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Comment by crispyambulance | Hacker News Reader

  >  assumption that _everyone wants to be stacked on top of each other_

It's also an assumption that everyone wants to begin and end every trip, no matter how trivial, with a parking spot. It's an assumption that people will want to drive in traffic for 20 minutes minimum to get to a supermarket, do anything with their kids, or anything outside their property line.

The notion of "stacked on top of each other" has unpleasant connotations, but there are many different ways to live in a dense city. Would you feel "stacked on top of each other" in a Parisian townhouse with a magnificent shared courtyard, 12 foot ceilings, and everything you could possibly want a short walk or subway ride away?

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> It's also an assumption that everyone wants to begin and end every trip, no matter how trivial, with a parking spot. It's an assumption that people will want to drive in traffic for 20 minutes minimum to get to a supermarket, do anything with their kids, or anything outside their property line.

I wouldn't be surprised to find some suburbs with some of the traits you mention, but it hasn't been my experience with them. I've lived in about 5 different suburbs in my life and a supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it's even within biking distance. Parks are by schools and there's usually an elementary school fairly close if you're looking to do something with your kid. Depending upon the suburb you can also play in the street, which I regularly did growing up.

The traits you are talking about sounds more like a rural area than a suburban one.

supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it's even within biking distance

I'd consider that far, far away.

My walk to the nearest train station is about one mile, takes about 15 minutes to get there on foot, and that's irritatingly far, too, considering the trip is two way and repeats every day. Something like a grocery shop should be accessible within decent walking distance, a five-minute walk or so.

A rule of thumb is that if something is far enough that I have to take the car in the first place I'll be incentivised to drive further away to a big supermarket/other big stores while I'm at it.

> A rule of thumb is that if something is far enough that I have to take the car in the first place I'll be incentivised to drive further away to a big supermarket/other big stores while I'm at it.

The grocery store that’s 2 miles away is a big supermarket. The US doesn’t really do small groceries in most places.

The US used to have tons of small groceries everywhere. The legislative mandate for free parking everywhere has put them out of business, and many were demolished to build freeways.

Yeah, like most small stores they paid their staff less than the big supermarket, had worse selection and charged a lot more. The supermarket took over because they had better prices on better selection. It was nice to walk to the store for something you were missing that was common, but if you wanted to cook something exotic odds are they didn't have it, and so you switched most of your shopping elsewhere and mostly don't miss them.

Smaller groceries means more selection, not less, because each store can specialize instead of needing to suit the average expectation of everybody in a 5 mile radius.

I live in one of America's few dense cities, and there are three stores I visit often, one Kroger chain with the selection you'd expect, one latin grocery, and one asian grocery where I can get all kinds of stuff that most people in the suburbs who shop at walmart and safeway have never heard of, all within a 10 minute walk.

Come on, you don't have to be in one of the "few dense cities" to find an Indian, Asian, Latin, etc. grocery.

I live in a city of about 100K people, and there are plenty. Or a few miles away is a city of ~70K people with others. As well as non-chain organic markets, whatever. The suburbs are adjacent; that's what suburbs are.

I am in the northeast, are you a Californian or Texan?

If they specialize they can find a niche that the large players don't cover. I have seen a few markets that were not specialists. They had the same American food selection that everyone buys (obviously in different areas the exact selection is different, but within the region none). The same name brand spaghetti sauce (but only of the 2 name brands, not the 10 in a supermarket), onions, ground beef you buy in the large supermarkets today, but at higher costs.

The Kroger chain you visit killed all of the above (except for the gas station convenience stores which are a smaller version of the above)

Yes, but now the US has tons of supermarkets everywhere.

In the nearby major city I'm most familiar with, most of the grocery shopping you'd do would be in supermarkets--often Whole Foods some of which on the smaller side. Other than convenience stores, there are also some bakeries, produce stands, and butchers. But most of your shopping is probably going to be at supermarkets (which have parking).

And this is mostly because we have designed our zoning and land use policies to favor big, centralized stores over lots of small, little ones.

An interesting parallel is Japan; Japan doesn't require parking with its properties, and to buy a car in Japan you have to produce proof of a parking space that you have (probably by purchasing a spot either with a property or in a lot somewhere), and the market has mostly sorted itself in favor of extremely dense networks of small shops.

