That sounds violently American. Anyway, according to that statement either you hate dense cities or you just love wasting your time in them.
Maybe try a top public transit network, like Vienna (overall), Moscow or Madrid (subway), Tokyo (train) or even Paris (when there's no strike) to see things done right, because in the US cities with barely functional public transit can be counted with a single hand.
You're making false assumptions about where I've lived or travelled without refuting my points about New York. I live in San Francisco (the bart+muni+caltrain system here is actually quite horrible - it's inefficient, expensive, the coverage is weak and frankly it's smelly) and it's nickname as "the most East Coast city on the West Coast" is not well-earned at all, it's just due to the rest of California being completely and utterly car-based and without decent public transportation.
I've also travelled a lot, including Europe since all of my relatives are in Turkey. Barcelona is great, it's kind of like a cross between my hometown of San Diego (it's also 2 million people and sunny) and New York (great art scene, up-til-dawn nightlife and a city-wide metro) but it's on a much smaller scale.
And it's not simply a bias towards big cities - trying to find my way around Tokyo was a nightmare. I love Japan and it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, but the trains inside cities (not the bullet trains between them) aren't even run by the same companies, there's several parallel networks in place.
I can see London being very similar, considering New York modelled its subway system on the London Underground. Just looking at the two different subway maps makes me think NY is a vast improvement though, considering that one is a grid that maps directly to the streets and the other is a confusing circular spaghetti-looking mess. Most large European cities tend to have a similar layout of concentric circles (due to castles and moats and whatnot) and I find that using polar coordinates to get around isn't very intuitive compared to simple square x-y grids. If I look at a map of New York, it's easy to say "ok, I need to go two over and 5 up to get where I want to be."
Saying that cities are "uniquely great each in their own way" is fine, I'm not saying any other cities aren't great and that New York is better than them in all respects. In fact, New York is a horrible place to get lonely - if you don't already have a lot of friends, nothing's lonelier than being surrounded by millions of people all in a rush to get somewhere else and too busy to meet new people.
I dunno. I’ve been to all of those European cities and they were nice to visit for a week as a tourist but the density along with everything that goes with it: noise, smells, crowds etc were always a reminder that I only want to be there on a brief visit. I’m my suburban city, I simply hop in my vehicle and can be anywhere I want in 3-15 minutes.
Yes, and I really really hate dense places like Paris and Netherlands. Fun to visit but can't stand living there. I want my yard, and my individual walls, and my quiet neighborhood. I'm pretty much fine driving and don't care much about parking lots. I don't have kids so thats not really a factor, I remember going to parks all the time when I was small for this reason.
I mean city life isn't for everyone but I personally love dense urban cities and you can 100% have a great QOL there, especially when well designed. I live in NYC and would point to Lisbon, Paris, Copenhagen, Budapest, and Amsterdam among others. A lot of the negatives that can come with dense urban areas are bad execution that can sometimes even be fixed within one city. Montreal for example does a great job solving for lack of green space.
I love cities for availability of so many things quickly, diverse people and cultures that can only really be accomplished with large numbers of people, large social pools, high arts density, public transit so no need for a car, etc. If you're looking for a large space to live in, a backyard, lots of nature, then most cities won't hit that. Just depends on values but neither is wrong.
My data is on the analysis of U.S cities. Please use Google. That's what were talking about right?
Dense European cities are not designed like U.S cities namely in way of transportation systems... That's the number one point you're missing. Europe != US. Europe has tons of suburbs btw. You should travel outside city cores the next time you're there. Europe's transportation network doesn't revolve around highways and individual vehicle transport. Thus, they don't have the problem the U.S has in way of how people get into city cores.
Not to mention, you're missing a huge difference w.r.t to how jobs are scattered throughout the U.S vs europe and the affordability of housing therein.
Since the U.S's transportation system is not like Europe's nor are the city centers, the U.S's cities are most definitely not more efficient when you consider the total cost (the huge pollution cost, the time cost, and inefficiency of people who can't afford/fit in the city commuting in)
I really wish people would do more research before down voting people's comments and rebutting commentary with unsound rebuttals .. Downvotting is not for voting down comments you don't favor. You express that in comments and allow for responses to clear the air... which I have
Pick any moderate sized city in Europe! There's no reason Americans have to choose between glass and concrete imposing megastructures a la (parts of) NYC or sprawling car-dependent and socially atomized burbs a la Houston/Phoenix etc.
We can have moderately dense, highly walkable, transit-connected, safe, clean, private, quiet, socially vibrant, affordable towns and suburbs all over the country.
