5 ms·

Well Europe and the EU both have larger populations than the US and quite a bit higher population densities (even though the continent of Europe is slightly lar

Well Europe and the EU both have larger populations than the US and quite a bit higher population densities (even though the continent of Europe is slightly larger) so wouldn't you expect Europe to have more skyscrapers than the US?

WJW 2y ago
Europe just seems to go for much more mid-rise high-density neighborhoods compared to the US with skyscrapers in the city center and then sprawling suburbs that are so low-density you can barely get out of them without a car.
- arethuza 2y ago
  What I found most surprising about a lot of US city "downtowns" is how utterly dead they are in the evenings and at weekends.
  - fosk 2y ago
    They are also dangerous and that’s also a big reason why nobody hangs out there after a certain time. European downtowns are family friendly and actually nice and safe, unlike the US.
    - brnt 2y ago
      I think the comment about Kansas City shows that the big reason nobody hangs out there is that nobody actually lives there. And so since after 18:00 everybody these huge, built-up areas are suddenly available, you create excellent conditions for things that'll keep people from going there. The 'secret' of European downtowns is that they are not uninhabited.
  - nervousvarun 2y ago
    The answer is crime. It's always crime.
    - User23 2y ago
      This is why you hear about a housing affordability problem in Washington DC despite a quick search showing dozens of recent sales for 2-3 bedroom apartments for under $100,000. There never was a housing shortage, there’s just a shortage of people willing to live in vibrant urban neighborhoods.
      - mtran381 2y ago
        I think you might need to look closer because the HOA or coop fees are insane.
      - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
        You say vibrant. I would say crime-ridden and politically charged. Houses that are in bad areas where no one wants to live willingly isn't part of acceptable housing inventory.
      - red-iron-pine 2y ago
        > vibrant urban neighborhoods. is that a euphemism? DC used to lead the nation in murder rate for decades -- the DC basketball team used to be the Washington Bullets, which stopped being ironic and funny after a couple years. There are still DC neighborhoods where the police won't send cops without 3+ cars of backup. DC has gotten much better but is still like #12 or #13 in the US, and it's bad areas are still very bad. The rest of the Fed-Gov areas in the city are locked down hard, but no one lives there, and nearby areas Georgetown or Tenleytown are expensive. Source: from the area, went to AU, had to do background investigations on dudes in SE DC.
      - nervousvarun 2y ago
        I guess one man's "vibrant" is another man's "violent".
  - baby 2y ago
    With remote work they are dead all the time now
    - jagger27 2y ago
      The death of the third place is far more important than any impact remote work has had.
      - glompers 2y ago
        Third place is a specific term for those who have not been familiarized: "In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place")." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
      - baby 2y ago
        Not sure i get your point
        jagger27 2y ago
        If all that existed in those now dead downtown neighbourhoods were offices then of course they’d be dead with a significant disruption to work. What’s missing are still third places, and probably first places too.
weberer 2y ago
A lot of it is about zoning laws. The downtown Helsinki area has 0 skyscrapers, and the closest ones are the Redi buildings about 5km away.
rsynnott 2y ago
A fairly common US city plan seems to be: small ultra-high-density core with a bunch of skyscrapers, fading almost immediately to rather low-density, and then shortly afterwards to virtually no-density. European cities tend to be generally higher-density (no large US city is as dense as Paris, say, though Manhattan taken alone would be somewhat more dense than Paris), but with fewer skyscrapers.
- lolinder 2y ago
  > no large US city is as dense as Paris, say, though Manhattan taken alone would be somewhat more dense than Paris This seems off. If you consult this map and chart [0] Paris seems to do something very similar to NYC with regard to density. There's the city of Paris proper (75 on the map) which has a slightly higher population than Manhattan but a much lower density (52k/sq mi in Paris vs 74k). Then as soon as you get out of that 40 sq mi (about the size of the Bronx) into the the petite couronne density drops to well below that of any one of the five boroughs besides Staten Island. So, yeah, if you take an area the size of a single NYC borough in the Paris region that's drawn specifically around the densest population zone then it has a higher density than NYC taken as a whole. But if you compare most-dense-zone to most-dense-zone then NYC is denser by a fairly wide margin, and if you compare areas that are of a similar size rather than only including the City of Paris proper then NYC wins again. It seems like what you're describing is more an artifact of where we choose to draw city boundaries than that Paris actually is denser in practical terms as experienced on the ground. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris
  - myrmidon 2y ago
    > It seems like what you're describing is more an artifact of where we choose to draw city boundaries than that Paris actually is denser in practical terms as experienced on the ground. I mostly agree, but it's important to note that Paris is a lot smaller than NYC, so comparisons between NYC boroughs (which are each almost as big as the city of Paris) and Paris' surrounding departments are clearly favorable for NYC. If you compare cities of similar size, i.e. Paris with Los Angeles (which is still bigger, both city and metro area), then the european capital is significantly ahead in density (and I did not cherry pick Los Angeles specifically, it's the same for Chicago, Houston, etc.), and the difference is very significant: Even the core of those US cities (excepting NYC) is less dense than the 3 inner Parisian suburb departments (!!).
bluGill 2y ago
East of the Mississippi river has similar population densities to Europe (still less, but not by much). However US population density is skewed downward by the large amount nearly uninhabited land in "the west" and Alaska.

