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Comment by naremu | Hacker News Reader

I've been wondering how related these feelings of distance and isolation in the middle of society are to how the area is designed.

I had always known for a long time the "why" I didn't want to go out on weekends and such, but it wasn't until I watched some of those videos from "Not Just Bikes" that it really, really struck me. I literally dread finding parking more than I enjoy finding friends.

And suburban (and frankly disturbingly high percentages of urban) America IME is a strange cross between in constant proximity of others, and constant suspicion of others. Like there's just enough people around to not be alone, but not enough to feel safe for many.

There's another comment in this thread positing that the social closeness of the old days broke down because of more urbanization, but it's clear it's sprawl that's killing socialization.

The other day a friend and I were talking about cities since I complain a lot about this now, and we did a quick check: Houston is far, far LARGER than say, Zurich, but their population density is a fraction. Everyone lives in cars that don't talk to each other, going to little boxes that mostly don't talk to each other. And the parking lots required for people to travel to a restaurant or bar means that there's less restaurants and bars.

Incidentally, I've found a single combination pedestrian/bike trail near me, and it's busier than the other trails, and people there are so much friendlier. It's a joy to go, and I'm slowly realizing I may still be introverted, but being out and about without it being a chore actually alleviates a lot of my anxiety.

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This is a bit of an unconventional POV, but I don't consider large areas of suburban sprawl to be cities but just really big towns. This covers Houston, swaths of Atlanta, lots of Southern California. There are lots of people living there compared to rural areas, to be sure, but without the density to support usable public transportation (once-an-hour buses don't count), it's really not a city at all. It's endless suburban sprawl, and many people do appreciate that. Just don't call it a city when it's really not.

I don’t think it’s unconventional, it’s just a definition of suburbs.

Worse of both world in my book. Unless you want to raise your kid in isolation.

How? My eight year old daughter gets to roam free and has seven or eight different kids she plays with on a weekly basis. A few of them daily. We’re not worried about her getting carried off because the area is super safe. We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house. It’s also very diverse, her friends parents are from Ukraine, India, Jordan, Vietnam, China, and those are just the people I’ve met. The American suburbs are an excellent place to raise children.

I've found that it's more about the person than the area.

My friend is an urban activist and he always complained that his childhood neighbourhood wasn't conducive to meeting people.

Recently I learned that we actually grew up just a few bus stops from each other. For me it was never an issue to hop into a bus/subway train and reach my friends - usually unannounced.

Some people want to be forced to socialize - others find ways to socialize with those around them. And others only want to socialize with copies of themselves.

Easy to meet people, and easy to hop on public transport to visit existing friends, are two very distinct things. How did you meet these people who were not within walking distance?

School mostly - my family moved to the other side of the district when I was in 6th grade, but I already had an urban card and the right to go out whenever I pleased as long as was back by 7pm, so we stayed in touch, even though I went to a different middle school where in turn I met more people living closer to my new neighbourhood.

The only people my age in this new neighbourhood were bullies and/or juvenile delinquents, so I didn't make any friends there.

My closest circle currently is my class nerd group from middle school with one additional guy from a high school the two of those went together. The urban activist friend I met through another guy from this bunch, who introduced me into some extracurricular activities in his school which I could attend.

I also have college friends who, like me, didn't move cities to go there. One of them is actually a guy who my primary school friends met in their middle school and who went to my high school, but we only got to know each other better in college. We were all spread out over this 1.7mln city, but that was no problem since everyone had phones.

No, American suburbs are good enough compared to American cities that are just filthy. Cities outside of US are just fine for raising children.

> Cities outside of US are just fine for raising children.

Idk, there are many cities outside the US where I wouldn't want to stay more than absolutely necessary, let alone raise children.

There's a lot of dangerous cities in the world. Lots of countries have weak governments unable to keep the peace, with social life disrupted by crime, strife, unrest, distrust. But there are also lots of countries that are much, much safer than the US.

US certainly has its share of horrible cities.

That said, US is a collection of regions with very different social setups and it is easy to move between them. It is common, as preferences change, for youngsters to live for a few years in one state, settle to raise children in another, then move as empty-nesters to third.

If safety is what one is after, one can find a place that is super safe, comparable on safety to anywhere in the world. Someone else would aim for nightlife instead. This flexibility is what makes US very livable for me. Just my 2c.

Definitely this. I grew up outside Baltimore and went on to live in Boulder CO, Orange County CA, moved back home and then to LA on a whim. Finished school in Nashville, TN and my wife and I are about to get out and move to Maine. Zero red tape whatsoever- the flexibility and ease of traversing and moving around the USA is definitely awesome and rarely discussed in terms of the benefits of living here. There’s something for pretty much everyone and the culture varies greatly from region to region, city to city.

With freedom of movement, it's just as easy to move around the EU now. But I don't have to make a trade-off between safety and nightlife.

But I've got to admit that Maine looks pretty safe according to https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/charts-and-maps

First of all, I am not bashing EU or Europe -- great countries, great history, etc. But I would pretty strongly disagree on "just as easy to move around the EU" part. From what I understand it is super smooth for vacations, but not nearly as frictionless to move around semi-permanently. For example, someone graduating in Norway, moving to Spain for 3 years, then on to Germany would see friction in renting a flat, sending children to school or buying a house. If this is not the case, I would love to be corrected.

Also, it sounds strange to me to look at guns as an inverse proxy for safety. I would, especially with kids, first look at drug prevalence and second at accidents on the roads (both cars and bikes). Which reinforces what I started with: the ability to select the place I want to live in based on my own preferences. Given a wide variety of options, both politically and socially, one can usually find a place they are happy in. My 2c.

For school you may have language barriers, depending what language(s) your children speak. They're entitled to a place at school though.

The only barrier to buying a flat or house might be slightly reduced access to loans. I found in Denmark it is easier for a Dane to get a loan for 95% of the house value, but foreigners might only get 80%. EU citizens are somewhere in the middle, depending what the banks think.

Language is the main problem. If you aren't fluent in the new country's language, you can have problems with government bureaucracy, school/work, socialising, children's lives, doctors etc. If you speak English these are much reduced in countries with high English proficiency (IS/NO/SE/FI/DK/NL/LU/CY, obviously IE/MT). Or, if you are moving where there's already a significant community of people speaking your language.

Good to know, thank you! Totally fair on language, I assumed that a person moving to a country will have to learn (or, better, already know) a language.

Do kids from other countries tend to be accepted well in schools? I heard that at least in France schools can be very clique-ish and coming from the outside the kid can face significant hurdles. But I am just parroting what I heard elsewhere.

Highly skilled professionals in some fields (engineers, scientists, software developers, very senior managers etc) can often find a job with only English. These people are more likely to send their children to a foreign-language school, even if they have to pay for it, as they might not plan on staying forever.

Not knowing/learning the language also works for some jobs like cleaning or agriculture, if so many workers are migrants that everyone speaks Romanian or English etc. Also postgraduate students.

Plenty of people from the north who move south when they retire (e.g. Netherlands to Spain, Germany to Greece) move before learning the language.

How quickly people learn the local language depends. Slowly in Denmark or the Netherlands where English is almost universal and work is often done in English, quickly in France or Italy where the opposite applies. Slowly if you're 65 and surrounded by other Dutch pensioners.

From what I know of France, a child from the other side of France can also be excluded, but this is from French emigrants teasing each other. I haven't heard of similar problems in Denmark.

Growing up in London I didn't even notice the European immigrants in my class and could hardly exclude the 40% of the class who were descendents of South Asian immigrants, but this varies significantly around the country.

I expect compared to the USA there's much more reluctance to move when a child is 14-18 years old, unless they can be certain of a place in the French school in Copenhagen etc. But this is primarily because of the difference in exams and language.

Depends on the school of course. The school of my children has plenty of foreign kids, or kids with foreign parents at least, and that's not a problem at all. But Amsterdam is a bit more cosmopolitan than most places, of course. It might be harder for the only foreign kid in a small village. Or not. It all depends.

Not sure if there was much need for snark, I was simply stating some positive aspects of living in the U.S. (becoming increasingly difficult) - would be nice to not have the violence piece thrown in my face. There are also plenty of cities with “culture” and low levels of gun violence here. San Diego, Denver, Portland, Austin for example of bigger cities.