American in Texas here - maybe this is a behavior encouraged by the very thing we're discussing, but going to the grocery store _every day_ is a big yikes to me. I go once a week and get everything I need for that week. Because I take my car, I can carry that amount of stuff.

It all just ties together. Going to the grocery store every day is a big yikes because you can't walk around the block to pick up fresh produce for dinner

I live a 2 min walk from a grocery store and no way in hell I’d want to go there everyday.

Yeah, I live a block from my grocery store in SF, and I still only go 1-2 times a week unless I need something fresh for today / missing ingredient, which is rare since I plan ahead and only buy things that will last at least a few days.

Living in a dense city like SF is great for somethings, but it sucks when you want to leave, and paying almost $400/month for parking isn't good either. Both lifestyles have their advantages and I think it really comes out to personal taste and choice.

Which has turned out to be a really great habit to have now that going to the grocery store regularly is pretty unsafe.

pre-covid I stopped by the grocery store almost every day to pick up whatever I wanted for dinner.

Back when I lived across the street from a grocery store I'd sometimes go get food for dinner, talk a bit with guests for what we wanted for desert, then walk over and pick up whatever we'd decided on. When the grocery store is across the street it is basically an on-demand food pantry.

When a grocery store is very nearby and you go to the grocery store, you can get your produce fresher. And you don't have to plan your meals, which may or may not be a positive side (it is for me).

Check out this Canadian talking about his grocery trip in Amsterdam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk.

You can't get your produce fresher if you are walking, unless the current temperature just happens to be a few degrees above freezing.

In much of the USA, your produce would freeze and thus become mush.

In much of the USA, temperatures well above 90 degrees would wilt your produce. Also, all your frozen food would be ruined.

Err, no? I live in Montreal, I've carried produce and other kinds of food by bike or by walk in -30C to +40C weather. It doesn't take so long that your food becomes damaged.

If you're carrying frozen food, we have bags with insulation and reflective foil on the inside. Put your frozen food there and even in +40C weather it will take much more than 15 minutes to thaw. Besides, buses and obviously the metros are acclimatized to a temperature of more or less 25C.

It really is just a non-issue. I assure you your produce are left outside for more than 20 minutes. There is no impact at all on freshness, and walkable cities promote smaller grocery stores that tend to have fresher food.

It's remarkable to see people so detached from their natural origins to believe produce will freze or spoil when extracted from the supermarket and exposed to the outside world for a few minutes. Unless you are living at the North-Pole and need to walk more than half an hour in arctic blizzards, there is physically no way your food can freeze on the way back from the supermarket.

Food grows outside, in direct sunlight, exposed to scorching heat or near-freezing temperatures. Most of the plant based food is still living in the shelf when you purchase it, and has imune systems to fight-off bacteria and the like that would otherwise colonize it. The only concern are products of animal origin in the heat, but even the most sensitive like refrigerated fresh fish, still needs at least a few hours in hot weather before they can become problematic.

Going once a week is efficient, but a little difficult to match up to a diet full of fresh fish, fruits, & vegetables.

When grocery shopping frequently, you're also going for five or ten minutes instead of two hours, and the grocery is probably on your way home.

> Going once a week is efficient, but a little difficult to match up to a diet full of fresh fish, fruits, & vegetables.

This has never been a problem for me. Many fresh fruits and vegetables will easily last for a week in your refrigerator (some for longer), and fresh fish or meat can be frozen for later use. Fruits such as berries that degrade rapidly can be eaten first, and fruits that last longer, such as apples or oranges, can be eaten later. Fruits like peaches or avocados can also be bought in varying states of ripeness, which means that different ones could achieve ripeness over the course of a week.

I lived in Dallas for a long time, at my last house a Whole Foods, a "neighborhood" Walmart and a Trader Joes popped up pretty much equidistant (7 minute walk) from my house. It is quite pleasant, actually, to walk to the grocery store and get groceries for that night's dinner. Since then I've always lived within a 10 minute walk and generally get one to two (paper) sacks of groceries two or three times a week, sometimes more often. Temptation to snack is drastically reduced as we only have 2 days of food in the house.

Everywhere I've lived so far, I could reach several supermarkets in a 10 minute walk. 2 miles is much too far for elderly people to walk.

