, aggressive homeless people, and how crazy the DMV is.
bsbechtel 8y ago
Define economic winner....you mean top line income and area GDP? These places are the most expensive places in the country to live, and quality of living is considerably lower. Incomes may be lower in many areas of the country, but when you consider you can pay $2k/mo on a 5,000 sq ft mortgage instead of renting a 900 sq ft apartment, I don't view these places as economically successful as many perceive them to be.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Yes, I mean by having lots of high-paying jobs. Speaking in the abstract, that means economic success. You're not wrong that high cost of living can often cancel much of that out at the individual level though. > quality of living is considerably lower. See my other nearby comment for why this is a "it depends" thing. A lot of people would consider living in Kansas City to have lower "quality of life" than NYC even if it's less crowded and it's much easier to afford a house. Your comment itself illustrates the disconnect here: we have one side arguing that the other side is wrong in what they want, ala "Why don't more techies want to come here?? This is ridiculous!" "Well, because they want to live in places with X Y Z even if they're expensive and crowded." "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)."
  - dionidium 8y ago
    > "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)." I'm guilty of this, but I think your formulation is a straw man. All I want to tell people is that they shouldn't reflexively rule out the middle of the country, because a lot of people really would be happier there. Not everybody, but some people. And the way (some people on) the coasts talk about the Midwest and the South is as though they're a complete and total non-starter that's out of consideration entirely. "Yeah, New York's expensive, but what am I going to do? Live in Cleveland? Obviously I can't do that!" I think that kind of talk convinces a lot of people who would be happier somewhere else that they shouldn't even bother looking into those places. And that's a tragedy of human flourishing. Edit to respond to one comment below: > I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily. On the contrary, I think you're inordinately focused on your own particular (and somewhat eccentric) issues. Most Americans prefer car ownership. You might think they're wrong to prefer this. I do, too! But, "I don't want to live somewhere where I have to own a car" isn't a mainstream American opinion.
marz0 8y ago
Philadelphia
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  Ooh, that's a good choice. Philly isn't more conservative, but it is cheaper and I'm given to understand it's one of the more urbanist cities in the US (probably because of its age). I'm sure I can still find some things, though. * Very few miles of protected bike lanes, although at least things are looking up there for the future: https://bicyclecoalition.org/our-campaigns/30-miles-of-protected-bike-lanes-2/ https://bicyclecoalition.org/our-campaigns/30-miles-of-prote... (although the fact that 30 miles is celebrated as some big achievement is itself telling) * Two subway lines is better than most US cities, but still not very many for a metro of this size. Munich has a comparable metro population and has 8 subway lines, for example, not to mention several separated-grade commuter/rapid transit lines that go way out into the burbs. Looks like high quality, rapid transit is still close by for only a small percentage of Philadelphians. It also sounds like the regional rail system is in disrepair. * Looking at the zoning map, it looks like implementation of mixed use zoning is much better than most US cities, but still very limited in many neighborhoods, which limits walkability: https://openmaps.phila.gov/ https://openmaps.phila.gov/ * Also from the zoning map, many areas are still zoned just for single-family homes, which limits walkability/bikeability (and also encourages economic segregation, to boot). Philly's level of urbanism should really be like the bare minimum for US cities, but in reality it's close to the top, I think.
  - soulnothing 8y ago
