4 ms·

Most Livable Cities

16 points by godelmachine 5y ago

eatonphil 5y ago
I live in New York and I think it's pretty livable. The massive subway and bus lines allow you to save thousands of dollars on rent by living a 40 minute commute from Manhattan away. This ends up with a comparable rent per square foot to Philadelphia. I've only ever visited San Francisco once but from what I've read, it's surprising to see SF end up on multiple lists of highest quality of life cities in the US with no other US city listed. Are these studies just biased to the wealthiest cities rather than something like the quality of life of the average or majority resident?
- csomar 5y ago
  > by living a 40 minute commute I mean, that's 2 hours commute everyday or 700 hours per year wasted on commute. That's almost 3 months worth of work wasted on commute. I'm not sure if you are thinking about it.
  - eatonphil 5y ago
    40 minutes where I spend the time reading in my Kindle. I've done car commutes before and I don't ever want to do that again. Public transport commutes are something else (assuming the environment is decent, which I think it is).
    - zepto 5y ago
      To contrast, the time when I had a 40 minute car commute was heavenly for me. I loved the time to myself and to listen to autidobooks. When I switched to public transport, being jostled with a mass of people made it impossible to read a kindle, and even audiobooks were far less easy to pay attention to.
mikhailfranco 5y ago
Any such comparison that ignores climate and cost of living is totally meaningless. Monocle claims to consider climate/sunshine, but the top of its list is dominated by Scandinavia and central/eastern Europe that have dismal cold wet winters, with short days conducive to SAD depression. The only redeeming quality being that one or two have distant access to skiing.
- matttproud 5y ago
  Yeah, maybe I am enjoying less sunlight; but I am certainly enjoying all of the negative freedom — the freedom from abject destitution, dysfunctional society, having to own a car for rudimentary things, significant pollution and environmental degradation, illiberal democracy, etc. I’m an American, and the feeling that it was a precarious house of cards bugged me enough to leave a decade ago. :shrug:
Smithalicious 5y ago
Surprised to see Osaka above Tokyo here - I found Osaka to be decidedly more grubby and with a severe increase of speaker trucks driving in circles praising Jesus. Not that it's not a pleasant place, of course. EDIT: didn't look further than the first list, the others are closer to my experience
- godelmachine 5y ago
  >>didn't look further than the first list, the others are closer to my experience So you agree with the list except for Osaka?

16 points by godelmachine 5y ago

I live in New York and I think it's pretty livable. The massive subway and bus lines allow you to save thousands of dollars on rent by living a 40 minute commute from Manhattan away. This ends up with a comparable rent per square foot to Philadelphia. I've only ever visited San Francisco once but from what I've read, it's surprising to see SF end up on multiple lists of highest quality of life cities in the US with no other US city listed. Are these studies just biased to the wealthiest cities rather than something like the quality of life of the average or majority resident?

csomar 5y ago
> by living a 40 minute commute I mean, that's 2 hours commute everyday or 700 hours per year wasted on commute. That's almost 3 months worth of work wasted on commute. I'm not sure if you are thinking about it.
- eatonphil 5y ago
  40 minutes where I spend the time reading in my Kindle. I've done car commutes before and I don't ever want to do that again. Public transport commutes are something else (assuming the environment is decent, which I think it is).
  - zepto 5y ago
    To contrast, the time when I had a 40 minute car commute was heavenly for me. I loved the time to myself and to listen to autidobooks. When I switched to public transport, being jostled with a mass of people made it impossible to read a kindle, and even audiobooks were far less easy to pay attention to.

mikhailfranco 5y ago

Any such comparison that ignores climate and cost of living is totally meaningless. Monocle claims to consider climate/sunshine, but the top of its list is dominated by Scandinavia and central/eastern Europe that have dismal cold wet winters, with short days conducive to SAD depression. The only redeeming quality being that one or two have distant access to skiing.

matttproud 5y ago
Yeah, maybe I am enjoying less sunlight; but I am certainly enjoying all of the negative freedom — the freedom from abject destitution, dysfunctional society, having to own a car for rudimentary things, significant pollution and environmental degradation, illiberal democracy, etc. I’m an American, and the feeling that it was a precarious house of cards bugged me enough to leave a decade ago. :shrug:

Smithalicious 5y ago

Surprised to see Osaka above Tokyo here - I found Osaka to be decidedly more grubby and with a severe increase of speaker trucks driving in circles praising Jesus. Not that it's not a pleasant place, of course. EDIT: didn't look further than the first list, the others are closer to my experience

godelmachine 5y ago
>>didn't look further than the first list, the others are closer to my experience So you agree with the list except for Osaka?