Some of us have family and friends here or simply can’t afford to live in or move to the EU if we wanted to.

It's not snark. Safety is a serious issue for me when it comes to my kids. An issue that I don't have to worry about here, but I'd feel quite a bit different if we lived in an area where you have to take the possibility of school shootings into account. It's good to know that's not an issue everywhere in the US, but I honestly wouldn't know in what part of the US it's not an issue; from the outside, it seems they can happen anywhere.

cool. just saying- consider yourself fortunate as I was born in one of the most violent cities in the world (Baltimore) to an over-bearing mother who had a very hard time with me leaving despite the riots, corruption, and nightly gunplay I could hear ring out from my row home. We are quite close but she didn't speak with me for months when I moved.

I do sympathize though. I do not have kids (yet) but our move from TN > Maine is definitely partially motivated by the fact that I said I would absolutely never raise a child in the south due to gun culture and archaic legislation in general. For example most states in the south still allow school teachers and administrators to hit children- most of this happens in Mississippi and TN, then basically other states where lots of poverty, christianity, or mormonism are.

I grew up in an American suburb and now live in Boston. I like that the city is more walkable, but still not very walkable. Transport is a hassle. The city streets are also often unclean, and there are some folk on the streets who most people would rather not associate with, e.g., homeless, vulgar, etc.

What is it about cities outside of America that make them better? Do you any any examples? Do you have any suggestions what we could do in America to emulate that?

Any American city of sufficient size has many parts, some better than others. Much of Baltimore is unpleasant or dangerous, but the Mount Washington area looks suburban and is pleasant. There are dangerous and unpleasant parts of Washington, DC, and there are parts that are fine. There are some troubled places in suburbs, as well.

I think this is a very rare situation in the US and depends heavily on either luck or targeted buying to land the right neighborhood at the right time.

I grew up in a wonderful neighborhood in a nice suburban area, but I was the youngest kid by about four years so I never walked to a friend’s house.

I also never realized I was missing anything until I moved to a non-US city in my twenties and found out how different life could be in a human-scale environment.

> We lived in the city before and it was dangerous and the neighbor had a crazy pitbull chained up that’d break out all the time so we couldn’t let her out of the house.

That's not specific to cities. My wife grew up on a farm, where neighbours lived a hundred meters away, and her brother had an entire chunk bitten out of his leg by a neighbour's dog. I grew up in a village, and I was terrified of some of the dogs there.

We live in a city now, and although we live in a street with a lot of dogs (to the dismay of my cynophobic kids), all dogs are very well behaved.

> The American suburbs are an excellent place to raise children.

I guess it varies. I've heard stories of American parents having CPS called on them merely for having their children play outside. Many American suburbs don't have the bike paths or even sidewalks necessary for kids to get around.

Oh yeah CPS came and determined we weren’t neglecting our children when some busybody called on us. It was annoying.

Then she lost her job and had to move away, which I definitely didn’t feel any sense of schadenfreude from. We ended up buying her an Apple Watch with cell service and the complaints stopped.

I think us letting our daughter roam free has changed the general mood of the neighborhood and I’ve noticed far more children playing outside. We’ve been the catalyst to get everyone to just chill out. Be the change you want to see in the world and all that.

That is pretty awesome. Well done.

I have lived both in suburbs and cities and there are just as many poorly-kept and dangerous dogs in one as in the other.

Huh? Growing up in the burbs (90's and 00's) I had dozens of kids around my age within biking distance.

This is changing, kids are riding a lot less than in the 00s (here's one of many articles):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/06/04/fewer-kids-...

It may be social, in that letting kids roam on their own is not as acceptable and could get you in trouble with courts. Also, "cars" are more dangerous these days, ans they shift into more trucks and SUVs with massive blind spots and distracted drivers, and there have been many efforts to eliminate penalties for speeding, and the difference between 20mph and 30mph is literally a ton of death.

The number 1 thing I would love for my child is to live in a place where I was not in constant fear of cars when on the sidewalk or street. It wasn't like that when I was a kid in the suburbs in the 80s. And I will likely have to leave the US to find what I want.

>And I will likely have to leave the US to find what I want.

Yep, that's exactly what I did. I'm in Tokyo now, and it's mostly what the "NotJustBikes" crowd is asking for: great public transit, walkability, lots of bike-riding, etc. I see kids walking or riding bikes by themselves all the time. I finally realized I was never going to be able to live in this kind of society in the US, so I found a place that had the lifestyle I wanted and moved there.

Helmet rules are a key part to that, it encourages the incorrect belief that riding a bike is dangerous (not to mention being something else to deal with), thus fewer do it

I was an extremely active kid, biking everywhere until the street lights came on pretty much every day.

The helmet safety panic really crushed a lot of my enjoyment of life. Made riding a bike utterly miserable for me - both socially with my peer group at the time, as well as it being massively uncomfortable to wear. Not to mention getting in trouble dozens of times for leaving it at whatever location.

I usually would end up biking outside sight distance of the parents and ditch it under a bush for later retrieval. But once this rule was enforced on me, my biking was severely curtailed as it didn't have the same simple joy of freedom it had beforehand.

I had the same experience. My memory of first grade until high school is getting home from school and hopping on my bike to ride to a friends house. I hope my kids can experience the same.

Sure, that’s a defensible argument on the merits against the colloquial usage of the word city as applied to some of these places but you’re running up against the fact that the term “city” has been eroded to near meaninglessness in North America.

New England has counties and townships and cities, California and Texas only have counties and cities. Even a place that calls itself a town is still a city as far as their laws go, so advocating your position is going to run up against practical issues with people about why you’re saying their city isn’t a city.

We already have terms for this, and it’s called the suburbs.

And a few places like Virginia, you have Cities and Counties, and you can only be in one or the other. Sort of a Vatican City/Italy situation, except the same country.

I like the idea. Simplified governance

I omitted it for simplicity, but San Francisco is basically that: a consolidated City and County, the only one in the State. I mean in legal effect it washes out to a charter county that is also called a city, we have a Board of Supervisors and a Mayor but no city council, and we employ both a Police Department and a Sheriffs Department.

Texan cities though, some of those cross into three counties.

Even worse, some of those "cities" only have about 3000 people in them.

I don't think it's that unconventional. I'm a published critic of American-style automobile sprawl, and I've argued that 90% of what notionally passes for a metro area in Middle America should be reclassified as a rural area in the eyes of most reasonable people from elsewhere in the world.

If you can't walk to a corner store, you're not living in a "metro area" in my opinion.

In the UK you would barely even have neighbours if that were the case, it would be properly rural, US 'suburban sprawl' needs a different word IMO, it's a housing estate basically (though that implies social housing) but a spectacularly isolated/car-assuming one.

Yeah. In other countries, suburbs are essentially just less dense parts of the town, but still has most of what makes a town a town. Suburban US is not much different from desolate rural areas minus the farms.

I grew up in a rural area and currently live in a suburb… They are worlds apart in terms of:

* Proximity to (non-farm) work * Available public/private schools * Municipal amenities like parks and libraries * Basic retail services - groceries, clothing stores, etc. * Social activities/clubs

In short, other than needing a car to get around both places, they don’t have much in common at all.

I would say suburbs are smaller communities next to a major city. Most inhabitants usually work in the city, and the suburb is clustered around a center with the town-hall, activities like an ice-cream shop, and a mass-transit connection to the city center. They also have an easy connection to a major road/highway taking you to the city. The connection to the city is easy and commuting expected. The suburb is similar to a town in a sense that it is self-sufficient with a school, pharmacy and one, two restaurants, but with few cultural activities due to the competition from the city. Inhabitants spend most of their time in the suburb and children grow up there, but due to easy access to the city people living in the suburb often go into the city to shop, go into a cinema, meet friends or into a museum/theatre. The symbiosis with the city differentiate the suburb to an adjacent smaller town.

It's the idiotic American zoning laws. If an are is zoned for single family homes, you can't even put up a 7-11 in there. Even though it'd have booming business 24/7 just from people grabbing stuff ad-hoc that they forgot during their grocery run...

Instead people have to get into their 7-11 -sized trucks and drive to a store with a parking lot that's larger than many European neighbourhoods.

How do mexicans survive in the USA without a Costco and a taco vendor every half a mile?