    I just moved back to Philadelphia. After stints in Boston, New York, and Seattle. I have a completely different perspective than when I first left. A lot of the homes are single family, or row homes. This results in swaths of a residential feel in a city. Even the hot Fishtown felt very rural to me after my stint in New York. Although I appreciate the quite. Looking at the history Philadelphia started with the idea of brownstones/row homes instead of apartment buildings. To give people more space. But this does result in sparseness of shops. A lot of the multi tenant buildings are either new constructions or converted warehouses. The two subways is always a point of contention. But I don't find it that big of a deal. Living near either Broad or MFL, I can get around very easily. The city is also extremely walk able, a majority of the people I knew just walk. It's under two miles river to river. If not that there are a number of buses. http://skookul.com/ http://skookul.com/ <| For real time public transit. I can't speak regional rail. But when I left ~15, commuting from Delaware was a shit show. In the city bike lanes I don't think is the best. But the river trail along the west side is well used. I know a number of people up in outer Manayunk bike in. https://schuylkillrivertrail.com/ https://schuylkillrivertrail.com/ Having just taken a history walking tour. How the city feels makes alot of sense. It's meant to feel like a number of connected neighborhoods. I still think it deserves a second look for tech companies. With all the universities and good start to transit. It's ripe for an investment outside of Comcast.
plumdot 8y ago
Detroit?
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  * Almost no rail transit whatsoever, closest equivalent looks like a bus system that doesn't even have its own lanes, let alone being separated-grade. * I see a few off-street bike paths, but at a glance, no physically protected bike lanes. Maybe there are a few I'm missing, but if so, very few. Very few bike lanes in total, too. * Freeways cutting through the city * City is super sprawled out, looks like most of the space is the typical American mandatory single-family home area with no retail activity, so walkability is limited even where the sidewalks are fine. * Very wide roads all over the place Also just in general Detroit seems like it's been historically mismanaged and has lots of problems with crime and infrastructure and corruption and poor schools, which doesn't help things.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    I think there's less value to this kind of experience-living-in-a-city-via-google-maps than you're implying here.
    - TulliusCicero 8y ago
      To be sure, an actually thorough analysis would require firsthand experience (and I have visited Portland at least multiple times). It's just that most US cities are so very terrible at urbanism that it's easy to spot many of the massive flaws from Google Maps.
      - dionidium 8y ago
        Most Midwestern cities are indeed sprawling, pedestrian-hostile, car-philic wastelands and that's what you're going to see on Google Maps. But, thankfully, they didn't destroy all of their pre-war housing and infrastructure and so most of them have at least a couple interesting, walkable neighborhoods. If you're moving to NYC, then you can throw a dart at the map and you'll land in a walkable neighborhood. If you're moving to St. Louis or Cincinnati, then you'll need to do some research. The dart is a bad strategy. So, look, it's totally fair to say, "I don't want to live in a city like that." But there are people working really hard to make their little pockets better for bikes and pedestrians and so on, and I think people underestimate the extent to which that's going on and the extent to which they could be happy in a neighborhood like that, especially when housing is 1/10th the cost.
lbriner 8y ago
> How many of those more conservative/cheaper US cities actually take walking/biking/transit over driving as a serious issue? Do you really think NYC is a good example of this? I found the car traffic horrific, cycling is variable at best and downright dangerous at worst. The subway is pretty amazing but massively under-invested. Even most UK cities which have longer levels of history restricting what can be done for cyclists are better than NYC.
- hessproject 8y ago
  NYC certainly isn't perfect, but there's been significant investment in bike infrastructure (and the expansion of citibike) and is quickly improving. Anecdotally, I find I have to plan my trips a little bit, but can get from my apartment in Queens to most places in Manhattan without leaving a protected bike lane for more than 2-3 blocks
amyjess 8y ago
