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Comment by throwawaybookst | Hacker News Reader

The choice between "dense urban core" and "suburb" is distinctly American. Especially in Europe, city (in the sense of "not suburb or rural" != center of a large (1M+) population.

In America, any region with a population the order of 100k or less is basically a shopping area surrounded by suburbs. The same is not true in Europe.

In Europe, you can definitely find walkable, breathable, friendly cities while still living in an area that is safer than (and has a smaller population than) the typical Chicago suburban area.

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I don't think it's a distinctly American term. The distinction between the "city" and "suburbs" or "commuter belt" is pretty common in Europe too, at least in cities that actually have such a pattern, especially with a radial commuter-rail network and clearly defined commercial center. For example I don't think anybody that lives in Ishøj or Brøndby is under the impression that they live in an independent "city"; they live in a suburb of Copenhagen, whose main virtue is that it's cheaper than Copenhagen but has good access via the S-train.

A large proportion of the commuter belt of London, Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Brussels, Rome, etc. are places like that, some nicer and some more depressing, but definitely suburbs that exist mainly to house people who commute in to the city.

I disagree. Typical Chicago suburban area is safer than Europe. If you exclude homicides, most of which happen on the south side of Chicago, Europe has a lot more crime

Indeed; in Europe, you can find the same reproduced at the village and hamlet level, too.

It's a density issue, at heart. Any US "city" (if it should be called that) of 100K-500K occupies 10x-20x the surface area that it would in most parts of the world, removing much of the cohesion that leads us to call places cities or towns in the first place.

I think you're going to get in trouble with generalizations like "any US city", or even "any US city of 100k-500k". Can you be more specific about the faux-cities you're referring to, rather than nerd-baiting me to come up with a list of cities that defy your criteria?

I should know better than to use words like "any" with programmers, it's true.

In response, I started compiling a list, but then I realised I can't think of a counterexample. "Any" might be just about right. Do you know of one?

I'm thinking of places like Indianapolis, Fairfax, Macon (GA), almost all college towns I've been to...

The one that sprang immediately to mind was Ann Arbor, Michigan, because I used to live there. But I can come up with more, if you like.

Your argument is that mid-sized US cities with densities comparable to European cities are rare, and that this causes pathology. That sounds intuitively defensible, because America definitely has more space to play with for its cities than Europe. But let's try to be specific.

What's a model European city, so we can compare its density to some set of American cities?

I spent my middle and high school years in Athens, GA. It would not ordinarily be seen as a target for sprawl-bashing, given its ostensibly compact nature. And it's true, the downtown and campus are fused into something fairly livable.

However, as usual, 90% of the population doesn't live in that tiny core, but instead in the same kind of low-density layout one can find anywhere in America. While I haven't been to Ann Arbor since grade six or so, my recollection is that it's similar; wonderful UMich campus, nice downtown, but most of the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area? Same old automobile folk traditions. Am I misremembering?

Re: comparing density --

Density is certainly not the only variable. In my article, I made the point about how proximity/adjacency != walking accessibility. That seems relevant, too. It's probably quite possible to build a place with a decently high density where a car is still required to go anywhere, or a relatively low-density but profoundly pedestrian-friendly hamlet.

I know Athens solely from REM and Elephant 6 music. I've never been there.

Saline and Ypsi are suburbs of Ann Arbor.

Ann Arbor itself is mostly walkable, tree-lined, mixed-use, and connected by public transportation.

More than 90% of the population of Ann Arbor lives in Ann Arbor and not Ypsi or Saline. :)

What are the rest of the variables? I'd like to drive to specificity. If there's a set of US midsized cities that defies your characterizations, maybe there's something interesting that ties them together.

I'm certainly not going to deny that there are crappy cities!

I'm not sure I've ever seen a midsized US city that defies my characterisations. I've seen plenty of cases where something progressive-sounding got built within them, but it was an island, unconnected and irrelevant. One mixed-use-sounding shopping strip with attached condos does not sprawl unmake.

New Orleans, Minneapolis, Oakland, Berkeley, Providence, Madison. There are lots of cities in that population range, and they aren't islands.

And, I just gave you a specific example that isn't "one mixed use sounding shopping strip with attached condos".

Of those, I've only been to Minneapolis, but I can say with complete certainty that it, too, is a suburban wasteland. Yes, it's got a downtown that's clearly seeing some promise, as is true of numerous cities (even the very same Atlanta), but all in all, it's almost entirely a driving city.

Biking around Utrecht is a lot more fun than biking around Ann Arbor.

The train to Amsterdam is better than the train to Chicago too (cheaper, faster, more frequent).

It's a bigger city than Ann Arbor, with about twice the density.

I think there are probably enough differences in land use planning that you won't quite be able to have a model city for Europe.

The train from Ann Arbor to Chicago? The nearest major metro to Ann Arbor is Detroit, not Chicago. Utrecht is just 30 miles away from Amsterdam. A2 is 250 miles from Chicago.

Sure, but you'd drive there.

The point of that was that it is connected to a rail network in a way that doesn't exist in Michigan.

Also, when I lived in Ann Arbor, we never cared about going to Detroit itself.

Utrecht is about as far from Amsterdam as Orland Park is from Chicago. Train connectivity between Orland and Chicago: also pretty frequent and reliable.

It's a little unfair to compare that particular run to the entire state of Michigan, which would be the 20th largest country in Europe if admitted to the EU, just behind Iceland and ahead of Hungary.

That's fair, I wasn't in NL long enough to really get a sense for distance. Took the train to Amsterdam once.

(we're both making some edits)

I think the higher density is part of why Europe seems to have more nice cities though. I actually kind of joked about that while I was there, that the publicly owned land in Michigan is roughly the size of the Netherlands (the national and state forests).

With high density, if you "need" cityscape you can just build a rail to where it makes sense to have the city.

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