Milan, Italy, here. I can reach 4 supermarkets in at most 10 minutes, walking from my home. Of course I never go there by car, it would take more time. Probably it's the same in many areas of NYC or SF (been there some 20 years ago.) But if you move into the suburbs or away from the largest cities even Italy it's a cars only country. Sure, every small town has its elementary school, parks and play areas but you can't live without a car.

> Of course I never go there by car

Do you carry your groceries, or have like a cart? I always end up with several trips to my car worth of groceries to last a week.

Because grocery stores (and specialized stores such as butchers or farmers markets etc.) are more accessible, people in cities often buy only a few meals of ingredients at a time. It's easy to stop by a store and pick up some some amount of fresh whatever as you go about your day.

Do you predominantly walk, bike, or drive to your sub-2mi supermarket?

Before covid we walked more often than we drove, but got most of our stuff from driving.

Driving for the bulk, walking for the random stuff we needed.

> Would you feel "stacked on top of each other" in a Parisian townhouse with a magnificent shared courtyard, 12 foot ceilings, and everything you could possibly want a short walk or subway ride away?

No, I wouldn't feel "stacked on top of each other" if I were a multi-millionaire in Paris.

But, in the real world, your talking about putting families into 600sqft (at very best) boxes, with audible neighbors on every side of the unit, and no way to go anywhere (no parking, no meaningful transport, because 'everything we'd let you have is a short walk away')

If you actually do what you've described, and give everyone their own townhouse, you've just reinvented the modern suburb. Because that's what modern suburbs look like, everyone in a townhouse, or a townhouse with some small strips of yard around it.

> but there are many different ways to live in a dense city

Sure, but only if you are fantastically wealthy.

> no way to go anywhere (no parking, no meaningful transport, because 'everything we'd let you have is a short walk away')

It's news to me that the Paris Bus, Tram, Metro, RER, SNCF, Velib, and the venerable scooter have all suddenly vanished.

Obviously they haven't, and they remain great options for people wealthy enough to afford Parisian Townhouses.

But unless you somehow gift me one million dollars USD or more (and the same to every single person I know), none of us are going to be able to afford to live anywhere in Paris that actually has close access to all of those things you've described, with the living situation described above.

If we're magically exceptionally lucky, at best we might get like one or two.

I lived in the center of Paris for years on a few Altairian dollars per day, and you're being ridiculous. Rental prices in Paris proper, not even the banlieue, are about the same per foot as Cambridge/Somerville/Boston while being an overall nicer place to live.

Scooters, the RER, the SNCF, the bus, the Vélib and the metro, are very cheap and service even poor parts of Paris and the Banlieue pretty well.

There's also this assumption that people in relatively segregated rich areas want to be connected to poorer areas via public transit - the opposite is more often true.

People who wish to live in neighborhoods with low crime often NIMBY off any attempts to add public transit options specifically to keep out the riffraff.

  Marin County is home to over 252,000 residents, yet it is without a BART station. If you search
  web content to find out why that is the case, you will not find a lot. There is minimal information 
  explaining why the BART doesn't connect from Marin to San Francisco and even less explaining why it 
  doesn't connect from the East Bay to Marin.

  Marin funded a large portion of the project when BART was being planned in the 1950s. But "concerns"
  over whether or not the Golden Gate Bridge could support BART suddenly arose. After San Mateo pulled
  out of the plan, Marin's participation fell through as well.

  It is not unfair to speculate that socio-economic discrepancies might have something to do with this 
  lack of transit connection. After all, Marin is the county where wealthy residents stopped George Lucas 
  from building affordable housing on his land. The median household income there is almost $84,000, more 
  than $15,000 more than San Francisco and more than twice as much as Oakland.

  A similar situation in Dayton, Ohio arose where wealthy suburbanites tried to stop the local transit 
  authority from building three new bus stops near major employment centers.[1]

[1] https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollecti...

Agreed, though I don't think we should, as a society, allow this kind of class-based segregation. It causes nothing but pain in the long term.

This is everywhere, though. In spite of the reverence for Parisian living in this thread, it limits how high buildings can go, resulting in pricier housing because "muh skyline".

I don't know about Paris, but London public transport reaches almost every corner of the city. I'm making some assumptions here, but I assume you've only ever lived in an American city. You often see Americans thinking that the terrible public transit they see is what public transit is everywhere. This is very much not the case.

