10 ms·

If anything, you are being too nice to US suburbs: It's perfectly possible to have towns that are much denser than any US suburb. My Spanish home town has about

If anything, you are being too nice to US suburbs: It's perfectly possible to have towns that are much denser than any US suburb. My Spanish home town has about 100K inhabitants: You'd not call that a city anywhere in the US. And yet, It's basically a circle with a one mile radius: Yes, just one mile. In that situation, one can walk everywhere, and public transportation is limited to the elderly, people carrying heavy things, and the impatient that live in the outskirts of town. As a pre-teen, I could go to any of my friend's houses to do tabletop roleplaying all by myself. If my mother needed a break from parenting, she had three different siblings living within a quarter mile. When your average building is 6 stories tall, and your typical street is 30 feet wide building to building, a quarter mile circle holds a lot of families! In comparison, my neighbor from across the street in the US suburbs is 60 feet away, door to door, and a quarter mile circle won't get me to 300 front doors, total.

Gigachad 4y ago
I think people don't realise how dense an area can be without needing highrises. Even just townhouses which are still "single family" buildings on their own land are roughly 4x denser than detached houses.
- alwayslikethis 4y ago
  Single family homes often also have lawns and yards, which is mostly unused space
  - Slava_Propanei 4y ago
    [dead]
vkou 4y ago
> When your average building is 6 stories tall, and your typical street is 30 feet wide building to building, a quarter mile circle holds a lot of families! Someone walking through a six-story downtown is, by such a measurement, traveling faster than a car traveling at ~90 mph through suburbia. (Of course, a car can't travel that quickly through suburbia.)
- atoav 4y ago
  How much use you can pull out of that depends on how it is zoned. In European cities it is not uncommon to have grocery stores, pubs, cafes, bakeries and such within walking distance of your home. My next grocery store is 2 minutes by foot. The next 24/7 store where I can get beer 5 minutes, the next park 8 minutes. In the worst flat in these terms I ever had in a city over here was 10 minutes walk to the next grocery shop and this was a dirt cheap flat on a loud main road. Even parts of the town where you have mostly residential housing will have the occasional small shop, grocery store, gas station or similar. If I understood zoning in the US correctly this kind of mixing is at times even forbidden?
  - pas 4y ago
    yes https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k https://youtu.be/qQ7MP2e7Bqk https://youtu.be/qQ7MP2e7Bqk
  - jjav 4y ago
    > In European cities it is not uncommon to have grocery stores, pubs, cafes, bakeries and such within walking distance of your home. My next grocery store is 2 minutes by foot. The next 24/7 store where I can get beer 5 minutes, the next park 8 minutes. To be fair this exists in many of areas in the US as well. From my suburban single family home in a small town in California I can easily walk to all those things in a few minutes, including 24x7 supermarket, another nicer supermarket, plenty of restaurants, movies, stores of nearly all kinds, playgrounds, sports fields, etc.
- jerrre 4y ago
  very interesting way to look at it!
bombcar 4y ago
100k is certainly a city. That’s quite large - and for many places in the US the local “city” is of that size. People definitely call Ventura, CA “the city” and its 100k.
- jodrellblank 4y ago
  > 100k is certainly a city. In the UK “city” status is conferred by being on the government’s list of cities and isn’t automatic based on size or presence of a Cathedral or anything else. See: Tom Scott on YouTube “the town which forgot to be a city” - https://youtube.com/watch?v=kBaLb1C4WAg https://youtube.com/watch?v=kBaLb1C4WAg
  - mcv 4y ago
    In Netherland it traditionally means the place has city rights. But Den Haag (The Hague) never had city rights (being the seat of the count of Holland), so despite being 500k large, it's technically not a city. Though in all other aspects it really is. A much younger city, Almere (200k+), a fairly new suburb of Amsterdam but now the 5th largest city in the country, is far too young for such city rights. But we also have "cities" that have only a few hundred inhabitants. The province of Friesland famously has 11 cities, but many of those are tiny, and it doesn't include several of the largest towns that are not technically cities.
  - TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
    One thing I learned from the comments of that video (Lennart Regebro): > In Sweden, the concept of "city" was removed in 1971. Everything became just municipalities. > This annoyed Stockholm, so in 1983, Stockholm municipality simply renamed itself "Stockholm Stad" (Stockholm City). That pissed Malmö and Göteborg off, and they also promptly renamed themselves to be cities. Today 14 municipalities n Sweden claim to be cities.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Some places in the US define what a city is, but it can be very small - Fourth class: Cities with 9,999 or fewer residents. It has more to do with what services the city provides vs the size (cities provide trash pickup, etc).