So, I just got back from a week-long vacation to NYC, and it's reinforced what I've always felt about it: NYC is a wonderful place to visit, but I'd never want to live there. I had a lot of fun, and I wish I could've stayed another week, but actually living and working there? No thank you. I actively do not want to fight through crowds and run to catch connecting trains just to get to and from work every day. I don't want to live in a tiny apartment with no cooling but a room air conditioner sticking out the window. I don't want to be surrounded by noise 24/7. Trust me, for every person who wants to live in NYC because it's actually a city, there's at least one person like me who only wants to set foot in cities to play tourist and would rather live and work in the suburbs. And I'd rather live in modern suburbs at that... in NYC suburbs like Westchester (where I stayed during my trip), the housing stock is so old that even a nice place will be a fixer-upper, and the street layout is horrendously bad because nothing was planned in advance. I strongly prefer living in southwestern suburbs where nothing is older than the late '70s, half the neighborhoods were built in the 21st century, and the suburbs are built around a one-mile grid of six-lane divided highways (e.g. Dallas, Vegas, Phoenix).
- ruddct 8y ago
  The great thing about NYC (and a thing that is lost on most people visiting the city, including myself before I moved here), is how many options you have for your living situation. Want the crowds, the city life and the noise? Live downtown. Old-school New York? The upper west side. Brownstones on quiet, beautiful streets? Any number of Brooklyn neighborhoods. A quaint New England-y fishing village? City Island. Conservative-leaning, leafy suburbs? Staten Island. The ethnic enclave of your choice? Peppered throughout the city. Cheapo cool kid artist communities? Bushwick/Ridgewood. Want to own a boat and live on the water? The Rockaways. The list goes on and on, and that's not even touching Jersey, Westchester or Long Island. The beauty of the city is that all of these places are unquestionably, culturally 'New York'. They're also, for the most part, quite well connected to the city core on affordable public transit, and in many cases quite affordable by big American city standards.
- notyourday 8y ago
  If you want a suburban life in NYC you simply move to Queens or the part of Brooklyn that is closer to Queens.
Alex3917 8y ago
NYC literally has an app where anyone can press a button if they're standing somewhere where they feel like a tree should be planted, and if you press the button a couple hours later a group of guys will show up and start digging a hole and plant the tree. For all of its problems, it's the only city that works at least somewhat like a city should.
- timr 8y ago
  That's kind of a twee, brooklyn-artisinal-pickle example, but the greater point is true: having lived in a number of big cities around the US (including San Francisco), New York is simply functional in a unique way for a US city. Even San Francisco is a backwater by comparison. For example: I was issued a ticket in SF for moving (and I hired professionals to do it). That kind of crap simply doesn't happen in New York, but it happened routinely in SF.
  - Alex3917 8y ago
    > That's kind of a twee, brooklyn-artisinal-pickle example I'd actually argue that the quality of street / park trees is the best way to judge how competently a city has been run over time. When a city has lots of healthy older trees, that means not a single administration has dropped the ball in over 200 years or whatever. If look around NYC there are thousands of mature American elm trees everywhere, but not in any of the surrounding suburbs. Why? Because NYC parks department actually takes care of the trees when they're sick and removes them if they can't be saved, whereas all of the surrounding tri-state towns just let them infect the surrounding trees and then die. Now maybe the fact that Robert Moses's favorite tree was the sycamore should have been a hint to everyone that some of his other policies may have been suspect, but that's a different issue.
    - timr 8y ago
      Sure, yes. But the tree-planting-app thing is still twee.
- ciferkey 8y ago
  This sounds awesome! Do you know what the app is called?
danans 8y ago
> How many of those more conservative/cheaper US cities actually take walking/biking/transit over driving as a serious issue? I often wonder about why relatively conservative /cheap/low-density/car-bound are so correlated. Are there significant counter-examples, in the US or elsewhere, where, for example, a more conservative area is higher density or urban, compared to it's more progressive surroundings? If those situations are very rare, then why? Is it strictly historical, or does relatively higher density, and more frequent interactions that result, change many people's perceptions.
rustybelt 8y ago
Chicago. In the midwest and has the best urban core in the North America outside of New York.
taurath 8y ago
> One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. I think you’re conflating current cultural preference with actual economic ability. Where do towns like Palo Alto, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale fit into this?