Rural doesn't seem quite right--in rural areas you can actually buy food at a roadside food stand. NA sprawl is effectively 'housing desert' where the only thing is housing.

If anything, you are being too nice to US suburbs: It's perfectly possible to have towns that are much denser than any US suburb. My Spanish home town has about 100K inhabitants: You'd not call that a city anywhere in the US. And yet, It's basically a circle with a one mile radius: Yes, just one mile. In that situation, one can walk everywhere, and public transportation is limited to the elderly, people carrying heavy things, and the impatient that live in the outskirts of town.

As a pre-teen, I could go to any of my friend's houses to do tabletop roleplaying all by myself. If my mother needed a break from parenting, she had three different siblings living within a quarter mile. When your average building is 6 stories tall, and your typical street is 30 feet wide building to building, a quarter mile circle holds a lot of families! In comparison, my neighbor from across the street in the US suburbs is 60 feet away, door to door, and a quarter mile circle won't get me to 300 front doors, total.

I think people don't realise how dense an area can be without needing highrises.

Even just townhouses which are still "single family" buildings on their own land are roughly 4x denser than detached houses.

Single family homes often also have lawns and yards, which is mostly unused space

> When your average building is 6 stories tall, and your typical street is 30 feet wide building to building, a quarter mile circle holds a lot of families!

Someone walking through a six-story downtown is, by such a measurement, traveling faster than a car traveling at ~90 mph through suburbia.

(Of course, a car can't travel that quickly through suburbia.)

How much use you can pull out of that depends on how it is zoned. In European cities it is not uncommon to have grocery stores, pubs, cafes, bakeries and such within walking distance of your home. My next grocery store is 2 minutes by foot. The next 24/7 store where I can get beer 5 minutes, the next park 8 minutes.

In the worst flat in these terms I ever had in a city over here was 10 minutes walk to the next grocery shop and this was a dirt cheap flat on a loud main road.

Even parts of the town where you have mostly residential housing will have the occasional small shop, grocery store, gas station or similar. If I understood zoning in the US correctly this kind of mixing is at times even forbidden?

yes

https://youtu.be/TaU1UH_3B5k

https://youtu.be/qQ7MP2e7Bqk

> In European cities it is not uncommon to have grocery stores, pubs, cafes, bakeries and such within walking distance of your home. My next grocery store is 2 minutes by foot. The next 24/7 store where I can get beer 5 minutes, the next park 8 minutes.

To be fair this exists in many of areas in the US as well.

From my suburban single family home in a small town in California I can easily walk to all those things in a few minutes, including 24x7 supermarket, another nicer supermarket, plenty of restaurants, movies, stores of nearly all kinds, playgrounds, sports fields, etc.

very interesting way to look at it!

100k is certainly a city. That’s quite large - and for many places in the US the local “city” is of that size.

People definitely call Ventura, CA “the city” and its 100k.

> 100k is certainly a city.

In the UK “city” status is conferred by being on the government’s list of cities and isn’t automatic based on size or presence of a Cathedral or anything else.

See: Tom Scott on YouTube “the town which forgot to be a city” - https://youtube.com/watch?v=kBaLb1C4WAg

In Netherland it traditionally means the place has city rights. But Den Haag (The Hague) never had city rights (being the seat of the count of Holland), so despite being 500k large, it's technically not a city. Though in all other aspects it really is. A much younger city, Almere (200k+), a fairly new suburb of Amsterdam but now the 5th largest city in the country, is far too young for such city rights. But we also have "cities" that have only a few hundred inhabitants.

The province of Friesland famously has 11 cities, but many of those are tiny, and it doesn't include several of the largest towns that are not technically cities.

One thing I learned from the comments of that video (Lennart Regebro):

> In Sweden, the concept of "city" was removed in 1971. Everything became just municipalities.

> This annoyed Stockholm, so in 1983, Stockholm municipality simply renamed itself "Stockholm Stad" (Stockholm City). That pissed Malmö and Göteborg off, and they also promptly renamed themselves to be cities. Today 14 municipalities n Sweden claim to be cities.

Some places in the US define what a city is, but it can be very small - Fourth class: Cities with 9,999 or fewer residents.

It has more to do with what services the city provides vs the size (cities provide trash pickup, etc).

More Europe anecdata:

I live in a small town of around 2000. Within 5-10 minutes walking I got: a restaurant, a cafe, a grocery store, pizzeria and kindergarten. Within 5-10 minutes of biking I have: public library, another grocery store, two bars and a restaurant. Public transport is readily available to take me to the neighbouring hustle-bustle (pop. 600'000) within 35 minutes. So my town is 50 times smaller than your Spanish example but it is perfectly possible to have all these services at this scale as well!

The 2k town often/usually only has one of a cafe/restaurant/grocery store. Sounds like you've got a good town though!

I live in a "mid sized" european city (500k), about 2km from the center, and the _only_ think I use my car for is getting out of the city. Within 10m walking I have pretty much everything I need, and within 20m of public transport (ironically, walking can be quicker for the short distances), I have pretty much everything I _want_!

I live in an area in one of the major European cities (Budapest) that locals just call "the village".

It's right in the middle, close to the central district. It's got everything. From barbers to art galleries, from Portuguese cuisine to folklore shops, from luthiers to really good schools. A bustling art scene, clean streets. A huge shopping centre a nice park and an international transportation hub are all in in walking distance (<10 min), while the district itself manages to stay cozy and friendly.

I have friends who haven't left the borders of this "village" during Covid, it's really got everything. Part of a big city while being not part of it at the same time.

Also, I come from a 20k small town (so right between the two examples above) and had a very similar experience there, apart from everything the world has to offer being easily accessible once you decide to hop on a tram or your bike.

I grew up in a 50k "small city", and I hated it personally. It was big enough to have "everything you wanted", but small enough to feel like there was no escape, no anonymity, no privacy. Everyone knew everyone, and everyone knew everyone's business. The larger city with a smaller neighbourhood (which is a good description of most european cities that I've spent time in) are a great compromise I think.

I live in Amsterdam (800k), not in the center, but within 2 km walk I have half a dozen supermarkets, untold numbers of restaurants, at least 2 hardware stores, several bakeries, pharmacists, half a dozen primary schools, a secondary (high) school.

In the village I grew up in (then 40k, now 100k), every neighbourhood had a shopping mall with one or two supermarkets, a Chinese restaurant, a few other shops, surrounded by 3 primary schools (one public, one protestant, one catholic). The same everywhere. Don't expect any bars, though. Or restaurants other than Chinese. I believe the town had one disco that served several neighbouring towns as well.

US anecdata:

I also live in a small town of around 2000 in rural Massachusetts. Within the same walking distance I have: full elementary school (kindergarten through 6th grade), public tennis and basketball courts, a public indoor gym, a grocery store, several restaurants, several bookstores, several banks, a pharmacy, a bowling alley and a few more misc stores. We also have public transport to the nearest big town but it is only a few times a day.

The only reason my town is dense and walkable is due to geography. It was settled 250 years ago and it is nestled on a river between two "mountains" (really just big hills) so once all the available space filled up 100 years ago it just stopped growing (my house is on the outskirts of town and was built 115 years ago).

In comparison I grew up in a sprawling small town in the US midwest which has embraced even more sprawl since I moved 30+ years ago and I hate going back. Its just souless and unwalkable as it has endless land to expand into and no plan to keep it human scale.

Multiple bookstores in a U.S. town of 2000 people? Is it a college town?

There are a lot of small towns like that in western massachusetts, which are in proximity to the five colleges, but aren't in them. Places like Montague or Shelburne Falls have areas of density in town that you can walk around in and get to things, and then you can drive 20-30 minutes into Amherst or Northampton or another larger town, closer to the universities.

I went to school out there and have friends from the surrounding areas, it's nice if you're wanting something more rural but still near things. The key to it is a lot of the towns were built 100-200 or so years ago, when it actually was necessary to build close to each other in community.

Western Massachusetts is unique I have 2 world class art museums and a couple of other smaller museums within biking distance of my house.

Williamstown area?

Yes.

I don't think that's a sufficient condition. I too am from a New England town that was incorporated more than 200 years ago. But it doesn't have the density or the amenities that you're describing. (I wish that it did!)

Yeah that's fair, it's never just one thing and not all old towns are going to be like that, but it's pretty common in at least Massachusetts, particularly if you're in proximity to a larger town. It's also a much denser state in general than Vermont/Maine/New Hampshire, from what I remember growing up there.

