421–430 of 619 posts
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Don't forget we also spend less on feeding ourselves than anyone else in the world[0]. [0] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/12/this-map-shows-how-mu...
That's partly due to lower food standards, surely? Salmonella causes hundreds of deaths per year in the US but I believe almost zero in the US.
I’m personally not a huge fan of driving everywhere. But I wonder whether HN’s view on this isn’t out of touch with the average middle class American’s. The average American commute is 48 minutes round trip, significantly shorter than France (71 minutes), Italy (65 minutes), or Spain (61 minutes): https://www.oecd.org/els/family/LMF2_6_Time_spent_travelling... That’s mainly because Europe has higher public transit us…
I think you've got this almost exactly backwards. People in Paris don't buy cars because they have low utility. A car is slower than public transport for almost any journey in Paris. That's because population density in France is 4x higher than that in the US. What's also important to remember as well is that commuting by car doesn't scale well. As population density rises, commutes become exponentially longer due to…
That's a meaningless statement unless you're comparing the Paris metropolitan area to some similar area in the US. France doesn't have a sparsely populated continental interior to drag down the nation wide population density.
I get the impression that, outside of a few major metropolitan areas with real estate booms, most areas within the U.S. have been comparatively more successful than most areas within Europe at enabling decently-sized real estate at affordable prices and at enabling the younger generation to get on the real estate ladder without their parents' help.
Cities where infrastructure is super-dense and everything is walkable, like NYC and many European city centers are nice for young people, students, urban/digital nomads, tourists, etc.
When you get to a certain age and want to settle down and start a family, priorities start to change and you realize how trapped you are, with the European model.
You're paying a fortune to rent a shoebox. Add to that the high taxes and mandatory social security that exists in Europe. This means, you find yourself in a situation where you're wealthy but cash poor, and have little opportunity to accumulate wealth in the form of cash. (The kind of cash that would be needed as a down-payment on larger real estate).
The option that people exercise in the U.S. is "move to the burbs". ...but this option is not so readily available in Europe. Here, high standards of infrastructure are enforced before planning permission for residential development in suburbs/exurbs can even be granted. This means that this kind of real estate is pricey pretty much the day it becomes viable to build there. Further out, in properly rural areas, zoning laws will often permit building there only when buildings have an actual agricultural purpose.
The car plays a pretty important part in that: Rezone a bunch of agricultural land into residential. Build some roads that go there and connect it to the powergrid and telecommunication network. Boom. Affordable real estate. People can move there, and after you have enough people, you can start to think about public transportation, schools, things to do, and all that other stuff. But you do that AFTER it has become economically viable to offer that stuff, not as a prerequisite for allowing people to build there. This is, in my mind, something that the U.S. has a lot of and that we could really use more of in Europe.
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Are you sure we live in the same city? The Central line during summer is so hot it wouldn't be legal to transport cattle on it. The Northern line regularly has packed platforms going north in the morning. The Metropolitan has been undergoing "modernisation" for over a decade... EDIT trains also frequently run late OR early They break under the slightest deviation in nature - rain, snow, heat and leaves on the track a…
In Munich the SBahn is what you described. Not being on time/trains cancelled is the norm . When it snows in Norway the SBahn here breaks down.
The flipside of the coin needs to be mentioned too. What Europe is doing around zoning and infrastructure is, as is often the case, the "Big Government" model, compared to the U.S.'s more "Small Government" approach. I get the impression that, outside of a few major metropolitan areas with real estate booms, most areas within the U.S. have been comparatively more successful than most areas within Europe at enabling d…
It's hard to overstate how happy I would be if the street outside my apartment wasn't a canyon of speeding vehicular death for a toddler.
I love everything about living in the city with my child except for the sheer number of cars that pass through in the name of "freedom" and for a lack of decent alternatives. It's a short walk or bicycle ride to any number of amenities, and a short commute to work means I can spend more time at home with him.
I didn't like the car traffic before, and I hate it even more now. If there was a car free city on the US Eastern seaboard with an office for my employer, I would move there in a hot second.
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That's partly due to lower food standards, surely? Salmonella causes hundreds of deaths per year in the US but I believe almost zero in the US.
My guess would be agricultural subsidies more than food standards.
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While traveling outside the US, I have found many people think Americans are cold and heartless and just let people die. It is an understandable conclusion the way people talk about the US system in the media and internet, but it also isn't true. The US has dysfunctional, public healthcare but it isn't so dysfunctional that you just die if you fall or get an ear infection without insurance. So saying the US has "no p…
But you are fucked with a huge bill that would cripple your life in a way that you might as well be dead.
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While traveling outside the US, I have found many people think Americans are cold and heartless and just let people die. It is an understandable conclusion the way people talk about the US system in the media and internet, but it also isn't true. The US has dysfunctional, public healthcare but it isn't so dysfunctional that you just die if you fall or get an ear infection without insurance. So saying the US has "no p…
But you are fucked with a huge bill that would cripple your life in a way that you might as well be dead.
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In Munich the SBahn is what you described. Not being on time/trains cancelled is the norm . When it snows in Norway the SBahn here breaks down.
I've used the S-Bahn for 20 years (nowadays I can use the U-Bahn) and sure, it has its problems, but you are very, very hyperbolic. Most of the time it works just fine, whether the weather is good or bad. Sometimes the central tunnel is blocked, which is a problem for a system with one tunnel. That's why we build a second one. Meanwhile, cars are stuck in traffic almost all the time. The only way to cross the city in…
- late
- a service was skipped
- broke down half way through the journey
Come to think of it actually just last week I was forced to take the train and ofc the next service "zug fällt aus". Then after some ~40 mins of waiting there was the next service. A group of kids shouted "Oh mein Gott, s-bahn!". Great summary of the quality of the service.
Just because the vehicle traffic also sucks doesn't redeem S/UBahn by any factor!
Most big cities have a majority of the population without cars at this point. These cities naturally favor more legislation against cars and this is causing city administrators to over time introduce more restrictions for cars. E.g. many Dutch cities got a head start on this to make more room for bicyclists in the nineteen seventies already. Simple measures include raising prices for parking and parking permits, intr…
I don't think I've ever seen a French city where most streets, including those downtown, don't have street parking. Most of the time it's not free, but it's always there.