If the problem is that there aren't enough acceptable quality housing with good public transit access, it seems like building more transportation and housing would be a good solution rather than building similarly expensive suburban sprawl.

> But unless you somehow gift me one million dollars USD or more (and the same to every single person I know), none of us are going to be able to afford to live anywhere in Paris that actually has close access to all of those things you've described, with the living situation described above.

Have you ever set foot in a European city ? I currently live in Paris. Bus, metro and Vélib' are three minutes away and I am not a millionaire. It all costs me 38 euros a month for unlimited journeys.

I could afford to start a family here. Two affluent people can rent 750 square feet in Paris. I could even probably buy if I accepted to be in debt for thirty years.

>I could afford to start a family here. Two affluent people can rent 750 square feet in Paris. I could even probably buy if I accepted to be in debt for thirty years.

I think this is the exact tradeoff that is being discussed. Some people are OK with the 750 square ft flat. Others want a 3,000 sqft home on a quarter acre with room to park a boat or RV.

You can get this within a 15 minute Drive of downtown Houston for $300k, but you wont be walking to the local grocery or civic building.

As far as I can tell, 300k will buy you a 250 sqft apartment in Paris, but you will have access to walkable civic amenities.

> It all costs me 38 euros a month for unlimited journeys.

Ouch. My VBB-Umweltkarte for similar costs 63 EUR a month.

Well, the actual cost is 73 euros per month but in typical French fashion my employer has to pay for half of my metro pass (also I have the cheapest bike rental plan and trips are only free if they last less than 30 minutes).

Nonsense. There are very walkable and affordable cities with pleasant neighborhoods that don't break the bank in all parts of the world (sans North America). Off the top of my head and from first hand experience:

- Warsaw

- Glasgow

- Porto

- Lisbon

- Athens (Greece)

- Berlin

- Budapest

- Barcelona (OK, this one gets pricey but is superbly laid out)

To be fair at least some of these cities aren't described as affordable by locals. Berliners are constantly complaining about the rent prices.

I also heard that lately. But up until the recent run up in prices it was quite the bargain for what you were getting.

Probably true of locals of every city in the world but Berlin in particular is still very cheap relative to many western EU cities.

Numbeo cost of living index has it 153rd in the world including rent and it's well below places like Houston which is probably the cheapest large top tier city in the US.

The cities you list are not exactly diverse economic powerhouses in the same way even Houston is. A comparison of the "GDPs" of those cities would show that much.

Also no one wants to walk through blighted or a high crime neighborhood. American cities have a lot more diversity than any of the cities you mention with income disparities separating various races and stocks of people. Homogeneity of the populaces involved is a factor often totally and wholly ignored in these comparisons of "walkable and affordable" cities.

Walking through even the ghetto-est part of Belfast may not be the same as walking through the same in Opa-locka, Miami-Dade County, Florida. There are no racial boundaries to overcome in Belfast or Budapest. Not even remotely close to the extent we encounter in America. Like I said this metric should be factored into these conversations.

Is this your long winded way of saying "I'm scared of black people"?

There are plenty of very diverse races living in Europe and nobody is scared of them.

That is completely not what he said and you know it. You should be ashamed of yourself for taking a sincere and thoughtful reply and twisting it to call him a racist.

I did not call him racist so don't put words in my mouth. I said that he sounded like he was scared of Black Americans which I think is rather obvious from what he wrote.

Granted I'm not an American and I have no idea how hostile race relations run in that country but I know that in most of Western Europe and in Canada most people have no issues mingling with other races and all neighborhoods are getting increasingly diverse.

> Walking through even the ghetto-est part of Belfast may not be the same as walking through the same in Opa-locka, Miami-Dade County, Florida. There are no racial boundaries to overcome in Belfast or Budapest. Not even remotely close to the extent we encounter in America.

I don’t know what Opa Locka is like but Belfast is not a good example to compare to.

>>Walking through even the ghetto-est part of Belfast may not be the same as walking through the same in Opa-locka, Miami-Dade County, Florida. There are no racial boundaries to overcome in Belfast or Budapest.

I think you may have picked the worst possible example for articulating your point.

Upside: an apartment in Warsaw is 2114 Zloty (about $600). Downside: it's 38 sq m (410 sq ft). On the other hand, 650-1000 sq ft apartments go for 4500 Zloty ($1200), so go pack your bags now! (https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109102/poland-average-r...) Want to buy? 2000 Euro / sq m. (https://www.globalpropertyguide.com/Europe/Poland/Price-Hist...)