Yes, we have more Art Museums than anything we need in our daily lives. What I like about it is the lack of access to high consumption. What is bad is that the large chain stores killed the local businesses and then realized the market is too small to really care. Jbullock35 how about some clues about your town so we can try to guess.

You nailed it - I live in Shelburne Falls.

More or less the same demographics and same experience. The North Western Mass town I'm in was founded as the gateway to the west. It is nestled in low land between three mountain ranges. Our side of one range drains to the Atlantic through Hudson River the other side drains to the Long Island Sound. The public transportation is tough for us if you want to leave town. We are so mobile that I find it an odd expectation to live close to your friends.

> Within the same walking distance

Aye, but I bet GP's home town in Spain is much more pleasant to walk in from November to March ;-)

That aside, there are some real gems among Western Mass towns! I wonder, with all the empty land in this country (even in places very hospitable to human life), if it's possible to found new towns built in the "European" model of a central plaza surrounded by multifamily, mixed-use developments within walking distance? Were I a billionaire, this is the sort of stuff I would explore.

I really do love New England towns in general. I went to undergrad at a small Vermont college and being walkable or bikeable to restaurants, bars, grocery stores, etc. but also being immersed in nature was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had.

> The only reason my town is dense and walkable is due to geography. It was settled 250 years ago and it is nestled on a river between two "mountains" (really just big hills) so once all the available space filled up 100 years ago it just stopped growing (my house is on the outskirts of town and was built 115 years ago).

It's not geography, it's history. The only nice places in the US are places that were built before cars.

I always struggle with the difference between a town and a city, because Dutch has only one word for them: stad. A stad (plural "steden" is something that in the middle ages had city rights (or is it town rights?), a dorp (village) does not. And this has lead Netherland to have some steden of only a few hundred inhabitants, while some villages have more than 100,000, which of course makes no sense. The place I grew up in even has "dorp" in its name, so I will always consider it a village (besides, there's nothing to do there, but I guess that goes with suburbs), but it has about 100k inhabitants by now.

I guess to me, the real difference is density and how much there is to do. A city has a bar on almost every street corner, a village, no matter how big, does not.

Cities and towns sound pretty similar to your steden and dorp. The US can get complicated because every state defines things their own way but generally there are different legal requirements and rights for cities vs towns.

In North Carolina there is a "city" called Brevard with a population of just under 8,000 but you also have the "town" of Cary with population 170,000.

Of course there is still the issue of how the words are commonly used vs their actual legal definition but if you ask 100 different people the difference between a city and town, you'll get 100 slightly different definitions. Someone that grew up in New York City will have a very different definition than someone that grew up in Wyoming 50 miles from the nearest gas station. At the end of the day, there's just some vague notion that cities are bigger than towns.

A dorp is a village, note all the English village names ending in -thorp or -thorpe.

Although we can't trust the cognates, as 'stad' is related to English 'stead', which meant a settlement of any size.

Traditionally the distinction was you had to have a cathedral to be a city.

... I suppose the modern equivalent is a CBD.

In my Portuguese apartment block I have 2 restaurants, a cafe, a hairdresser, a phone shop and some other commercial I haven't quite identified.

From the front door I can throw rocks at 2 more cafes, another restaurant, a launderette, a playground and a car dealer. There is a basket ball court out the back.

Nothing special about my 7 storey block, but when a certain density is reached things start to work really well

Where is that more precisely ?

Lisbon suburbs

This sounds really weird to me. Where I’m from, suburbs try to distinct themselves from the city by using arbitrary landmarks, like railroads. When they gain this distinction, they are able to separate even more using taxes and schooling to create a deeper division. From my point of view, including these suburbs into the city is practically better than the trend of segregation.

I tend to disagree here. The isolation reduced travel between, which could in turn cause those burbs, to build their own stores and libraries. My closest gym is 8km away. My closest corner store is about 5km. I have a McDonalds at the 1km mark, but that's about it.

I def don't want my kids riding their bikes along the strode to the "corner" store.

Now. for playing. We have a 60km road, and a river. I can tell my kids to stay inside those and know that most cars traveling in there are local, so driving a bit slower.

I wish we had a community center/library around here. I'd love to meet my neighbours.

Towns are not really different than cities, they are just smaller. In a town you will still be able to walk to places.

On that note, being able to walk to places would disqualify most, if not all, US suburbs from being towns or cities. Other than the occasional developer created, faux "town centers" (that you laughably need to drive to), they don't even have anything in the way of a downtown or central square.

> but without the density to support usable public transportation (once-an-hour buses don't count), it's really not a city

Transportation is for rural areas. If there is support for transporting people around beyond the capacity of their legs, I'm not sure that is really a city either. The hallmark of a city is the density for having everything you need to live out life right there, never, ever, needing to step into some kind of vehicle. Density but scattering life around over tens of miles or more, requiring travel to live out life, is just rural with nearby neighbours.

This is an extreme take but IMO New York is the only real American city. Maybe Boston and Chicago. Everything else is a glorified suburb. I wish we had good, small cities in this country, but we just don’t.

New Orleans?

San Francisco?

My personal theory is that suburban sprawl killed the "third place" in modern society. If you have to drive to a place to socialize (which probably involve drinking), then you're probably not going.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

My hypothesis is it's connected to the decline in religion, or, more specifically, the mandatory church on Sunday type of religion, no matter what flavor it took.

A built in semi-mandatory third place seems pretty nifty as far as building social relationships goes.

I'm an atheist but I do remember building bonds this way in those heady pre-smartphone days. It's a shame the baby is stuck in the bathwater.

The decline in religion happened after the increase of convenience. Hence the popularity of televised religious content.

My church started streaming services during the Covid lockdowns, but it's really not the same as being there.

I think it's deliberate because plebs socializing is a destabilizing factor to the state.

Religious buildings can be third places, but the kind Christian churches that have faded out of American public life fail the “neutral ground” condition: there’s usually strong social and community pressure to make appearances, meaning that individuals can’t come and go as they please.

This is in contrast with dominant religions (including Christianity) in other countries.

Suicide rates in men are highest in rural areas, which also have highest Church attendance. Does not track. From experience, going to church doesn't necessarily mean you'll connect with other families. At most I've seen extended family co-mingling at a family member's place or resto after service. Living in the city, there is no shortage of ways to connect with others on the physical plane, should one choose to do so. Though it's hampered by zoning and the convenience of the virtualization of all experiences.

I don't think so. I'm not in US, but here „third place“ was not a thing regardless of density. In fact, now climbing out of ex-soviet past (read poverty and totalitarian regime preventing the third place as well as urban sprawl), we got both urban sprawl and growth of the „third place“. Well, little growth from next-to-none. Which is hitting a low ceiling of rather intraverted culture that is caught up in TV and interwebs. Why go to bars if everybody is sitting in tight groups-of-friends and scrolling together...

Ironically, somewhat-third-place, seems to be most active in suburbs and rural areas. Where neighbours need to work together to solve various community issues. And that turns into partying together as well. It's common to have a community house where everybody can use the space for organising whatever, from playing table games to art classes to random lectures to movie nights. While densier cities seem to be less socializing outside of family&friends circles.

I just came back from Vietnam and I noticed that many Western countries lack low intensity socialising. There are tea carts everywhere. People sit, sip tea or some other light beverage and just do nothing. They’re close to others who are also doing nothing with whom they may or may not engage with. Bars and clubs are too intense, too expensive and unappealing if you don’t drink alcohol. At libraries and coffeeshops people are often busy.

Most of Europe has a café culture. It is sorely missing from North America. You just sit outside and watch the world go by.

Berlin in particular has lots of parks, and people can go there with drinks, grills, frisbees etc. The sheer number of them means that most people are within walking distance from one. It’s great to meet without spending money. Again, those are almost absent in most of North America. You have to drive to them, so they’re inaccessible to kids. My hometown made loitering almost illegal in them anyway.

Illegal to 'loiter' in a park? What does legal use of it look like? Moving through at a swift pace with eyes straight ahead and a stamped permit that it's the most efficient path to your destination?

Hustle! Hustle everywhere!

