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Comment by werber | Hacker News Reader

I thought this seemed fair till i read it was in flushing. Nyc is the worst, but, if you’re American where else can you get a city that international and walkable

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Chicago, DC, Boston, SF, Philly (depending on "international"), Portland (walkable but not really international - it's just 90s-2000s white Americans doing 90s-2000s white American stuff, you'd think Kurt Cobain still roams the earth)

Though if you want affordability, that leaves Chicago and Philly.

NYC sucks in that sense though, as a lot of industries that are conglomerated in NYC haven't ensured salaries keep up with those in High Finance and Tech

At least Boston has relatively affordable suburbs and Bay Area level wages, DC has plenty of federal jobs that pay competitively, and SF has the larger tech industry (which is still going great despite a couple high profile layoffs)

Miami? I was impressed with Miami when I visited. Lots of high rise residential housing, sane political governance, nice downtown, and pretty walkable.

Well, there's weather though.

Miami is walkable in some parts, I personally feel it’s as walkable as LA, walkable neighborhoods but big moats between them (not just the bridges)

Yeah, though I think Bay Area is similar - LA is huge and more equivalent to compare to Bay Area (SF + Oakland + Peninsula + San Jose), than just SF itself.

Also more comparable populations that way too.

To be clear; what I mean LA as in LA city not the county. LA and Miami are similar in they have some neighborhoods that are walkable (the most popular parts), but the majority of them are not and they’re not very walkable between the two. Little Tokyo is walkable but then there’s a gap between there and downtown, then you have a huge Hollywood stretch then a huge gap around ktown if you go between them. Miami has the same issue, Brickell is walkable but as soon as you leave it has a bunch of impassable areas to go to downtown, same as if you were to leave wynwood. The worst part of Miami city’s unwalkability is once you leave those neighborhoods it pedestrian hostile like Shendahdoah or Little Havana.

SF and NYC do have neighborhoods like this, but those occupy very tiny portions of those cities comparably to Miami.

It's almost impossible to use public transit outside of Brickell.

Miami-Dade is very sprawly, like Los Angeles.

This is unsurprising as Miami is a relatively new city that expanded post-WW2, like LA.

The cities I listed above were already fairly high density before the automobile was invented

I explored Brickell and Miami Beach, comparing to LA is unfair imo, that’s like comparing to “Bay Area” instead of SF.

Your right.

It's even worse than LA. The LA metro has better connectivity across the city of LA than Miami Metrorail does in Miami.

> I explored Brickell and Miami Beach

Did you walk or take public transit to Little Havana or Little Haiti?

IIRC Miami was the worst on a list put together by CityNerd of large cities with a high (housing+transit)/income ratio. I can't access YT at the moment so feel free to correct.

boston suburbs aren’t walkable though, if you’re not remote you’ve got a minimum 40 min commute each way

True, but a burb like Tewksbury is a bit more affordable than a similar burb in NYC like White Plains or Piscataway when factoring salaries and taxes.

Same way most people in the NY Metro live in less walkable boroughs or suburbs.

And it's the same story in any other "international" city - be it London, Tokyo, Paris, etc

> Nyc is the worst

I love NYC. I don't mind going into Boston or such for the day, but there's nothing like NYC on east coast. It's fantastic.

I think he meant "the worst" in the same way that Britta is the worst.

This kind of reflexive defensiveness by some New Yorkers feels annoying to the rest of us

Yes. In the US, sure. Compared to cities outside the US it is horrible. Less walkable than most, food is ok if you know where to go but nothing special and also super expensive like everything else, aggressive drug addicts wandering the streets, high crime including random acts of violence for literally no reason at all, incessant aggressive honking at all hours of the night, even when you are paying $5k a month for your 1 bedroom apartment it the apartment itself is not a nice place to live in terms of things like sunlight and ventilation, and the city itself is super corrupt. There’s a million folks in unions and other arrangements who are “grandfathered in” to all sorts of privileges that are used to secure their vote. The city has an astronomical budget, all the money is going to more or less bribe key voting blocks. It has been this way for well over a century.

The thing that NYC really has going for it is that the rest of the country is a giant suburban dystopia.

I haven’t been to NYC recently but I read that the public transport has become filthier. Homelessness has become a major issue too.

I already felt like I was ranting for too long, but yes that too. People are paying far more now for a much worse experience/quality of life compared to before the pandemic. I was at one point in the city among my reasons because it had good public transit, but then taking taxis all the time because my partner did not feel safe on the subway after numerous incidents, and just had a “what the fuck am I even doing here” moment.

i live in NYC and have traveled to plenty of other international cities.

none of the things that you're saying are true compared to my experiences (or those of my friends) in any way that i can think of as meaningful.

the only city i've been to that feels like it's captured the same "vibe" as NYC, for me, has been Paris.

Tokyo was more impressive in its sprawl and history (and obviously cleanliness), but there is a sense of Japanese monoculture that saturates everything in a way that is almost tactile. not in a bad way, but definitely such that i felt like something was "missing" during my visit.

Singapore gets really close to the same feeling, but for all of its heterogeneity there's an undercurrent of authoritarian sterility that made it very difficult to feel comfortable (Disneyland with the Death Penalty, indeed).

anyway this is already pretty long winded so i should probably stop talking, but NYC has a lot "going for it" besides the rest of the US just sort of being a suburban hellscape. at some point i'll move out, but living here has been a really comforting reminder that international views such as yours of American cities are incorrect.

Visiting another city is not in any way comparable to living there. Or would you defer to the opinion of some tourist who visited NYC for a random weekend?

I was born in Manhattan and lived in the city for over a decade and still own an apartment downtown. I know a thing or two about the place. It's cool that you get a vibe from being a transplant here for a couple years, that has literally nothing to do with anything I said. The lawlessness is also quite a different experience for women--I am guessing having random guys off the street try to force your door open and follow you into your building or corner you on a subway or follow you around riding a bike aggressively catcalling you is probably not something you are dealing with on a regular basis.

The day I left I moved out over a pool of dried blood from a stabbing in front of my door the night before. I've lived in over 20 countries since then and not experience anything similar except maybe in Canada, which has similar drug problems as the US.

With the caveat that I moved away (due to work) a little under a decade ago... what you describe doesn't match my experience with NYC at all. Maybe back in the 80s, before it was cleaned up... but I was less frequently there back then. Before you said you lived in the city, the message from your first post made me assume you were talking about the city as someone who learned everything they know about it from the news.

Oh. Yeah I would also probably pay $15k for $1k rent if I intended to stay in NYC long term. You'd have positive ROI on that before the end of year two.

But Flushing is too far from Manhattan and too close to La Guardia. I'd gladly pay more not to listen to that shit all the time, the car noise in the city is bad enough.

Presumably you’re not Chinese. If you are then it’s the center of everything.

Or any other immigrant community for that matter.

Most immigrant communities agglomerate in Queens - from Korean to Chinese to Azeri Jewish to Bangladeshi to Jamaican

San Francisco. International and walkable, good transport.

The homeless are a problem, but New York has them too.

New York's homeless have to contend with winter. That makes for a far less bleak street scene.

SF homeless isn't even REMOTELY comparable to NYC, and I've lived in both cities for 8 years each. Not even the same planet.

I've also lived in both, and currently live in NYC. I think they're on the same planet.

Well, if it's "international" you're looking for, there are other cities abroad like that. But I get your point, the US has very few walkable cities with high levels of diversity.

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