jesperlang 4y ago
More Europe anecdata: I live in a small town of around 2000. Within 5-10 minutes walking I got: a restaurant, a cafe, a grocery store, pizzeria and kindergarten. Within 5-10 minutes of biking I have: public library, another grocery store, two bars and a restaurant. Public transport is readily available to take me to the neighbouring hustle-bustle (pop. 600'000) within 35 minutes. So my town is 50 times smaller than your Spanish example but it is perfectly possible to have all these services at this scale as well!
- maccard 4y ago
  The 2k town often/usually only has one of a cafe/restaurant/grocery store. Sounds like you've got a good town though! I live in a "mid sized" european city (500k), about 2km from the center, and the _only_ think I use my car for is getting out of the city. Within 10m walking I have pretty much everything I need, and within 20m of public transport (ironically, walking can be quicker for the short distances), I have pretty much everything I _want_!
  - holistio 4y ago
    I live in an area in one of the major European cities (Budapest) that locals just call "the village". It's right in the middle, close to the central district. It's got everything. From barbers to art galleries, from Portuguese cuisine to folklore shops, from luthiers to really good schools. A bustling art scene, clean streets. A huge shopping centre a nice park and an international transportation hub are all in in walking distance (<10 min), while the district itself manages to stay cozy and friendly. I have friends who haven't left the borders of this "village" during Covid, it's really got everything. Part of a big city while being not part of it at the same time. Also, I come from a 20k small town (so right between the two examples above) and had a very similar experience there, apart from everything the world has to offer being easily accessible once you decide to hop on a tram or your bike.
    - maccard 4y ago
      I grew up in a 50k "small city", and I hated it personally. It was big enough to have "everything you wanted", but small enough to feel like there was no escape, no anonymity, no privacy. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everyone's business. The larger city with a smaller neighbourhood (which is a good description of most european cities that I've spent time in) are a great compromise I think.
mcv 4y ago
I always struggle with the difference between a town and a city, because Dutch has only one word for them: stad. A stad (plural "steden" is something that in the middle ages had city rights (or is it town rights?), a dorp (village) does not. And this has lead Netherland to have some steden of only a few hundred inhabitants, while some villages have more than 100,000, which of course makes no sense. The place I grew up in even has "dorp" in its name, so I will always consider it a village (besides, there's nothing to do there, but I guess that goes with suburbs), but it has about 100k inhabitants by now. I guess to me, the real difference is density and how much there is to do. A city has a bar on almost every street corner, a village, no matter how big, does not.
- GoldenRacer 4y ago
  Cities and towns sound pretty similar to your steden and dorp. The US can get complicated because every state defines things their own way but generally there are different legal requirements and rights for cities vs towns. In North Carolina there is a "city" called Brevard with a population of just under 8,000 but you also have the "town" of Cary with population 170,000. Of course there is still the issue of how the words are commonly used vs their actual legal definition but if you ask 100 different people the difference between a city and town, you'll get 100 slightly different definitions. Someone that grew up in New York City will have a very different definition than someone that grew up in Wyoming 50 miles from the nearest gas station. At the end of the day, there's just some vague notion that cities are bigger than towns.
  - Symbiote 4y ago
    A dorp is a village, note all the English village names ending in -thorp or -thorpe. Although we can't trust the cognates, as 'stad' is related to English 'stead', which meant a settlement of any size.
- pg_1234 4y ago
  Traditionally the distinction was you had to have a cathedral to be a city. ... I suppose the modern equivalent is a CBD.
somewhereoutth 4y ago
In my Portuguese apartment block I have 2 restaurants, a cafe, a hairdresser, a phone shop and some other commercial I haven't quite identified. From the front door I can throw rocks at 2 more cafes, another restaurant, a launderette, a playground and a car dealer. There is a basket ball court out the back. Nothing special about my 7 storey block, but when a certain density is reached things start to work really well
- ttoinou 4y ago
  Where is that more precisely ?
  - somewhereoutth 4y ago
    Lisbon suburbs