My personal* experience is that in areas of the US where real estate is highly valued, there's a low level resentment of anybody existing without having an intent to spend money. Parks are tolerated, but the expectation is that they're purely cosmetic, to be walked through at the very most.

* My experience is not universal and is just that: my personal experience.

It's a delayed vestige of the "stranger danger" panic of the 80's and 90's. Being in a park without kids is considered suspicious in some places now. Fortunately, not where I live.

It’s also a subtle way to punish poor people. Obviously it impacts the homeless, but even poorer people without yards or adequate access to private space to play/relax will be forced to loiter in public to get out of the house.

More like sit and scroll on your phone... :D

I love the idea of what cafes were supposed to be a century ago. But nowadays HN or some subreddits plays the same role. Now I can live in bum-fuck-nowhere and interact with other people from wherever. While saving on exorbitant rent just to be close to meeting points.

On other other hand, this kills the romanticised idea of the cities. But are we after „city life“ as a cargo cult? Or exchange of ideas? Internet enables later from even most remote points of the world. While former feels more like roleplaying nowadays.

Community building is slightly different from cafe culture though. Cafes culture is similar to social media bubbles. Community that connects people physically living in the same people allowing to solve practical problems of the day is needed one way or another.

If you think that meeting someone over drinks is equivalent to exchanging a few comments asynchronously, one of us is blissfully unware that they're missing out.

Café culture simply means that you have a convenient place to meet with other people with some regularity. You really don't need to be judgemental and dismissive about it.

I see two faces of it. One is meeting local people as in building local community and fulfilling socialising bar for yourself. Another is collaborating on ideas long-term. Those are very different.

For me the most valuable part is the later. And interwebs do wonders in this space. Same conversions IRL may have been nicer, but there's no way I could have been part of them (or at least so many of them) otherwise. And if you're in a crowded cafe watching a famous person... It's not 1-on-1 conversation either, much closer to Reddit's AmA thread...

As for building local community... IMO Cafes are too restrictive. A decent community space wins all day any day.

I'm saying that most of Europe has access to such spaces, and that they serve an important purpose. It's a good place for loosely planned social encounters. Whether or not you personally like them is irrelevant.

> And if you're in a crowded cafe watching a famous person

You can go to another café

Born, raised and living in Europe, it seems to me to be a myth of days long gone. I love the idea in theory. But I just don’t see it playing out in real life. They do play a role. But I do see similar, if not better, scenarios happening in different settings.

Another cafe wouldn’t have that famous person though. Which is fine. Just saying that many real life interactions ain’t deep 1-on-1 conversations.

You think parks are "almost absent" in North America?

I feel like parks in most of the U.S. are dominated by activities. Sports, jungle gyms, etc. Often times there’s not a great place to just sit down and socialize.

every single park ive ever been to does in fact have this weird little thing called grass

But there's also the sprinklers that go off every minute to keep the grass looking healthy so no one can sit on it. Or the grass is part of the baseball field. Plenty of good parks in the US for hanging out but wayyy more bad ones where just socializing seems like an afterthought, or not a thought at all.

Nah there's still plenty of "An area that's mostly nature and you can just walk through and enjoy it" but the vast majority of them were set up a hundred years ago so the reality is that most of them aren't even remotely close to population centers anymore. This means if you want to walk in a park, first you must drive there. Also in many places, staying past sundown is not allowed, as in the cops drive in (like they will actually drive around on the grass if they physically can!!) and sass you.

Yeah obviously the US is huge and there’s plenty of nature to be found, but somehow we’ve just forgotten to integrate that into our communities and walkable areas completely.

Now I'm wondering if you think we have tiny parks or gigantic playgrounds

The parks as I know them are.

In Germany, there is a park within walking distance, and usually a bike paths leading to it. You can also walk along numerous paths in the forest and along rivers.

In Canada, I would have to drive to them, or risk biking on busy roads. It boggles my mind that you have to drive to the place where you walk. These parks also tend to severely restrict what you can do, and when you can do it.

Sure, there is amazing nature if you can drive to it, but daily access to green spaces is sorely missing.

Work-from-home (as much as I love it) has also killed the "second place" for a lot of people.

Not to mention grocery delivery apps and such. Just speaking personally, it's perhaps a little too easy to never leave my home. Doing so now requires a deliberate decision.

Here’s another thing no one talks about because it’s taboo: drink driving. Right up until the mid 70s, it was completely socially acceptable to drink and drive. Now I agree that it was probably a good thing that’s it’s been banned, but having to pay for and organise transportation to go to whatever event it is you want to go to adds another substantial layer of friction to socialising. Not to mention the fact that the alcohol itself meant people were probably more sociable. It seems that due to all our technological and cultural change since the 70s we’re living physically healthier and safer lives but at the cost of poorer social and mental health.

Uber makes things a lot simpler.

Not in rural areas. Maybe for suburbs. At least in SF ppl Uber a fair bit, but I suspect most trips on a night out are not replacing someone driving their own car.

Maybe, but it also adds a (let's say) $20+$20 to your bill at the end of the night. For a lot of Americans that's not exactly cheap.

More like $50 there and $70 back.

Also, you can be banned from Uber. It is rare, but it can happen, and then what.

"If you can't afford that price for a ride, plus a $50 tip on top for the hard-working driver, you're a piece of scum and you should just stay home." - typical liberal American

"This is the Free Market at work, and if you can't afford it, you're poor and should just stay home. Poor people are subhuman trash." - typical conservative American

At least here in Brisbane, Australia, it went from $5-10/ride at the peak of VC funding mania to $25-50/ride now

At least it still beats the experience of taxis in Brisbane. Before Uber were allowed at the airport, I had multiple trips where drivers assumed I was a visitor and tried to take me on circuitous routes to increase their fares, and the experience after nights out was no better.

Since the infinite funding stopped artificially holding prices low, I still found Uber cheaper generally speaking, and with a better experience. (I will say that my experience living in the UK does not hold the same; taxis here are generally better.)

I agree. A DUI costs easily $10K regardless of outcome. Lost opportunity cost of not networking (job opportunity, friend opportunity, happiness, therapy) easily has the same cost over just a few years. Uber is very cheap in comparison… many people don’t make the comparison.

I had a DUI. Cost me 3k-ish. It only cost 10k to hire an attorney who will tell you to plead guilty anyways. Money well spent...

If you're in Wisconsin, you get a punch card. Tenth one's free!

Found the rich person who thinks 50$ to go 8 miles is normal

This is why I love living in a city with a reliable train network. So many times I have left a party completely drunk late at night, and been perfectly able to manage my way back home. Seems like Americans are left with the choice to either risk killing someone/themselves driving home or just not going out.

> Seems like Americans are left with the choice to either risk killing someone/themselves driving home or just not going out.

If only there was a service where you can pay money to be driven somewhere... I heard Americans invented these smartphones with apps, Maybe they can even invent an app-based version of that paid ride service!

Yeah if I had to pay $50+ (The actual price uber charges for this trip) to get home, I'd just stay home.

Thankfully with a functioning public transport network, it costs me $4

That sounds like quite a distance.

Taxis are incredibly cumbersome to hail, if not impossible, in less dense areas. Uber is also relatively new on the scene in the grand scheme of it. You didn't always have that option.

If I spend $15 on drinks then Ubering to and from has just at least tripled my cost of going out.

If going out with friends costs $20 a head instead of $45, more people will want to do it.

Even with trains, commute isn't free.

Yes, you can see I costed out a non-car round trip at $5. In NYC on the MTA it would be $5.50; in DC, between $4 and $8.

One thing I do in DC is ride bikeshare to the bar (where the amortized cost of the ride, with my annual membership, is basically $0) and then take metro back ($2).

And of course this is all moot if you can just walk, since it is always free, which is one major benefit of denser mixed use walkable neighborhoods.

This is a comment by a rich person who is ignoring the subject matter, or someone who hasn't used uber post-covid

Move to Baltimore, my friend. There are at least six bars within five blocks of my house. You’d have to get pretty sloshed to not be able to make the walk back.

Yeah, totally safe walking drunk in Baltimore at night...

Lay off the Fox News

Yeah, it's just Fox. Not official crime statistics.

Or even Wikipedia: "The American city of Baltimore, Maryland, is notorious for its crime rate, which ranks well above the national average. Violent crime spiked in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray on April 19, 2015, which touched off riots and an increase in murders. The city recorded 348 homicides in 2019, a number second only to the number recorded in 1993 when the population was nearly 125,000 higher."

