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Comment by smt88 | Hacker News Reader

I've lived in rural, suburban (McMansion-dominated), and urban parts of the US, including NYC. I grew up in a semi-rural place.

NYC was by far the most depressing and soul-crushing for me. It's lonely despite being crowded, it's filthy, it's unreasonably expensive, it's hard to get anywhere, and it's unfortunately full of people with a similarly condescending viewpoint about people/places outside the city.

I now live in a large southern city with lots of sidewalks and love it, and returning to New York makes me incredibly sad for the people who still think it's the only city to live in.

My point is not that I'm correct. It's just how I feel. Rather, I suggest you examine how you talk about your viewpoint to avoid sounding so confident about things you have no actual experience in.

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I was actually born in Poland and spent the first half of my childhood on the outskirts of a mid sized town, 2 blocks from a huge forrest, and enjoyed it a ton, as a 10 year old I was able to walk or bike to any corner of the town on my own.

I'm not being condescending about living in suburbs or rural areas, just the design of a large portion of car dominated suburban areas of the US. As an example, I just got back from Pittsburgh, where I was staying in an AirBnB that was only 2 miles north of the city. I was really excited to explore Pittsburgh and was hoping to bike or walk down to the city after work but it would have been a 50min walk down a narrow road that's dominated by F150s and mini vans, something that even as an adult I didn't feel safe doing. I got to see a large portion of the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh and most of it looked like that, as I was driving through it it hit me that there are no kids out even though it's the middle of Summer, the only place we saw any was at shopping malls with their parents.

NYC is not a soul crushing place full of condescending people if step outside of the touristy areas of Manhattan. I grew up in Queens (Ridgewood / Kew Gardens Hills) and lived in Harlem and northern Brooklyn as an adult, all of which are some of the most diverse zip codes of the world with a ton of friendly middle class people. As a teenager I was able to bike or take the train to any basketball court in the city, say hi and play with people from all over the world. These days with all of the bike lanes that they added I can bike to almost anywhere in the city in under 30min and it's my main mode of transportation.

EDIT: Good biking video demonstrating soul crushing new york https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77nmYdbJSJ0

> I'm not being condescending about living in suburbs or rural areas, just the design of a large portion of car dominated suburban areas of the US.

It sounds like your experience in Pitt was bad and I'm sorry you didn't have fun. I'm glad you found a home in NYC that you love.

What's not okay is projecting your suburb in Pitt onto the entire Midwest. There's a large geography to the US with many different cultures. What you wrote felt condescending and classist when framed alongside your projection that doesn't ring true for most of the towns in the Midwest.

To frame this with your example, if I only spoke about the worst parts of NYC and then projected them onto the entire city I doubt you'd have a very high opinion of me. That's why people don't like what you said.

He was talking about the car-mandatory suburban design of the USA, which is pretty much everywhere by law outside of a few grandfathered places that were built before the car was invented and some commercial down towns. They also tend to be very expensive since they are in short supply and high demand. It has nothing to do with the people or culture per say and his experience exists everywhere! Look at pretty much an identical experience in Houston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxykI30fS54 . The channel also has few examples of the same thing in london, ontario, canada.

In Europe, small town life is not necessarily suburban life, there are a lot of of walk-able villages connected via a train line that you could take to commute to your job in city, and they're wayyyyyyyyyy better than the sadness that is US & Canadian suburbia.

The offense people took had nothing to do with cars and more to do with generalizations and common microaggressions by coastal folks from large metros.

Honestly, I am very frustrated that this forum struggles so repeatedly to empathize with voices outside large metros, but I will attempt to break this down shotgun-style for you.

> As a New Yorker driving around middle america is super depressing.

Imagine if I called the place you're from, the place you grew up "depressing". All for a lack of sidewalks? As others shared we have woods, parks, lots of activities, etc. Yeah, it's not the same culture as NYC, but I don't think it requires being insulted. It's also not factual that you can only get around with a car. I survived til I was 16 with just a bike and rode everywhere. Still do, and now I live in San Jose.

> I can't imagine growing up trapped in my own home on a street with no sidewalks, only being able to go where my parents take me and finally growing into driving age so that I can go from parking lot to parking lot.

