291–300 of 572 posts
One of the perks of living in a smaller city (in my case, Reno) is that if your friends are in the same city at all, chances are y'all are already within close proximity.
Of course, perspective. I'm in a "big city" right now, smaller than Reno, and it is the biggest city I've lived in.
Sprawl exists because it’s nice. People really like having a 3,000 square foot detached single family home with a 2 car garage. Especially when all of their friends have one. The only way everyone gets that, by definition, is sprawl. Of course, the drawbacks to personal health and well-being and societal stability are immense. But it’s really nice, too. Like, sitting in a massive basement with three TV’s while the gr…
Sure, I'd like that too.
But also, how about 3000 square feet apartment with top-notch sound insulation and a balcony, with an underground garage?
That sounds like it would have most of the benefits, I would actually prefer it, as I don't care about yards. And with 10-20 story buildings, you could still have quite a large population density, with cafes, grocery stores etc. on the ground floor.
> The fetishization of the nuclear family Just because you know a big word doesn’t mean you have to use it. Nuclear families are just what’s left after stripping away larger families which have been the norm throughout human history.
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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 heav…
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.
I've been wondering how related these feelings of distance and isolation in the middle of society are to how the area is designed. I had always known for a long time the "why" I didn't want to go out on weekends and such, but it wasn't until I watched some of those videos from "Not Just Bikes" that it really, really struck me. I literally dread finding parking more than I enjoy finding friends. And suburban (and fran…
This is a bit of an unconventional POV, but I don't consider large areas of suburban sprawl to be cities but just really big towns. This covers Houston, swaths of Atlanta, lots of Southern California. There are lots of people living there compared to rural areas, to be sure, but without the density to support usable public transportation (once-an-hour buses don't count), it's really not a city at all. It's endless su…
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At least in my country, no one calls ahead before dropping by to meet you in smaller cities. They just show up and hang out. In the big cities, of course, everyone plans ahead. Which is great for productivity but pretty awful for socializing. Urban culture revolves around productivity, while in smaller towns here, everyone seems happy being non-productive if it means keeping their social life.
> At least in my country, no one calls ahead before dropping by to meet you in smaller cities. They just show up and hang out. I consider myself pretty sociable, but holly shit that sounds like a nightmare.
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Uber makes things a lot simpler.
At least here in Brisbane, Australia, it went from $5-10/ride at the peak of VC funding mania to $25-50/ride now
Since the infinite funding stopped artificially holding prices low, I still found Uber cheaper generally speaking, and with a better experience. (I will say that my experience living in the UK does not hold the same; taxis here are generally better.)
I've been wondering how related these feelings of distance and isolation in the middle of society are to how the area is designed. I had always known for a long time the "why" I didn't want to go out on weekends and such, but it wasn't until I watched some of those videos from "Not Just Bikes" that it really, really struck me. I literally dread finding parking more than I enjoy finding friends. And suburban (and fran…
Not just bikes makes it feel like the solution to everything is to be like the Netherlands. In that sense it's a fraud. To some extent yes you should be more like us and offload some of that traffic onto a bike path. To the extent that works and is efficient. But... I have lived here all my life. It is not a solution to anything else. It turns out, bikes do not talk to each other very much either.
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How? My eight year old daughter gets to roam free and has seven or eight different kids she plays with on a weekly basis. A few of them daily. We’re not worried about her getting carried off because the area is super safe. We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. It’s also very diverse, her f…
No, American suburbs are good enough compared to American cities that are just filthy. Cities outside of US are just fine for raising children.
Idk, there are many cities outside the US where I wouldn't want to stay more than absolutely necessary, let alone raise children.