Great post - but they are 'not the good old days' today in terms of affordability in most places. Gentrification is not so bad, but hypergentrification is. Th

Great post - but they are 'not the good old days' today in terms of affordability in most places. Gentrification is not so bad, but hypergentrification is. There is a new form of 'Globalist/Consumerist' gentrification and suburban building that is straight up 'bad' - there is no local anything, just miles of materially 'ok' people working for large corps, driving the same cars. There are no accents, cuisine, no weird characters, no un-PC opinions, and there's nowhere to walk. There is a huge missing ingredient in 'urban planning' that we have not put our finger on, and it's related to commodification of culture, particularly in North America. The Europeans (and others) haven't so much 'figured it out' so much as 'already had it' and are careful to adapt new-tech, even tossing it in retrospect (dumping cars downtown). Finally: Montreal. It's fairly affordable (super cheap in USD), authentic, cool, there is more going on here in the summer than any American city except NY (even LA) and that's saying a lot. Quebec speaks French and is protected from a lot of the US culture wars as there's no hyper-scrutiny of some things here. There are many interesting places in the US as well, but probably not so many big ones.