To most of the midwest and south, this is an extreme exaggeration but conveyed as commonplace.

I don't owe any more mental energy to this thread, so this is my last reply. I do hope that you (and him!) can be aware of the microaggressions in this thread and why they're not okay.

Many of us grew up in "trapped in my own home on a street with no sidewalks, only being able to go where my parents take me and finally growing into driving age so that I can go from parking lot to parking lot." and escaped to cities or loathe the suburbia we live in today.

Just want to add that I actually did grow up in a Midwest suburb, developed in the 1980s, and I didn't like it at all. I totally agree with OP's characterization: I enjoy walking to get around, and the built environment, which doesn't allow for that, depressed me. I relished every opportunity to spend time in the city, which is quite walkable.

Some suburbs in the SF South Bay and Orange County, CA are even worse in this respect, though. The sidewalks are there but there's no walking in places like Yorba Linda or Placentia.

I would take no offense to anyone calling the places where I grew up or have lived depressing.

Microagressions? So damn sensitive jeez.

If this is the Strong Towns YT video talking about how Houston is basically a dystopia, not all of Houston is like this. There are many walkable neighborhoods in this city. Examples: Downtown and Midtown Houston, Downtown Woodlands, Downtown Conroe, some parts of Sugar Land, Downtown Galveston, etc.

There are also (many) more suburbs with housing across all price points that are primarily accessible by car, and the families that live there that are happy with this arrangement.

As someone who lived in NYC and now lives in Houston, I much prefer the latter.

It would be cool if there were more trees or a sweet bar along my walk, but I still try to walk two miles per day.

Public transit was cool (and I was a HUGE fan of the NYC Subways), and I wish we had a commuter rail station somewhere, but I much prefer the privacy and freedom of my own car.

Also, public transit in Manhattan is much more convenient than public transit in South Brooklyn or Forest Hills, where you're usually looking at a 30 minute trip minimum to get _ANYWHERE_. (I owned a car in NYC and all but stopped taking public transit once we got it.)

I like a lot of things about Houston and Dallas, but one thing I particularly like is that you don't _have to_ live the urban experience if you don't want to. We have something for almost everyone. I personally don't think that urbanization should be foisted on everyone.

Pittsburgh suburbs were just an example, there's plenty of nice walkable spots all over America, what I was talking about are car centric sprawls where you can't really go anywhere unless you get in a car. Having traveled most of North East, East Coast, Rust Belt and West Coast of the US, this is not a rare thing that's only seen in Pitt, even fairly dense parts of Long Island are just isolated homes and strip malls.

The North Hills (suburbs) of Pittsburgh are depressing indeed. I love the work the city proper has done to make walking and cycling a priority though!

Yeah I actually really liked proper Pittsburgh and was impressed by all of the bike lanes and greenery.

You’re still just generalizing your experience in a way that implies that you actually know what most of middle America is like, when you don’t. And having lived in Poland doesn’t somehow prove that you do.

I’ve lived in the US for over 20 years and have been to more than half of the states, including all of the east coast, west coast and large parts of the mid west. The states I haven’t been to are way more rural than the ones that I’ve seen. If I had to guess I’ve probably seen more of the US than 95% of Americans.

I’ve also done road trips through large parts of Europe and can tell you that none of it is littered with strip malls, parking lots and houses on streets without sidewalks.

I also find New York City to be extremely depressing, and radically subpar urbanistically compared with Berlin, where I currently live. You can take an S-Bahn in 30 minutes or so to S-Bahn Schlachtensee and swim clean, chill and easily accessible lake - a journey to the water in New York will take much much longer, involve more walking, and involve dirtier water.

It is easy to find scapegoats for the poor urbanism of the United States, but very difficult to think of a solution without a radical change in the nature of governance.

And in Berlin you can cycle! I'm not a regular cyclist, but on holiday I felt totally comfortable renting a bike and using the bike lanes to get around.

As a resident of Berlin (that likes living there) I feel it's important to also mention NYC has almost 2.5 times as many people and unlike Berlin is part of a large urban agglomeration (the northeast megalopolis - total population ~50m).

It's not quite a fair comparison.