bun_at_work 8y ago

Seattle?

TulliusCicero 8y ago
Is this a serious reply? Seattle has no shortage of high-paying tech jobs, and it's certainly not a cheap place to live, nor is it in any way conservative.
Majestic121 8y ago
I think we can consider Seattle part of the "Big Economic Winners"

christophilus 8y ago

Portland?

TulliusCicero 8y ago
I wouldn't consider Portland to be a cheaper or more conservative US city, and it's still one of the better US cities at urbanism, sad as that is, but okay. * The MAX has decent reach, but it's severely handicapped in capacity and speed by running at-grade. The Portland metro cheaped out there, and the result is a train system that's only good by American standards. * Many of the MAX stops, you can go a block or three and hit single-family homes (mandatory single-family homes, I think). To spend billions on a transit system, and then intentionally handicap its usage by strictly limiting how many people can live nearby around its stations...that's just completely insane. What are they thinking? "Better make sure as few people as possible can actually use this enormous investment"? * No bus lanes that I'm aware of, or at least few enough that a multiple-time visitor didn't see them, so buses are stuck in general traffic. * Very few physically protected bike lanes, in spite of its reputation as a bike-friendly city. The sum total value of bike improvements prior to the Orange Line was I believe estimated at around 60m, which is probably like a hundredth of one percent of the value of the roads and other stuff built for cars. * Despite ostensibly being a major city, most of the residential areas are zoned very low density. * Those very low density areas also generally have no commercial/retail activity allowed, which particularly hurts walkability: part of walkability is being able to, y'know, walk to things. Most of what I wrote here, you could apply in some form to nearly every US city.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > Most of what I wrote here, you could apply in some form to nearly every US city. Also every Canadian city, with some very rare exception to the bus lanes bit (there are like... two in Toronto). > Those very low density areas also generally have no commercial/retail activity allowed, which particularly hurts walkability: part of walkability is being able to, y'know, walk to things. The other things are more a matter of preference, while I think zoning insanity is the clear leader in making North America's cities and towns tend to be so tedious and isolating. > Very few physically protected bike lanes, in spite of its reputation as a bike-friendly city. The sum total value of bike improvements prior to the Orange Line was I believe estimated at around 60m, which is probably like a hundredth of one percent of the value of the roads and other stuff built for cars. For all the investments of Dutch urban centres in bicycle infrastructure, it seems to me that it is the culture which makes or breaks this. As a more-than-commuter cyclist, I can say with confidence that a clumsy protected bicycle lane is more dangerous for cyclists (but quicker for motorists) than none at all. Most protected bicycle lanes are clumsy. Here in Hamilton (mid-tier city in Ontario), a lot of the roads are one-way (which has some benefits and drawbacks, the bus routes look funny), but on these one-way roads, the city of hamilton has installed protected two-way cycle paths. Now, these are convenient, to be sure, but you can imagine that when you get on a one way road, you do not expect oncoming traffic, this leads to all kinds of precarious situations, and (among other factors here) probably some deaths.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- nsnick 8y ago
  MAX is not that handicapped by being at grade because it has dedicated roads/lanes everywhere it goes. Portland will eventually ban cars downtown anyway (they are close). Zoning laws are changing and have changed to allow infill. Plus, there is an urban growth boundary which will force higher density. The bottlenecks in Portland are the bridges and there is at least one bridge that cars can't drive on, only busses and transit and there will be more in the future. There are entire streets where vehicle through traffic has been blocked in favor of bicycles. There are still bike lanes on the major roads a block away too which is why you probably didn't notice the dedicated streets. Portland is being upzoned all over the place. look at any major street west of 82nd and you will see new apartment buildings on almost every block. The suburbs of Portland haven't caught up, but in 20 years if trends continue in both places I could see Portland being more dense than San Francisco and the suburban sprawl not ending till the sierras.

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

You greatly over-estimate how much those things influences people's decisions. People move for jobs. SF is pretty much the poster child for a terrible place to live (transit clusterfuck, aggressive homeless, high rents, no hope of owning property for most, increasing crime) that people keep moving to for the economic opportunity (good jobs).

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> SF is pretty much the poster child for a terrible place to live That depends on what you value. * SF's transit, while indeed bad, is still superior to all but a handful of other US cities. * Similarly, SF is top tier for walkability and bikeability. * SF has more cultural and ethnic diversity than most cities, especially since it's the principal city of a metro with a ton of immigration. * SF has a LOT of interesting stuff that goes on (partially as a result of the previous point). Concerts and walks and other cultural events. * Also as a result of the diversity, SF's food scene is really excellent. * I'm not personally much of a fan, but a lot of people actually like SF's weather. * SF is very left wing, and a lot of people in tech like that. Not everyone, but a lot of people. The things you listed as problems largely are real problems of course, but there's a reason so many techies still choose to live in SF even if they work in Mountain View, and that's something your theory here doesn't explain: why not live in the closer, somewhat cheaper, and less crime/homeless-filled South Bay? Your list of problems just reveals your own preferences: you prefer the advantages of the suburbs to the advantages of the city. Nothing wrong with that, but not everyone shares your preferences.
harimau777 8y ago
Personally, I think SF is a great place to live. It has great weather, lots going on, decent public transportation, lots of tech, and more open mindedness about how people want to live their lives. Other than issues that are pretty much inherent to living in a city (less access to large grocery stores, inability to setup a workshop in my home) the only big complaints I can think of are the cost of living, aggressive homeless people, and how crazy the DMV is.

