> There is certainly a wide spectrum of livable cities between SF and suburbia. Not in the United States. And if you're someone "who doesn't like making every

> There is certainly a wide spectrum of livable cities between SF and suburbia. Not in the United States. And if you're someone "who doesn't like making every trip by car", the list of cities is rather short and can probably be counted on one hand. In fact, New York and San Francisco might be the only ones which can realistically offer something comparable to what can be found in other global cities in terms of daily walkability and household shopping. Washington, DC, Boston, and maybe Chicago come close, but it's not quite the same. Chain stores are killing some of the walkability in San Francisco, though. A CVS, Wholefoods, or City Target can put convenience stores, toy stores, hardware stores, bakers, vegetable markets, meat markets, etc out of business across multiple neighborhoods, the same way a Wal-Mart can destroy entire downtowns in suburban and rural towns. And because transit sucks in SF (cheap and ubiquitous, but s-l-o-w), people often end up using their car to get to these higher traffic stores. This is a rather new phenomenon, though, because until about a decade or two ago San Francisco had extremely high barriers to chain stores.