Right, but the original comment was (condescendingly) comparing NYC to middle America, so differing densities and other demographics are precisely the point.

No, my point was about the car centric bend of a large portion of suburban / rural America. I wrote that message at like 1am, see my comment here for what I meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32355777

Compare Pittsburgh suburb (https://goo.gl/maps/bFBWcsJ6EeL1kgVe7) to the suburbs of the town that I was born in (https://goo.gl/maps/ktkWzAUa3tyz37hQ7).

This is an even better example: https://goo.gl/maps/cAECdLXaBVoErtsFA vs https://goo.gl/maps/oBmruFK2Sqaxg6TW7

EDIT: Same goes for the Bay Area, staying by YC offices for the interviews was depressing too. Look at this: https://goo.gl/maps/ERCkS7zrHw8tM2or9

NotJustBikes has some excellent videos on the differences between US and European cities, this one captures many of the issues - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw

> "And in Berlin you can cycle!"

You can certainly cycle in New York. Cycling has increased dramatically in New York City over the past decade or so with the installation of more cycle-friendly infrastructure, including over 100 miles of protected bike lanes, city bike sharing, e-bike rental apps, etc.

Cycling in nyc has changed drastically in the last decade. It's almost good now!

And for all of the cleanliness and convenience you also have to put up with 3/4 of the population blowing their cigarette smoke in your face. Especially indoors in bars, despite it being illegal.

This can't be quite true. In Berlin smoking is prohibited in public buildings, public transportation including nearly 100% of all train stations (the exception being designated smoker areas of ~20m² on open-air platforms), shops, bars and inside restaurants. Many places offer open-air seating (they call it Terrasse but it's the sidewalk); there, being outside smoking is not prohibited. There's an exception for small-ish bars which are clearly marked as being smokers' places and for adults only (>18yrs). So I'd say you've got a good chance of not getting smoke blown into your face.

Also, while you're right in that comparatively many people in Berlin are smokers (although that might be a commonality of cities as opposed to the countryside), they're still a minority of <30% [1], so more like 1/3 than 3/4 (it can feel like every second guy in the street though).

[1] https://www.abnr.de/tabakpraevention/daten-fuer-deutschland/...

Every large club in Berlin is full of people, staff included, smoking in violation of the law.

The rules are not enforced.

What? Smoking indoors is illegal in Germany, yet germans do it outright? This is a blow to the stereotype of the 100%-law-abiding-germans that I grew up with here in only-12%-law-abiding-south-america. I'm actually being serious. I never thought that germans would smoke indoors if it became illegal. I mean, here in Brazil it's illegal (I think it became illegal in the early 2000's) and nobody does it.

Berlin is a special, lawless place. It’s the capital of German halfassery. 50% of the packages I order from Amazon never arrive.

I’ve lived here since 2008 and it is unlike any other major world capital.

Note that if you're the sort of person to be bothered by smoke, one person lighting up in a room with 100 people will be noticed by the other 99 people. It only takes 1% non-law-abiders to make everyone think that Germans smoke in bars.

I'm from Germany and this is pretty unusual. There are very few pubs where smoking is kind-of tolerated and sometimes a drunk person will light a cigarette in a club, but it's really rare and absolutely a non-issue in my experience.

I live in Berlin and u must have not been out here coz many places, especially clubs, allow smoking indoors.

I didn't experience this in Berlin; to be fair, however, I didn't spend much time in Bars there.

In Berlin, the inside smoking laws are pretty much never enforced. Some bars have dedicated smoking rooms, but many don’t. As for clubs, you can mostly expect smoking indoors. A lot of people smoke, so you _will_ encounter smokey environments when out and about, especially during the winter

Hm, I'm suprised too, where I live it doesn't happen. Perhaps Berlin is different.

There are a lot of bars that don't allow smoking, but unfortunately almost all "good" (in my opinion) do.

There's some odd dynamic going on then. What happened here in Norway was that the indoors smoking ban was at first immensely unpopular (it didn't help that the health minister at the time, who pushed it, was a Christian Democrat who fit nicely into moral busybody stereotypes). But as soon as the ban was implemented, attitudes changed overnight. Even the smokers agreed that things were a lot more comfortable. And I've heard similar stories from other places with public smoking bans.