Gigachad 4y ago

I think people don't realise how dense an area can be without needing highrises. Even just townhouses which are still "single family" buildings on their own land are roughly 4x denser than detached houses.

alwayslikethis 4y ago
Single family homes often also have lawns and yards, which is mostly unused space
- Slava_Propanei 4y ago
  [dead]

vkou 4y ago

> When your average building is 6 stories tall, and your typical street is 30 feet wide building to building, a quarter mile circle holds a lot of families! Someone walking through a six-story downtown is, by such a measurement, traveling faster than a car traveling at ~90 mph through suburbia. (Of course, a car can't travel that quickly through suburbia.)

atoav 4y ago
How much use you can pull out of that depends on how it is zoned. In European cities it is not uncommon to have grocery stores, pubs, cafes, bakeries and such within walking distance of your home. My next grocery store is 2 minutes by foot. The next 24/7 store where I can get beer 5 minutes, the next park 8 minutes. In the worst flat in these terms I ever had in a city over here was 10 minutes walk to the next grocery shop and this was a dirt cheap flat on a loud main road. Even parts of the town where you have mostly residential housing will have the occasional small shop, grocery store, gas station or similar. If I understood zoning in the US correctly this kind of mixing is at times even forbidden?
- pas 4y ago
  yes https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k https://youtu.be/qQ7MP2e7Bqk https://youtu.be/qQ7MP2e7Bqk
- jjav 4y ago
  > In European cities it is not uncommon to have grocery stores, pubs, cafes, bakeries and such within walking distance of your home. My next grocery store is 2 minutes by foot. The next 24/7 store where I can get beer 5 minutes, the next park 8 minutes. To be fair this exists in many of areas in the US as well. From my suburban single family home in a small town in California I can easily walk to all those things in a few minutes, including 24x7 supermarket, another nicer supermarket, plenty of restaurants, movies, stores of nearly all kinds, playgrounds, sports fields, etc.
jerrre 4y ago
very interesting way to look at it!

bombcar 4y ago

100k is certainly a city. That’s quite large - and for many places in the US the local “city” is of that size. People definitely call Ventura, CA “the city” and its 100k.

jodrellblank 4y ago
> 100k is certainly a city. In the UK “city” status is conferred by being on the government’s list of cities and isn’t automatic based on size or presence of a Cathedral or anything else. See: Tom Scott on YouTube “the town which forgot to be a city” - https://youtube.com/watch?v=kBaLb1C4WAg https://youtube.com/watch?v=kBaLb1C4WAg
- mcv 4y ago
  In Netherland it traditionally means the place has city rights. But Den Haag (The Hague) never had city rights (being the seat of the count of Holland), so despite being 500k large, it's technically not a city. Though in all other aspects it really is. A much younger city, Almere (200k+), a fairly new suburb of Amsterdam but now the 5th largest city in the country, is far too young for such city rights. But we also have "cities" that have only a few hundred inhabitants. The province of Friesland famously has 11 cities, but many of those are tiny, and it doesn't include several of the largest towns that are not technically cities.
- TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
  One thing I learned from the comments of that video (Lennart Regebro): > In Sweden, the concept of "city" was removed in 1971. Everything became just municipalities. > This annoyed Stockholm, so in 1983, Stockholm municipality simply renamed itself "Stockholm Stad" (Stockholm City). That pissed Malmö and Göteborg off, and they also promptly renamed themselves to be cities. Today 14 municipalities n Sweden claim to be cities.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Some places in the US define what a city is, but it can be very small - Fourth class: Cities with 9,999 or fewer residents. It has more to do with what services the city provides vs the size (cities provide trash pickup, etc).