In context, the UK, with 65+ million people had like 700 for 2022, or around 60 times less per population...

I don't understand why people like to bath in drama like this. Yes, there are statistics... But, to be a bit cynic, you can spend your whole life being afraid of everything. But you can not spend the rest of your death being sorry about the decision that led to your demise. IOW, I'd much rather have a burden-free life where I might be a little unlucky and die before I reach the average lifespan... Instead of being careful and afraid the whole time but very old and bored.

Is it that my doctor told me that I have only a 50/50 chance of reaching the age of 30 that I see risks as a worthwhile thing to embark on. Or am I just stupid not wanting to waste my life with fear and not caring enough about becoming old?

> a burden-free life where I might be a little unlucky and die

Unlucky is being the victim of a random crime that leaves you crippled for life, not a clean death. I follow someone on social media like that, who was shot and left a paraplegic in a high-crime city.

Parts of Baltimore are objectively dangerous and it's not being dramatic to acknowledge that or want to avoid it. At some point it had a higher murder rate than the most murderous countries in the world, like El Salvador or Honduras; coincidentally, people from those countries are seeking a better life in the US, and I don't suppose you would say they should stay and have a burden-free life there?

>I don't understand why people like to bath in drama like this. Yes, there are statistics... But, to be a bit cynic, you can spend your whole life being afraid of everything.

Or you can spend your life in a safe, normal, environment, not just a crime ridden place, where crime of course doesn't end with homicides (those are the tip of the iceberg).

You know, so that you can have kids playing outside, cops not shooting first and asking questions later because of the crime rate, women not afraid of being raped or assaulted, and so on...

>Is it that my doctor told me that I have only a 50/50 chance of reaching the age of 30 that I see risks as a worthwhile thing to embark on. Or am I just stupid not wanting to waste my life with fear and not caring enough about becoming old?

You literally compared a crime ridden city to a terminal illness with big chances of dying before your time. Couldn't have put it better myself.

That people can still find joy in life or live their lives as best as they can, is orthogonal.

People can also find joy and love, and a purpose, while their country is at war, but that's not something we should tolerate as if "war/peace, it's all the same to me".

Go to https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com/?range=2022. Only 10 white people and 1 Asian were murdered in Baltimore last year. 210 African Americans were. It sucks, and it’s unacceptable socially and politically, but in terms of my own personal safety, it would be absurd for me to fear being murdered more than I fear getting hit by a car or whatever else.

That’s not to say I’m totally disconnected from it. I know I’m one degree from someone who was murdered, and I’m sure if I knew all the two degree separations, it would be staggering, but again, in terms of my life, I don’t do drugs and I don’t live in a neighborhood with gang shootings, so I’ll be fine.

For reference, 348 homicides in one year for a city of half a million people is the same risk (using the micromort) as base jumping twice in the same year, or driving 175k miles, or 85ish skydives.

Yeah, nothing to see here, move along...

heh no, America was taught by Hollywood to be afraid of Baltimore (The Wire)

People used to live in a relatively much safer country (which makes for all of the western world, western europe, UK, Australia, Japan, etc.) should be afraid of most American cities - especially certain areas and hours.

It's just that Americans in those cities have learned to normalize this violence all around them. They're OK with abnormally large rates of homicide, burglary, theft, rape, and acompanying ill like school shootings, police killings...

All major cities have areas and neighborhoods that are higher risk and not “safe”. You wouldn’t let your kid there, your partner or yourself go there typically.

I lived in North Philadelphia throughout college and a couple years after. It isn’t a lie to say you are operating at a different level of vigilance. Your behaviors change. So no, Hollywood didn’t tell me anything about North Philly, my experience did.

It’s quite amusing how everyone is saying US cities are safe and great like Baltimore, while they’re also saying “if you mostly stay in the gentrified or well established areas”. Is that even Baltimore then? Or a bubble within Baltimore?

> Is that even Baltimore then? Or a bubble within Baltimore?

If it's in Baltimore, then yes, it's in Baltimore. Why wouldn't it count? If a foreigner says, "America is unsafe" and you say, "Well, my suburb is safe," can they say, "Oh, that's not America"?

Those unsafe places are also America. I don't think anyone is arguing that there aren't some places in the US that are safe, but that on the whole, it's a lot more dangerous than Europe. The fact that some Americans have the means to shield themselves from it while others don't just emphasises the inequality.

My biggest problem, though, is the fact that schools are unsafe. The fact that schools need to practice shooter drills is heartbreaking.

When I was younger and went out drinking more often, I walked home from bars in Baltimore all the time. What the stats leave out is that (not getting into the deep politics of redlining and gentrification) the vast majority of violent crime just doesn't involve the pub districts and less neglected residential areas.

Yes, people will get mugged in the "nicer" neighborhoods once in a while. It's not something to discount or ignore. But when you hear about yet another gang shooting over the weekend, it's unlikely to be someone walking home from the bar in Hampden or Fells Point. It's in one of the neighborhoods that has seen disinvestment and poverty (and the resulting gang, drug trade, and violent activity) for generations.

On one hand I would love to not have to worry about the crime stats where I live. I don't want to avoid other people because I worry about getting mugged walking home at night. But I also hate the idea that everyone follows the same "move out as soon as you have kids/can afford it/get to a certain age" plan. It's like a constant, slow urban flight where people who are well-off enough to contribute to the city leave and only the poorest and least privileged residents remain.

I love that I can walk to so many places. When the city shut down due to a blizzard, I was fine not driving for a week or two. When it's nice out, I can walk 3 blocks to a massive park and see live music or a cultural festival. I can drive, but I can also bike or bus to work if my car is in the shop. Waterfront is walking distance. Shopping, restaurants, pubs, and galleries too. Oh, and my house cost under $200k (although I bought it a few years before the current price spike).

Yeah, I maintained https://homicides.news.baltimoresun.com for a while. Sad but true, there are one or two high profile murders in Fells Point per year, but if you're white or Asian, you are very unlikely to be murdered. It's almost all African Americans in the butterfly. I mean, it's a goddamn tragedy. You can see parts of Cherry Hill where every single block has a victim on it. Just heartbreaking stuff. But for me living in my neighborhood, murder is basically not a factor. Obviously any city you'll have to worry about muggings, but that's city life.

In another discussion about birth rate, somebody wrote something like this here in HN. "It's a lot safer on the street since we drink less and drive. So this saves many lives. But since we drink less, we meet less people and we make fewer children. But this "never born" children are in no statistic."

A person being killed and a person not being born are not the same thing at all.

I did not say "does not matter / it's the same". It was more like a point, how one thing (less alcohol) might does influece something else (fewer children).

It's still completely socially acceptable to drink and drive, at least in "redneck" parts of the country.

Not even redneck. Basically anywhere without public transit/uber people will get fairly drunk and drive.

Yeah, you're getting downvoted but this is true in rural/semi-rural areas.

Another good argument for walkable cities and good public transportation.

It's still "totally acceptable" to drink and drive pretty much anywhere in small town USA. The cops won't even pull you over. Unless you are poor.

> And suburban (and frankly disturbingly high percentages of urban) America IME is a strange cross between in constant proximity of others, and constant suspicion of others

When I lived in San Jose I trusted my immediate neighbors but someone on the street was basically a neighborhood watchdog for unkept lawns and cars that were parked too long. The neighborhood was mostly rentals, so landlords were responsible for lawn maintenance but of course these watchdog folks like to take their frustrations out on other renters. Our neighborhood never got together, just immediate neighbors, and people that lived close enough would Uber.

In contrast, when I lived in one of the poorer areas of Fort Worth and now living in the more working class area of Portland my trust for my entire street is sky high. We have friends, people help out and look out for each other. We have block parties, if there's disputes people talk it out, etc

All three are walkable places, and I live most of my life inside 5 city blocks. I'm not sure what factors make a successful community on a given street, but there are certain people that can make the entire experience miserable through seemingly insignificant actions (to them).

Curious about where in Portland this is - St. John’s?

Good guess. I live in SouthEast, near Gresham and Powell Butte Park.

Americans are friendly but when it comes to the decisions that matter (voting and the votes with our wallets) the preference is for the private over the public. People are scared to depend on each other or to be forced to interact with strangers.