bsbechtel 8y ago

Define economic winner....you mean top line income and area GDP? These places are the most expensive places in the country to live, and quality of living is considerably lower. Incomes may be lower in many areas of the country, but when you consider you can pay $2k/mo on a 5,000 sq ft mortgage instead of renting a 900 sq ft apartment, I don't view these places as economically successful as many perceive them to be.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
Yes, I mean by having lots of high-paying jobs. Speaking in the abstract, that means economic success. You're not wrong that high cost of living can often cancel much of that out at the individual level though. > quality of living is considerably lower. See my other nearby comment for why this is a "it depends" thing. A lot of people would consider living in Kansas City to have lower "quality of life" than NYC even if it's less crowded and it's much easier to afford a house. Your comment itself illustrates the disconnect here: we have one side arguing that the other side is wrong in what they want, ala "Why don't more techies want to come here?? This is ridiculous!" "Well, because they want to live in places with X Y Z even if they're expensive and crowded." "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)."
- dionidium 8y ago
  > "Well, they should care more about A B C instead (because I do)." I'm guilty of this, but I think your formulation is a straw man. All I want to tell people is that they shouldn't reflexively rule out the middle of the country, because a lot of people really would be happier there. Not everybody, but some people. And the way (some people on) the coasts talk about the Midwest and the South is as though they're a complete and total non-starter that's out of consideration entirely. "Yeah, New York's expensive, but what am I going to do? Live in Cleveland? Obviously I can't do that!" I think that kind of talk convinces a lot of people who would be happier somewhere else that they shouldn't even bother looking into those places. And that's a tragedy of human flourishing. Edit to respond to one comment below: > I think you're dismissing people's issues too easily. On the contrary, I think you're inordinately focused on your own particular (and somewhat eccentric) issues. Most Americans prefer car ownership. You might think they're wrong to prefer this. I do, too! But, "I don't want to live somewhere where I have to own a car" isn't a mainstream American opinion.

marz0 8y ago

Philadelphia

TulliusCicero 8y ago
Ooh, that's a good choice. Philly isn't more conservative, but it is cheaper and I'm given to understand it's one of the more urbanist cities in the US (probably because of its age). I'm sure I can still find some things, though. * Very few miles of protected bike lanes, although at least things are looking up there for the future: https://bicyclecoalition.org/our-campaigns/30-miles-of-protected-bike-lanes-2/ https://bicyclecoalition.org/our-campaigns/30-miles-of-prote... (although the fact that 30 miles is celebrated as some big achievement is itself telling) * Two subway lines is better than most US cities, but still not very many for a metro of this size. Munich has a comparable metro population and has 8 subway lines, for example, not to mention several separated-grade commuter/rapid transit lines that go way out into the burbs. Looks like high quality, rapid transit is still close by for only a small percentage of Philadelphians. It also sounds like the regional rail system is in disrepair. * Looking at the zoning map, it looks like implementation of mixed use zoning is much better than most US cities, but still very limited in many neighborhoods, which limits walkability: https://openmaps.phila.gov/ https://openmaps.phila.gov/ * Also from the zoning map, many areas are still zoned just for single-family homes, which limits walkability/bikeability (and also encourages economic segregation, to boot). Philly's level of urbanism should really be like the bare minimum for US cities, but in reality it's close to the top, I think.
- soulnothing 8y ago
  I just moved back to Philadelphia. After stints in Boston, New York, and Seattle. I have a completely different perspective than when I first left. A lot of the homes are single family, or row homes. This results in swaths of a residential feel in a city. Even the hot Fishtown felt very rural to me after my stint in New York. Although I appreciate the quite. Looking at the history Philadelphia started with the idea of brownstones/row homes instead of apartment buildings. To give people more space. But this does result in sparseness of shops. A lot of the multi tenant buildings are either new constructions or converted warehouses. The two subways is always a point of contention. But I don't find it that big of a deal. Living near either Broad or MFL, I can get around very easily. The city is also extremely walk able, a majority of the people I knew just walk. It's under two miles river to river. If not that there are a number of buses. http://skookul.com/ http://skookul.com/ <| For real time public transit. I can't speak regional rail. But when I left ~15, commuting from Delaware was a shit show. In the city bike lanes I don't think is the best. But the river trail along the west side is well used. I know a number of people up in outer Manayunk bike in. https://schuylkillrivertrail.com/ https://schuylkillrivertrail.com/ Having just taken a history walking tour. How the city feels makes alot of sense. It's meant to feel like a number of connected neighborhoods. I still think it deserves a second look for tech companies. With all the universities and good start to transit. It's ripe for an investment outside of Comcast.

