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> Thus the US has less spatial discipline than anywhere else in the world. Even when compared to places like Canada and Australia? Canada's population density

> Thus the US has less spatial discipline than anywhere else in the world. Even when compared to places like Canada and Australia? Canada's population density is 4 people/km2, Australia is 3 people/km2 and the USA is 36 people/km2. That said, as an Australian visiting the Netherlands (508 people/km2), one of the first things that caught eye was the residential garbage disposal. In the Netherlands you don't have single house bins that are picked up house by house. Instead they cart their kitchen garbage bags out to communal bins in the street. Those communal bins look like this: https://utrechtselect.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/recyclebak-768x544.jpg https://utrechtselect.nl/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/recycleb... They are small on the surface because the bin is under ground. It's more efficient in so many ways. They aren't just saving space in the street - the house doesn't need storage space for a weeks worth of garbage. And being the Netherlands, the weeks worth garbage is separated into 4 recycling types. And the garbage truck doesn't have to stop at each house, but rather just once per street.

bitwize 4y ago
The USA is very much like Australia. Major difference is it takes about 20 km to go from, say, Brisbane CBD to the boonies in Australia -- whereas in the USA, particularly the northeast corridor, you have to go a bit farther through densely but not too densely populated suburbs. If you want to see what spatial discipline looks like, check out Japan. I've always been impressed by Boston's ramification into side streets and back alleys where interesting shops, bars, and restaurants can be found. But a Japanese city ramifies a couple of iterations deeper: the side streets have side streets, the back alleys have back alleys. And they are littered with family-owned restaurants, tiny bars where you can have a conversation (unlike American bars where you have to shout to be heard over the sportsball game on every TV and the entire bar screaming when a score is made), and specialty shops of every sort. The shop you're interested in may be on the fourth, fifth, or tenth floor of a building. Any square meter that can be converted to retail space, will be. Train stations play host to entire subterranean strip malls. It's nuts. It's kind of cyberpunk. Or rather, cyberpunk borrowed from the aesthetics that blossomed on Asian city design constraints, particularly those of Japan, Hong Kong proper, and Kowloon Walled City.

bitwize 4y ago

The USA is very much like Australia. Major difference is it takes about 20 km to go from, say, Brisbane CBD to the boonies in Australia -- whereas in the USA, particularly the northeast corridor, you have to go a bit farther through densely but not too densely populated suburbs. If you want to see what spatial discipline looks like, check out Japan. I've always been impressed by Boston's ramification into side streets and back alleys where interesting shops, bars, and restaurants can be found. But a Japanese city ramifies a couple of iterations deeper: the side streets have side streets, the back alleys have back alleys. And they are littered with family-owned restaurants, tiny bars where you can have a conversation (unlike American bars where you have to shout to be heard over the sportsball game on every TV and the entire bar screaming when a score is made), and specialty shops of every sort. The shop you're interested in may be on the fourth, fifth, or tenth floor of a building. Any square meter that can be converted to retail space, will be. Train stations play host to entire subterranean strip malls. It's nuts. It's kind of cyberpunk. Or rather, cyberpunk borrowed from the aesthetics that blossomed on Asian city design constraints, particularly those of Japan, Hong Kong proper, and Kowloon Walled City.