Budapest? Average apartment size in Hungary is 77 sq m. Average in Budapest is 57-65 m^2. You Forints go a long way: 2824 / sq m (~$10?!?). I'm in! (https://www.towerbudapest.com/en/property_management/news/an...)

I would say those are very expensive for the local salaries.

In those countries it _really_ depends what your job is. If you're a teacher or a bus driver then yes rent is too damn high.

If on the other hand, you have a corporate job at a branch of a western company it's extremely cheap. Software developers in Warsaw easily make 10-20K PLN per month thus having rent costs less than a quarter of their paycheck.

Still wouldn't call that cheap percentage wise. Software developer in Montreal pays about 25-30% of the salary for 100m2 as well.

Yeah but Monteral is frigid for 8 months in a year and has so so public transit IMO. It is in Canada though which I dearly love (but not for its weather or its cities).

two issues with that list: most of those cities are poor, or at least not as affluent as others. and except glasgow, none accept english speakers.

and since we're doing lists, these are the most expensive cities i lived in (coincidentally some of them are the best cities in the world to live in, bar none):

- sydney

- tokyo

- singapore

- hong kong

- london

all top notch, all extremely expensive.

moral of the story is: you get what you pay for.

> and except glasgow, none accept english speakers.

What do you mean by don't accept?

Porto and Lisbon are quite easy to get around as an English speaker, most young people are very decent at speaking English.

there is a huge difference between "getting around" and "moving to, paying taxes, establishing a company, having locals as friends, selling your product to locals". none of these can be achieved with english since they do not have it as an official language. sure, there are ways around it, but it is a huge downside, especially when things get hairy.

Warsaw is TERRIBLE place to live. The city is ugly and dirty and always stuck in traffic (and yes, busses get stuck in traffic too), most office jobs are located in two main hubs, and it typically takes at least 30 minutes to get there by car (but then there's usually no place to park) or 45 by public transport. I'm very glad that the pandemic forced my company to go all-remote, because I was wasting a lot of time on my commute.

Yes, small grocery stores are at every corner but for other things, like clothes or electronics you still have to go to a big shopping mall, at least 2-3 miles away. Oh, and did I mention all those are closed almost every Sunday?

As for apartment prices even for really well paid software developer the choice is basically between buying a small (500 sqft) flat close to work, or bigger (800-1000 sqft) far away from it, with the added inconvenience of jet planes waking you up in the middle of the night, because Warsaw is stupid enough to have big international airport located near the city center.

EDIT: Another thing: after more intensive rains some of the subway stations get flooded, so they are out of service for several hours. Not that there are many subway stations in Warsaw - just 34, forming one and half line

As an American having lived in a 380 sq ft. studio in Hamburg, I can say the build quality of concrete walls was lovely. It was the quietest place I've ever lived, 7 stories a block from two parks.

I lived on a two lane street, and no one had air conditioners. You don't know how loud air conditioners and furnaces are until you live in a place without them.

I walked to work, and lived within 1/2 mile of 8 grocery stores. When I went to German class Downtown, I walked 15 minutes to a train. I could get to the airport in 25 minutes via one bus and one S-Bahn leg.

Here in the States, I also don't have a car, but I'm surrounded by highways separating me from a park, and my apartment is much much louder because Boise, the city, doesn't control the roads within it. The state does. Thoroughput is all that matters.

I still live 0.5 mile from multiple grocery stores, but I don't have transit here. Getting to the airport from Downtown is a 40 minute bus ride (with a 15-20 minute schedule variance) for 2.5 miles. The state won't allow the city local taxing power to improve transit, and so the city limps along, unable to expand transit that matches the limited space to expand lanes.

I assume you have never lived in Houston. Right now at 5:30pm (17:30) it's 95F (35C). I don't wanna walk 20 mins anywhere in this heat, I don't wanna stand and wait on the bus in the heat, I can't go pick up ice cream from the store and walk it home in this heat.

Surely you think, summer isn't that long, just tough it out a few months. Well I regularly run the A/C in the "winter months". Several years ago during the week of chistmas, I went to a late night movie, as I was walking back to my car to go home I noticed the following: at 11:30pm it was 80F (26C), the humidity was around 80-90%, and I was wearing shorts.