plumdot 8y ago

Detroit?

TulliusCicero 8y ago
* Almost no rail transit whatsoever, closest equivalent looks like a bus system that doesn't even have its own lanes, let alone being separated-grade. * I see a few off-street bike paths, but at a glance, no physically protected bike lanes. Maybe there are a few I'm missing, but if so, very few. Very few bike lanes in total, too. * Freeways cutting through the city * City is super sprawled out, looks like most of the space is the typical American mandatory single-family home area with no retail activity, so walkability is limited even where the sidewalks are fine. * Very wide roads all over the place Also just in general Detroit seems like it's been historically mismanaged and has lots of problems with crime and infrastructure and corruption and poor schools, which doesn't help things.
- dionidium 8y ago
  I think there's less value to this kind of experience-living-in-a-city-via-google-maps than you're implying here.
  - TulliusCicero 8y ago
    To be sure, an actually thorough analysis would require firsthand experience (and I have visited Portland at least multiple times). It's just that most US cities are so very terrible at urbanism that it's easy to spot many of the massive flaws from Google Maps.
    - dionidium 8y ago
      Most Midwestern cities are indeed sprawling, pedestrian-hostile, car-philic wastelands and that's what you're going to see on Google Maps. But, thankfully, they didn't destroy all of their pre-war housing and infrastructure and so most of them have at least a couple interesting, walkable neighborhoods. If you're moving to NYC, then you can throw a dart at the map and you'll land in a walkable neighborhood. If you're moving to St. Louis or Cincinnati, then you'll need to do some research. The dart is a bad strategy. So, look, it's totally fair to say, "I don't want to live in a city like that." But there are people working really hard to make their little pockets better for bikes and pedestrians and so on, and I think people underestimate the extent to which that's going on and the extent to which they could be happy in a neighborhood like that, especially when housing is 1/10th the cost.

lbriner 8y ago

> How many of those more conservative/cheaper US cities actually take walking/biking/transit over driving as a serious issue? Do you really think NYC is a good example of this? I found the car traffic horrific, cycling is variable at best and downright dangerous at worst. The subway is pretty amazing but massively under-invested. Even most UK cities which have longer levels of history restricting what can be done for cyclists are better than NYC.

hessproject 8y ago
NYC certainly isn't perfect, but there's been significant investment in bike infrastructure (and the expansion of citibike) and is quickly improving. Anecdotally, I find I have to plan my trips a little bit, but can get from my apartment in Queens to most places in Manhattan without leaving a protected bike lane for more than 2-3 blocks