I bet that even if a place managed to hide it from the public health authorities (they DO regularly do unannounced inspections anywhere food is served or made, after all), it would just be a colossal competitive disadvantage in most places. How strange that Berlin is different!

>> a journey to the water in New York will take much much longer, involve more walking, and involve dirtier water

It's not hard, not far to reach.

People use new york because it's the best america has. When you have the whole world, there are better places.

NYC has serious and complicated problems and it's perhaps not the best idea to hold it up as the pinnacle of a "walkable town". There are better choices to use for that example.

As you sort-of implicitly suggest, it doesn't have to be a choice between a soulless suburb with no sidewalks and a piss-soaked urban hellscape-- with NOTHING in-between.

What we do need, however, is more urban centers with walkable, complete streets, human amenities and a broad mix of different housing types for a wide spectrum income levels and NOT separate isolated enclaves for the wealthy and the poor. Especially important are appropriate and truly useable "third-places" rather just bauble shops for the wealthy, dollar stores for the poor, and distant megamalls for the middle-class surrounded an ocean of asphalt.

Where are you going in NYC? I live in a tree lined neighborhood with pleasant little cafes and restaurants. I bike a lot of places and I'm equally close to two large parks. There's some mix of incomes as the adjacent neighborhoods blend together. I hear the schools are pretty good, and there's good train access.

Some people think New Yorkers live in Times Square or the Empire State Building.

woah... I am not "against" NYC. I think it's awesome as a whole and I go there frequently. But yeah, it does have deep problems, the cost-of-living is borderline insane and it REALLY DOES smell like pee in far too many places.

I am just saying that NYC is not the best example of where we want urban centers to aspire to. For one thing, nothing in the USA is as big and or has the financial resources of NYC.

Towns in the US that want to improve their housing situation need to look towards what OTHER SIMILAR towns are doing and are successful at. NYC is such a weird case on the basis of scale and density.

Yeah, cost of living is a serious issue. We've been under-building housing for nearly 30 years.

I think that's all basically fair. I'm interested in how some places in Utah are trying to tackle housing, but haven't spent much time reading about it yet.

This is the kind of comment you write when your only experience with NYC is as a tourist in the densest parts of Manhattan.

NYC is not midtown manhattan. Please go check out Queens or Brooklyn next time you visit, I promise you it's safe and full of walkable and bikeable streets.

It's the cars for me. I hate driving. I hate how everyone having a car makes it necessary to drive everywhere. Very few cities in the us let you get away without owning a car.

NYC isn't perfect, its just better than everywhere else ive lived.

> I now live in a large southern city with lots of sidewalks

So you pretty much agree with the person that you're implying is an elitist, and live in exactly the same neighborhood they would choose if they found a good job in your city. You're not defending McMansion-dominated neighborhoods very well.

I don't understand the aggression.

It's not that that person was wrong. They were right -- about their own preferences.

They feel sorry for people who are different from them and want different things. Some people love being able to drive places (my disabled sister is one of them).

I feel sorry for people who don't know they're in a bubble. Maybe they truly want to live in a cookie-cutter McMansion suburb and just won't allow themselves to consider it for cultural reasons. That specifically is unlikely, but some version of it is probably happening, and they're missing out as a result.

I think it has to do with what stage you are at in life. If I was an eight year old kid NYC would be terrible: no pool, no pet dog, no backyard, rough schools, dirty public transits, restaurants don't have kids menus, etc etc. If I was a 23 year old college grad - NYC is the place to be: high paying stressful work, awesome happy hours, awesome C level mentors, easy to find roommates, killer Manhattan apartments, etc etc. If I was a 43 year old family man, NYC would again be horrible: terrible schools, long commutes, high crime, expensive beer, no car parking for kids, insane mortgages or rent, parks covered in homeless, old run down apartments.

Sound like urban living is not your cup of tea. Which is entirely fine and something YIMBYs strongly support.

YIMBYism is about options: those who do prefer to live in an area should not face artificial restrictions like bans on new homes in desirable areas near well paying jobs.

I love urban living and currently live in a dense part of a large city.

Condescension toward people who don't fall into that category is what isn't my cup of tea.

Gotcha.

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