WJW 2y ago

Europe just seems to go for much more mid-rise high-density neighborhoods compared to the US with skyscrapers in the city center and then sprawling suburbs that are so low-density you can barely get out of them without a car.

arethuza 2y ago
What I found most surprising about a lot of US city "downtowns" is how utterly dead they are in the evenings and at weekends.
- fosk 2y ago
  They are also dangerous and that’s also a big reason why nobody hangs out there after a certain time. European downtowns are family friendly and actually nice and safe, unlike the US.
  - brnt 2y ago
    I think the comment about Kansas City shows that the big reason nobody hangs out there is that nobody actually lives there. And so since after 18:00 everybody these huge, built-up areas are suddenly available, you create excellent conditions for things that'll keep people from going there. The 'secret' of European downtowns is that they are not uninhabited.
- nervousvarun 2y ago
  The answer is crime. It's always crime.
  - User23 2y ago
    This is why you hear about a housing affordability problem in Washington DC despite a quick search showing dozens of recent sales for 2-3 bedroom apartments for under $100,000. There never was a housing shortage, there’s just a shortage of people willing to live in vibrant urban neighborhoods.
    - mtran381 2y ago
      I think you might need to look closer because the HOA or coop fees are insane.
    - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
      You say vibrant. I would say crime-ridden and politically charged. Houses that are in bad areas where no one wants to live willingly isn't part of acceptable housing inventory.
    - red-iron-pine 2y ago
      > vibrant urban neighborhoods. is that a euphemism? DC used to lead the nation in murder rate for decades -- the DC basketball team used to be the Washington Bullets, which stopped being ironic and funny after a couple years. There are still DC neighborhoods where the police won't send cops without 3+ cars of backup. DC has gotten much better but is still like #12 or #13 in the US, and it's bad areas are still very bad. The rest of the Fed-Gov areas in the city are locked down hard, but no one lives there, and nearby areas Georgetown or Tenleytown are expensive. Source: from the area, went to AU, had to do background investigations on dudes in SE DC.
    - nervousvarun 2y ago
      I guess one man's "vibrant" is another man's "violent".
- baby 2y ago
  With remote work they are dead all the time now
  - jagger27 2y ago
    The death of the third place is far more important than any impact remote work has had.
    - glompers 2y ago
      Third place is a specific term for those who have not been familiarized: "In sociology, the third place refers to the social surroundings that are separate from the two usual social environments of home ("first place") and the workplace ("second place")." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
    - baby 2y ago
      Not sure i get your point
      - jagger27 2y ago
        If all that existed in those now dead downtown neighbourhoods were offices then of course they’d be dead with a significant disruption to work. What’s missing are still third places, and probably first places too.

weberer 2y ago

A lot of it is about zoning laws. The downtown Helsinki area has 0 skyscrapers, and the closest ones are the Redi buildings about 5km away.

rsynnott 2y ago

A fairly common US city plan seems to be: small ultra-high-density core with a bunch of skyscrapers, fading almost immediately to rather low-density, and then shortly afterwards to virtually no-density. European cities tend to be generally higher-density (no large US city is as dense as Paris, say, though Manhattan taken alone would be somewhat more dense than Paris), but with fewer skyscrapers.

lolinder 2y ago
> no large US city is as dense as Paris, say, though Manhattan taken alone would be somewhat more dense than Paris This seems off. If you consult this map and chart [0] Paris seems to do something very similar to NYC with regard to density. There's the city of Paris proper (75 on the map) which has a slightly higher population than Manhattan but a much lower density (52k/sq mi in Paris vs 74k). Then as soon as you get out of that 40 sq mi (about the size of the Bronx) into the the petite couronne density drops to well below that of any one of the five boroughs besides Staten Island. So, yeah, if you take an area the size of a single NYC borough in the Paris region that's drawn specifically around the densest population zone then it has a higher density than NYC taken as a whole. But if you compare most-dense-zone to most-dense-zone then NYC is denser by a fairly wide margin, and if you compare areas that are of a similar size rather than only including the City of Paris proper then NYC wins again. It seems like what you're describing is more an artifact of where we choose to draw city boundaries than that Paris actually is denser in practical terms as experienced on the ground. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Paris
- myrmidon 2y ago
  > It seems like what you're describing is more an artifact of where we choose to draw city boundaries than that Paris actually is denser in practical terms as experienced on the ground. I mostly agree, but it's important to note that Paris is a lot smaller than NYC, so comparisons between NYC boroughs (which are each almost as big as the city of Paris) and Paris' surrounding departments are clearly favorable for NYC. If you compare cities of similar size, i.e. Paris with Los Angeles (which is still bigger, both city and metro area), then the european capital is significantly ahead in density (and I did not cherry pick Los Angeles specifically, it's the same for Chicago, Houston, etc.), and the difference is very significant: Even the core of those US cities (excepting NYC) is less dense than the 3 inner Parisian suburb departments (!!).

bluGill 2y ago

East of the Mississippi river has similar population densities to Europe (still less, but not by much). However US population density is skewed downward by the large amount nearly uninhabited land in "the west" and Alaska.