amyjess 8y ago

So, I just got back from a week-long vacation to NYC, and it's reinforced what I've always felt about it: NYC is a wonderful place to visit, but I'd never want to live there. I had a lot of fun, and I wish I could've stayed another week, but actually living and working there? No thank you. I actively do not want to fight through crowds and run to catch connecting trains just to get to and from work every day. I don't want to live in a tiny apartment with no cooling but a room air conditioner sticking out the window. I don't want to be surrounded by noise 24/7. Trust me, for every person who wants to live in NYC because it's actually a city, there's at least one person like me who only wants to set foot in cities to play tourist and would rather live and work in the suburbs. And I'd rather live in modern suburbs at that... in NYC suburbs like Westchester (where I stayed during my trip), the housing stock is so old that even a nice place will be a fixer-upper, and the street layout is horrendously bad because nothing was planned in advance. I strongly prefer living in southwestern suburbs where nothing is older than the late '70s, half the neighborhoods were built in the 21st century, and the suburbs are built around a one-mile grid of six-lane divided highways (e.g. Dallas, Vegas, Phoenix).

ruddct 8y ago
The great thing about NYC (and a thing that is lost on most people visiting the city, including myself before I moved here), is how many options you have for your living situation. Want the crowds, the city life and the noise? Live downtown. Old-school New York? The upper west side. Brownstones on quiet, beautiful streets? Any number of Brooklyn neighborhoods. A quaint New England-y fishing village? City Island. Conservative-leaning, leafy suburbs? Staten Island. The ethnic enclave of your choice? Peppered throughout the city. Cheapo cool kid artist communities? Bushwick/Ridgewood. Want to own a boat and live on the water? The Rockaways. The list goes on and on, and that's not even touching Jersey, Westchester or Long Island. The beauty of the city is that all of these places are unquestionably, culturally 'New York'. They're also, for the most part, quite well connected to the city core on affordable public transit, and in many cases quite affordable by big American city standards.
notyourday 8y ago
If you want a suburban life in NYC you simply move to Queens or the part of Brooklyn that is closer to Queens.

Alex3917 8y ago

NYC literally has an app where anyone can press a button if they're standing somewhere where they feel like a tree should be planted, and if you press the button a couple hours later a group of guys will show up and start digging a hole and plant the tree. For all of its problems, it's the only city that works at least somewhat like a city should.

timr 8y ago
That's kind of a twee, brooklyn-artisinal-pickle example, but the greater point is true: having lived in a number of big cities around the US (including San Francisco), New York is simply functional in a unique way for a US city. Even San Francisco is a backwater by comparison. For example: I was issued a ticket in SF for moving (and I hired professionals to do it). That kind of crap simply doesn't happen in New York, but it happened routinely in SF.
- Alex3917 8y ago
  > That's kind of a twee, brooklyn-artisinal-pickle example I'd actually argue that the quality of street / park trees is the best way to judge how competently a city has been run over time. When a city has lots of healthy older trees, that means not a single administration has dropped the ball in over 200 years or whatever. If look around NYC there are thousands of mature American elm trees everywhere, but not in any of the surrounding suburbs. Why? Because NYC parks department actually takes care of the trees when they're sick and removes them if they can't be saved, whereas all of the surrounding tri-state towns just let them infect the surrounding trees and then die. Now maybe the fact that Robert Moses's favorite tree was the sycamore should have been a hint to everyone that some of his other policies may have been suspect, but that's a different issue.
  - timr 8y ago
    Sure, yes. But the tree-planting-app thing is still twee.
ciferkey 8y ago
This sounds awesome! Do you know what the app is called?

danans 8y ago

> How many of those more conservative/cheaper US cities actually take walking/biking/transit over driving as a serious issue? I often wonder about why relatively conservative /cheap/low-density/car-bound are so correlated. Are there significant counter-examples, in the US or elsewhere, where, for example, a more conservative area is higher density or urban, compared to it's more progressive surroundings? If those situations are very rare, then why? Is it strictly historical, or does relatively higher density, and more frequent interactions that result, change many people's perceptions.

rustybelt 8y ago

Chicago. In the midwest and has the best urban core in the North America outside of New York.

taurath 8y ago

> One of the big reasons a lot of people really like NYC is that it's one of the few cities in the US that actually feels like a city. I think you’re conflating current cultural preference with actual economic ability. Where do towns like Palo Alto, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale fit into this?