We just choose not to in large part because many Americans, brainwashed by The Automobile, can't even imagine such a state of affairs.
Same, everyone has this loaded idea that as soon as you visit a city out of the US it's a utopia. "Walkable-city" often means taking 2-4 different forms of transportation to get from A to B, and if you're going to 5 different places in a day before coming home(say class, the gym, the grocery store, a specific store for that one thing you need today, then dinner with a friend) it means carrying 1-2 bags with you all day and making 15 different metro line transfers, buses, etc and dealing with inclement weather and rush hour crowds where you can't get a seat. Have you ever been in a city with one of the largest metro systems in the world and had to physically push and get pushed into a rush hour metro car that's so packed you can't even get your phone out of your pocket on a ~38C day?
I have a feeling a lot of this sentiment is driven by digital nomads who booked a hostel next to a wework and do nothing but go to a coworking space for half the day then sightseeing and get the impression that everyone lives like this. I've stayed in more than one world class city and if you can afford it you eventually just start taking a lot more ubers than you'll care to admit.
Europe is very different to SF. In Europe the term city planning is somewhat different. Most cities were built for horses and carts at best.
Berlin has a fantastic public transport system, but 70% of is less than 70 years old. Istanbul's public transport system is truly terrible, but it's a nearly 3,000 year old city that gets nearly a +/- 50 degree C temperature range over a year.
Paris has an ok metro, but in general public transport isn't that great compared to say, Berlin, London or Barcelona.
London has a ridiculously overdeveloped public transport system that will get you from a to b but it's massively oversubscribed and the roads are rammed most of the time. To be fair, London is generally oversubscribed and rammed most of the time.
Large dense cities in certain parts of Europe and east Asia don’t face these issues (and even then, there isn’t really the same concept of large and dense in most of Europe), but I would say chaotic unfriendly cities are the default in most of the world. In a sense, many American cities act as a bridge between these two worlds. It also doesn’t help that you can fall much farther in the US than other places before anyone even begins to notice.
yes, it is overcrowded. I lived in European capital which is much more densely populated. I still remember people jams in subway during rush hours with horror
You’re constructing a straw man and arguing against it. I didn’t find Amsterdam boring because I couldn’t drive around. I found it boring because there was a limited set of repetitive things I could conveniently access. I found it pleasant, but also homogeneous and plain. There is greater variety to be had in most American cities, simply because you can access more neighborhoods, businesses, amenities, whatever in a short amount of time on your own terms. If you have to deal with public transit (slower speeds, wait times, changing lines, etc) then any such activity simply requires more time and makes it less likely you’ll do it. You end up living a less rich life as a result. All that said, I appreciated the intercity trains.
I think this is a pretty big assumption that doesn't really consider that not all people prefer densely packed urban environments.
I've visited Europe multiple times and lived in Austria for 7 months. I loved seeing new things that were so different from my midwestern home. Using the train was awesome, the ease of access to get good quality food, walkability etc.
However, returning to Europe in my 30s I don't have that same feeling anymore. Those cities give me anxiety now. There are far too many people in one area. Everyone lives in tiny apartments where they have to be careful about who they disturbed. Almost no one owns houses, much less any land to go with those houses. They're completely reliant on public transportation. There's a massive lack of access to any real nature. Everyone just seems really sheltered and most of them don't appear to have any knowledge outside of urban environments. There's also a very elitist attitude that their way of life is somehow better, even though most of them couldn't survive a day without having easy consumer access to everything.
Further into adulthood now I much prefer to live outside a city with some land and the freedom to do what I want on it. I can take my car into the city and visit whenever I want. However, I get to live outside of it with much better access to nature and imo a mentally healthier environment than a packed city. Large cities just seem packed with consumerism to me. People do nothing but go around and pay for products all day. Pay to eat, pay to have coffee, pay to go to a show. I'll visit and live elsewhere.
I've never been to Vienna so I can't speak to it but my experience in traveling around the world is that many cities have incredible central cities but also have sprawling medium to high density suburbs that everyone turns a blind eye to. The low density automobile focused suburbs of North America might not exist around those cities but the denser suburbs still have poor livability, especially compared to the central cities they surround.
Which cities? I think most American cities are kind of like busy suburbs with big business downtowns. There are some exceptions. Also the European cities I've been to feel very different from US cities
Maybe try a top public transit network, like Vienna (overall), Moscow or Madrid (subway), Tokyo (train) or even Paris (when there's no strike) to see things done right, because in the US cities with barely functional public transit can be counted with a single hand.
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