jesperlang 4y ago

More Europe anecdata: I live in a small town of around 2000. Within 5-10 minutes walking I got: a restaurant, a cafe, a grocery store, pizzeria and kindergarten. Within 5-10 minutes of biking I have: public library, another grocery store, two bars and a restaurant. Public transport is readily available to take me to the neighbouring hustle-bustle (pop. 600'000) within 35 minutes. So my town is 50 times smaller than your Spanish example but it is perfectly possible to have all these services at this scale as well!

maccard 4y ago
The 2k town often/usually only has one of a cafe/restaurant/grocery store. Sounds like you've got a good town though! I live in a "mid sized" european city (500k), about 2km from the center, and the _only_ think I use my car for is getting out of the city. Within 10m walking I have pretty much everything I need, and within 20m of public transport (ironically, walking can be quicker for the short distances), I have pretty much everything I _want_!
- holistio 4y ago
  I live in an area in one of the major European cities (Budapest) that locals just call "the village". It's right in the middle, close to the central district. It's got everything. From barbers to art galleries, from Portuguese cuisine to folklore shops, from luthiers to really good schools. A bustling art scene, clean streets. A huge shopping centre a nice park and an international transportation hub are all in in walking distance (<10 min), while the district itself manages to stay cozy and friendly. I have friends who haven't left the borders of this "village" during Covid, it's really got everything. Part of a big city while being not part of it at the same time. Also, I come from a 20k small town (so right between the two examples above) and had a very similar experience there, apart from everything the world has to offer being easily accessible once you decide to hop on a tram or your bike.
  - maccard 4y ago
    I grew up in a 50k "small city", and I hated it personally. It was big enough to have "everything you wanted", but small enough to feel like there was no escape, no anonymity, no privacy. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everyone's business. The larger city with a smaller neighbourhood (which is a good description of most european cities that I've spent time in) are a great compromise I think.

mcv 4y ago

I always struggle with the difference between a town and a city, because Dutch has only one word for them: stad. A stad (plural "steden" is something that in the middle ages had city rights (or is it town rights?), a dorp (village) does not. And this has lead Netherland to have some steden of only a few hundred inhabitants, while some villages have more than 100,000, which of course makes no sense. The place I grew up in even has "dorp" in its name, so I will always consider it a village (besides, there's nothing to do there, but I guess that goes with suburbs), but it has about 100k inhabitants by now. I guess to me, the real difference is density and how much there is to do. A city has a bar on almost every street corner, a village, no matter how big, does not.

GoldenRacer 4y ago
Cities and towns sound pretty similar to your steden and dorp. The US can get complicated because every state defines things their own way but generally there are different legal requirements and rights for cities vs towns. In North Carolina there is a "city" called Brevard with a population of just under 8,000 but you also have the "town" of Cary with population 170,000. Of course there is still the issue of how the words are commonly used vs their actual legal definition but if you ask 100 different people the difference between a city and town, you'll get 100 slightly different definitions. Someone that grew up in New York City will have a very different definition than someone that grew up in Wyoming 50 miles from the nearest gas station. At the end of the day, there's just some vague notion that cities are bigger than towns.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  A dorp is a village, note all the English village names ending in -thorp or -thorpe. Although we can't trust the cognates, as 'stad' is related to English 'stead', which meant a settlement of any size.
pg_1234 4y ago
Traditionally the distinction was you had to have a cathedral to be a city. ... I suppose the modern equivalent is a CBD.

somewhereoutth 4y ago

In my Portuguese apartment block I have 2 restaurants, a cafe, a hairdresser, a phone shop and some other commercial I haven't quite identified. From the front door I can throw rocks at 2 more cafes, another restaurant, a launderette, a playground and a car dealer. There is a basket ball court out the back. Nothing special about my 7 storey block, but when a certain density is reached things start to work really well

ttoinou 4y ago
Where is that more precisely ?
- somewhereoutth 4y ago
  Lisbon suburbs