So we’ll all try to have our own cars and drive on huge suburban streets and put our kids in private schools and build fences around our yards and vote down zoning laws that would promote density. And we’ll wonder why the people in that cute little European town we visited that one time seemed so much happier.

I think "scared" is the wrong word for it. People in the US tend to have very low levels of contentiousness, and that in turn makes people want to avoid strangers. The most obvious recent example is the push back against masking. In a high population density urban setting, even a few people who aren't adhering to masking raises the general risk level for people substantially. In less population dense areas it doesn't matter as much, because you're going to encounter fewer people. Another example is noise pollution. One of the primary reasons my spouse and I decided to leave the city for a more suburban area (and one of the reasons we're thinking about moving to an even more rural area) is to escape the constant presence of unnecessarily loud noise. Loud music is the major culprit. Between unbearably loud car stereos and loud neighbors (especially when living in an apartment building), low contentiousness means that even in a moderately dense area it's nearly impossible to find a moment of quiet.

It's quite possible that we're in a vicious cycle where low contentiousness causes people to be more isolated and more cynical and that in turn may cause some people to be less considerate of others, but if that's true it's still a systemic problem and at an individual level looking for more isolation is the only reasonable solution.

Do you mean conscientiousness? Low contentiousness is nearly the opposite of what you are going for

Yep, thanks.

All mask rules should have been lifted the second the vaccine was available without a wait. But the government kept it for another year. Of course we pushed back on that nonsense. Of course we don't trust those government people.

> it's nearly impossible to find a moment of quiet.

Wild. My experience has been if you live in the city long enough you don't even notice the noise. I've lived downtown for 10+ years in different major cities. There's a building being built directly behind me right now and I hear them all day long and it doesn't even phase me anymore. I'm also on a major drag where people drink all week long and walk around shouting at each other.

I kind of like it over the creepiness of being in a quiet empty house with nobody nearby..

I notice gunshots for sure but haven't heard many (any?) of those in Denver vs Dallas.

It does take its toll, though.

I've been living in a big European city for more than ten years now. I can kinda forget about the noises surrounding me, but I always tend to feel less tense when I leave for the countryside. And when I get back, sure enough, I hear all the random noises again. Upstairs neighbor dragging a chair when sitting at the table. Other neighbor taking a piss. Neighbor from across, blasting his TV or his kid crying for whatever reason.

There is never a moment of respite in the city. You wake up, you got your neighbors doign their thing. On your way to the office / park / groceries, you got the traffic noise. At the office: the AC hum and useless office chat. On the way home, traffic again. Back home? Neighbors are back, too.

If this is true, why is it illegal to build anything but low density suburbia in most places?

Well one example is infrastructure...if a formerly-rural area gets a gradual accumulation of homes, chances are they are all on septic systems...so people are using their property for waste water recycling, and there is a limit to how dense this type of living can be.

I grew up just outside a decent-sized city in Canada, now living in Texas...both places, on septic. Its not rare.

Right, but that's one of the reasons to make it easier to build infill development, which is largely illegal due to zoning, parking minimums, height maximums, etc.

I live on 3.5 acres and have a water treatment system and part of the reason is that there's a shortage of homes I _actually_ wanted, which are decent flats in the city where my kids can bike to school, so they're very expensive.

> And we’ll wonder why the people in that cute little European town we visited that one time seemed so much happier.

except they don't think that

the Americans nod politely and whisper to each other "can you imagine living that close to your neighbors? nooooo thank you!"

HN needs to just drop this notion that anyone opposed to density is a caveman. I love the fact that my neighbors can't see me and I can't see them. Everyone is one an acre minimum. We like it like that and we're not even Literal Nazis!

> HN needs to just drop this notion that anyone opposed to density is a caveman.

I totally agree with that. I've been a city dweller (in Europe) for 45 years or so and hated every second of it. I then lived in suburbia for 5 years and liked it much better.

I then just spent one year in the countryside in a very remote area and loved it. I knew my neighbors (but we all had big plots so it's not as if we could see each other) and already have made friends there.

Now I'm back to european city life and not one of the worst city (Luxemburg) and yet I hate it already. Shitty miserable apartment life, stacked on top of each others like ants "because density".

Just fuck that.

I'm going back to the country side as soon as I can.

I classify myself as an extremophile; suburbs are the worst of both worlds in that you're crammed in with a bunch of people but on a sprawling 2D plane -- large enough to have little privacy and low access to stuff, but just close enough for possible social friction. Ug.

My favorite, but less practical, choice is also countryside. :p

> suburbs are the worst of both worlds

Suburbs are a compromise for sure, but instead I'd call them a combination of some of the best of both worlds.

Personally now as an adult I'd rather live in a much more rural area to have more land and space to do things, but for children that's kind of boring. So this suburban area gives convenient walkable access to activities, places and friends for kids while still at least having a bit of space and land for the adults.

Often however the denser the urban core the easier it is for people to choose to live a short distance away in sparsely populated areas and still have ready access to urban amenities like good hospitals. In other words, those who dislike dense cities the most, should be promoting urban density as it increase options for those who like city living and for those who prefer the countryside.

Not just bikes makes it feel like the solution to everything is to be like the Netherlands. In that sense it's a fraud. To some extent yes you should be more like us and offload some of that traffic onto a bike path. To the extent that works and is efficient. But... I have lived here all my life. It is not a solution to anything else. It turns out, bikes do not talk to each other very much either.

But after arriving at destination, people can talk, no? You also dont get bothered with parking and everything is much closer, so less time in traffic, so much less thinking about how to get to destination and more about how nice it will be spending time with friends. But imo trains are better, even less thinking about commute. Living in Zurich for a bit was eye-opening. I took a breakfast with my friends in train, like in restaurant, when we went to mountains. And trains were fast and frequent, like one in 15-30min towards our destination

You still need people to talk and time slot to meet. Same scheduling issues.

I used to live in downtown of my 600k city. Moved back to outskirts of the same city. Driving is the smallest issue to meet.

Reading those discussions from afar, it feels like Americans are using urban sprawl as a scapegoat. While it's a problem everywhere else too. Even if you take away urban sprawl and driving, the problem will be there.

Well, idk, in my case it was really the transport. In the past I've lived in same area with my friends and we occasionally went to shop, walk together. In covid, I've moved in the opposite part of the city, with bus it'll take me 30 mins to arrive to them, with car, maybe 15-20, but taxi is expensive and I don't own a car+ the hassle to find parking. As result we met only on special occasions like bday or at some specific places in between but it's also not that frequent.

Did nothing else really changed in your or your friends' life?

I could say the same about my socialising now and a decade ago. But in reality a lot of other things happened - kids, parents getting old, mortgages and housing to take care of, stable jobs with more responsibilities, more resources (both time and money) spent on healthcare... It all adds up.

No, literally nothing else changed, no kids, no other job(except me, but i would say I more time free after switch). We are about~25yo each so, yeah the distance is the only thing that changed. In the past we lived in 10 min walking distance, now 30 mins on bus that doesn't have dedicated lanes and is getting pretty full pretty often. Like we are still friends and we try to meet on some occasions, but imagine in the past- 'lets go for a walk after work'-'yeah, no prob, meet in 5 mins'. Now it's -'im so tired, i don't think i want today(20-30 mins to destination+ the same to be back home), maybe next time' just thinking about how tiring it is to spend 40 mins total on transport is already killing the will to meet

Trains are great if they go where you need to go. But of course their high infrastructure requirements mean they won't always. Still to visit my friends i usually take the car as they don't live in the same city and housing near the station isn't cheap.

I was about to reply something similar. The Netherlands is also experiencing a loneliness epidemic, so just density and bikeability are not sufficient answers.

For anyone that's curious about numbers on this, every western country has a long-running social survey that asks how many close friends the respondent has. This data is usually freely available.

The real cause is literally staring everyone in the face who is reading this right now.

You can't deny that residential communities here in NL are quite different to those even in other European countries, let alone the main Anglosphere countries (US/UK/Canada/AU/NZ). The bikes help a lot sure, but there's more things here than the bikes that contribute to the sense of community, and it does work. (It's obviously not perfect)

Nothing is showcasing it works. We are on the downward path just as much as every other country, being more and more atomized and pulled away from friends and family due to social and economic incentives.