I am also Houstonian and can second this. The heat sucks and the humidity makes it even worse. And it goes on for much longer than most realize. They'll mention that other places also have a few hot days while ignoring that for the better part of the year (roughly April through October) it's not fun to be outside. I don't care if the grocery store is only a mile away, I'm still driving.

> in a Parisian...

Having occupied a 120 square foot chambre de bonne, I agree with your sentiment but I'd say it depends on a few qualifications. Like for instance not having basically plumbed closets as a large percentage of available living spaces. Building height restrictions in the city lead to a large number of tiny (aforementioned) inaccessible (few and tiny elevators) apartments.

There's the catch: is everything you could possibly want really a short walk/transit away? or is the proliferation of top-end (for you) options in a sprawling city way beyond what can be crammed within walking distance of _your_ home?

Are you satisfied with a few arbitrary restaurants within walking distance? or, car enabled, would you rather go 30 miles for that REALLY good place that would never be so close in a compact city?

Around here, the fancy restaurant has a boat dock. The people with money have boat docks. You don't walk to the restaurant! The dress code probably doesn't include SCUBA, especially if dripping wet.

I dunno about other places but I can get to everything within ~10 min bike ride in SF. I have a car too for longer trips but I really don't like driving and enjoy the side effect of free exercise. It's not for everyone, I'm sure people with kids and people in non mediterranean climates might find a more car-centric lifestyle more comfortable

I think you’re underestimating the number and quality of restaurants that are easily accessible in say a mixed used NYC neighborhood vs what’s within a 30 minute drive of a Houston suburb. Especially if you aren’t a fan of the midrange chains that seem to proliferate in sprawling areas for whatever reason.

To safely "do anything with their kids" a car is very useful. Depending on the ages of the kids...

Kids need to bring stuff. That could be hockey equipment, a drum set, or a clean playpen.

Kids wander off if not contained. A kid may get off a subway at the wrong stop, lost in the crowd, along as the rest of the family continues on down the line. A kid may fall onto the tracks.

Kids should be kept from licking public spaces. Kids should be kept from eating food found on the ground. Kids should not be able to play with hypodermic needles.

Sounds like some paranoid parenting that seems to be in style right now. In Tokyo kids take the subway by themselves as young as age 9. In denser cities the density helps in that other people help socialize/watch your kids and they can bike around to their friends place when they are older. As someone who grew up in a denser area, then moved to a sprawly suburb where you were dependent on your parents for getting you around, and lack of public space made activities revolve around consumerism, I greatly preferred the dense area.

Kids aren't born at that age. It takes 9 years. How are the little ones supposed to travel?

At one time, mine were these ages: 8, 6, 4, 2, 2, 0

Doing that on the subway would be nuts.

I actually know somebody who, as a kid, got off the subway at the wrong stop. That really happens. The crowd seems to be leaving, the kid goes, and before the parents can react the subway is moving again.

Activities need not revolve around consumerism. Find a less-densely populated area, and there will be wild space like forests and streams. Backyards can be pretty big too. Consumerism is more of a city thing, since there is no backyard and no forest.

If you have time to drive them somewhere you also have time to take them via public transit in a well connected city.

Absolutely nothing is "nuts" about taking six kids on the subway, I really have zero idea where that idea is coming from - I just can't understand it. My grandma never knew how to drive and she would take my cousins, siblings, and I all around town on the bus. No big deal at all, totally normal. There would be somewhere around 1-8 kids at any given time.

As a lifelong car-free European this almost reads like a parody, although I understand how you might get accustomed to a mindset like that.

I neither want nor need to be a taxi driver for my kids. From the age of seven they have been perfectly capable of getting to school, orchestra practice and sports by themselves using the subway, local trains and buses. The drum kits and equipment can be stored on location, and whatever they need to carry (the cello is heavy) builds strength or can be wheeled.

At their age, back in the day of no smartphones, if I got lost in the city I could ask any adult for help, and they would be delighted to help me.

Assumptions aside, I think this raises a valid question of how we balance high density urban housing and suburban housing in american cities. Can a city have both options as workable solutions?

Is there more demand for high density urban housing that cities are not meeting? If so, why?

Is there a demand for more access from suburban commuters? If so, why isn't the access available?

Are these solutions mutually exclusive?

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