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Comment by maxsilver | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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

> 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).

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