Dutch stereotype is to be 'friendly' outward but always keep people who you aren't close to at a distance. That attitude comes back to bite you when you move away past your early 20s or use your work life as your social lifeline in today's work environment. If it wasn't for social services, the consequences would be far worse. But those social services are also contributing to what keeps the majority from staying close together in the first place.

Yes, I have this problem with a lot of the “urbanism” community. I totally understand that there are significant issues with American urban design, but urbanists seem to suffer from the “when you have a hammer everything looks like a nail” syndrome, with increased density and walkability seemingly being the solution to all of the world’s problems.

If anything it’s, probably irrationally, turning me off to urbanism concepts. I think that when something becomes so trendy and so dogmatic, I subconsciously start to feel an aversion to it and assume it’s snake oil, whether that’s true or not.

While I also like "Not Just Bikes" and this idea in general, I must say that urbanists sometimes make this mistake - living right next to a dozen of people next door and a hundred more in the same building doesn't mean that you will talk to them. I've lived in the apartment for all my life and changed it last year. I have no idea who are the people next door to me, I don't know their names and the whole social interaction with them is limited to "have a nice day" once every few weeks when we accidentally meet in the corridor.

The other benefits of the higher density living does work though. More small businesses and shops nearby, hobby points of interest in the 15-30 minutes distance on foot or bus/tram, better infrastructure, etc.

I lived on 2nd Ave NYC for a while which matched your observations on interacting with neighbours. However there's an interesting urbanist video [1] that suggests that even in a higher density neighbourhood with appartment buildings, the amount of traffic on the road affects both how many friends you have and how much you socialise with neighbours in your building. Ie in a car lite environment, everyone is friendlier.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESgkcFbGiL8

The benefit isn't so much that you can be friends with your neighbours, but that the density makes all distances shorter and by extension your friends are still much closer.

In a suburb many of my friends would be 15+ minutes away by car. In the city I live in now (almost entirely apartments/multi-household buildings), almost all of my friends are within a 15 minute walk. It has been a massive improvement to my social life, mostly due to the ease at which gatherings can spontaneously/easily occur.

It seems vastly harder to make friends in a city, to me. When I lived in the suburbs, it was really simple to make friends. In the city, I dont know anyone. I agree that its nice to live so close to friends, but it seems impossible to MAKE any in the city.

Cars are awful. I was fantasizing about an e-bike after reading a thread on HN, but in Phoenix, I'd die for sure. I do not feel safe around other cars in my car much less a bike. I really wish the US weren't so all in on cars. It's only getting worse with the oversized death-machine trucks saturating the roads. My in-laws are blind as bats and drive something that should require a commercial license.

Getting around on an electric bike will prolong your life. I bike on good infrastructure and it makes all the difference, you see kids bicycle 7km to soccer practice. Two months every year I go to an area such as you describe and while it feels dangerous it really isn't that bad. The stress can be bad if you let it, but as long as you accept it and try to see everything nice that happens you are ok.

Try it out.

> Getting around on an electric bike will prolong your life.

Not if you get killed by a car. That's his point.

Bikes are great, but much more so in a society that recognises the benefits of bikes than in a society that sees than as alien and as targets.

It does help when more people start to bike. There is safety in numbers, not to mention more understanding and recognition. Netherland has the advantage that we've never really gotten rid of our bikes; as soon as cars were about to take over in the 1960s, people started to fight back. People here have been fighting for bikes and against cars for more than 50 years. In the US, that fight doesn't even have remotely the kind of momentum that it had in Netherland 50 years ago, so there's quite a lot of distance to catch up there.

Have you been to phoenix? Ebikes are not an option.

E-bikes are as "dangerous" to your health as motorcycles. It's a non-negligible risk, even if often worth it.

Japan doesn't make sense though, they have an amazing urban environment, yet still seem to have problems with social isolation.

I think work expectations and schooling play a bigger role in that than the city planning, but it may also be suffering from it's own success in some ways. An abundance of choice can sometimes make commitment difficult, dating apps are one example. It's easy to stay non-commited to a social regulationship when it feels like they are a dime a dozen.

I also get the impression that a lot is expected of individuals in their social performances, and so for those who struggle to participate, there isn't as much support.

This is exactly it. People are very busy with work, and work too much, and then there's so much choice socially, so they end up making plans for their free time several weeks in advance.

Just wanted to throw this in: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-working-hours-per-... because recently I was talking to some friends and they were very much under the stereotype that in Japan you work some horrendous amount of hours - that is not true. IIRC data is both self reported and from companies.

The real reason is the same in Japan as it is in Europe and America: even controlling for hours worked, low wages, high cost of living, and other economic costs associated with having a child, women are choosing not the have children because it would require them to end their careers in their prime. It is extremely difficult to have a child and a career at the same time as a woman, and many never return to the workforce. Even women who make good money and can afford to have children decide not to because it would require them to stop working

Parking is never a problem in rural or less dense areas. Downtown and trendy areas tend to be a parking nightmare but you can solve this with money.

Valet parking, paid garages, or Uber are all quite convenient but pricey.

> Parking is never a problem in rural or less dense areas. Downtown and trendy areas tend to be a parking nightmare but you can solve this with money.

Our current society is highly geared to making the maximum profit as much as possible. Oversights and externalities such as parking and traffic are never considered before a decision is made.

You rather not need to park at all, because you walked there. It is hard to imagine if you are used to the car megalopolis but living near everything you need should be the goal of good mixed use cities.

Rural towns are a mix because they can't reasonanly support everything a modern life needs, so you still use a car to go between towns or longer distances, and parking is easy so you do small trips too. But your essentials and community are nearby and the parking requirements are just the people in your town.

The suburban sprawl model is the worst of both worlds, nothing is nearby, even essentials, so you drive for everything. Because everyone from the burbs has to drive to the same place, parking sucks too. No community, no parking, no goods and services. Just houses and roads, intersected by busy highways.

I've found that suburbs are a lot more sociable and friendly than cities. Its impossible to make friends in a new city, and it seems like none of your neighbors are interested either. You have to be the one to go out of your way to meet new people

I have found that the suburbs are far friendlier than cities. In the suburbs, I knew a lots of my neighbors, and making friends was very easy. In the city, nobody talks to anybody. City people are just unfriendly or theyre sick of other people or something

https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/how-urb...

> Four-in-ten rural residents say they know all or most of their neighbors; the shares are smaller among those living in urban (24%) and suburban (28%) areas.

Our block is extremely friendly, but this is honestly that all the kids in the block play together and it brings their parents out to socialize while watching the children. Other blocks in the neighborhood don't seem to be outside at all, and the people who socialize seem to come to this block to do it. Much of it is one specific family who is just outside all the time and are friendly and so they catch a lot of people and get them talking.

Eh, it's part of it, but not the whole story. Utah is a pretty close place and it has a lot of sprawl (traffic isn't too bad though). So many things have changed in the last half-century or so that I don't think you can point to any one thing as the cause. Even in a city with a lot of sprawl you likely have a lot more people you are within a 10 minute walk of than someone in a mid-size town is within a 10 minute drive of, it's just hard to meet those people because most people stay within their existing bubbles unless some event shakes up their life (breakup, job change, moving, etc.)

Part of the reason is also that people are now more mindful of "private" space and "personal" space than ever before and so they are not used to having people living close enough where they have to interact with them on a regular basis.

That was not the case earlier where people who were related lived fairly close to each other. This is particularly true in places like Asia, Africa and parts of Europe even today.

Staying close together requires adjustment and also requires people to value the close proximity of others.. This is sadly something which has largely disappeared particularly in North America

The suburbs suck because people don't have porches anymore. Even if they did people are highly suspicious of one another. It is a lose-lose situation all around.

> people are highly suspicious of one another

I think that might perhaps be the biggest issue in the US. There seems to be a massive amount of distrust separating people. And some groups are eagerly amplifying that distrust with their culture war nonsense.

There might not be a way out for the US until that issue is solved.

The folks at Strong Towns tackle this and related issues from many directions. They've changed how I experience the built environments around me.

I was just going to make a low effort "Cars." comment, but yours captures my answer in a nicer way.

Except large suburbs go back over 70 years and the loss of community is a much more recent thing.

People are super lonely in NYC.

You might enjoy the book Happy City, by Charles Montgomery.

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