Comment by Mo3 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mo3 | Hacker News Reader

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Of course there's going to be some level of separation between residential areas and other areas - but contrary to, for example the US, where you have to walk for miles or put your life in danger bicycling between a suburb and the city center - the distances are quite negligible and the space in between is friendly towards anything that is not a car.

Public transport intervals are measured in minutes, and unlike in the US, it not only connects the suburbs to the city center, but the suburbs to other suburbs as well.

Really, everything you want to do is doable and everywhere you want to go is reachable. I miss it.

Regarding coffee/meal/beer, there's little shops or cafes or restaurants mixed into the residential areas as well.

This video details the fantastic engineering very well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP-G-inkkDg

This is specifically about differences between US and Europe but also a great watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6K8KEoZwMRY

Yes, in the USA people choose between living in a city or suburb. If you pick suburb you need to use a car all the time or be on one of the few major rail lines. People are just bringing up how this design seem to capture some of the worst parts of suburb living while managing to doge the benefits of city living.

I guess so but I'm seeing 1-2 restaurants/bars in sub-neighborhoods that are about 1.5km wide.

I'm not saying the city is bad by any means, I'm just saying that it falls very short in what I would hope to be the "future of urban life". Maybe the future of smaller towns or exurbs. But there seems to be a lack of necessary dynamic spaces that change in character throughout the day as people flow in and out that you look for in great urban areas.

I mean, it is an experiment. Nothing more, nothing less. I'm sorry the BBC is dependent on clickbait titles, but Almere is really nothing too special as I have also mentioned in my original post referring to another users great post here. Some of these concepts have been in place in other cities around the Netherlands for a while, and (imo) work better there.

There is not much life going on in Almere, which might explain the lack of density of restaurants or whatever you see.

It's really just that Almere is artificial land reclaimed from the sea, so they have quite a lot of space there to experiment with their weird metal houses and green roofs. Almere is a little less dense than other cities nearby.

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