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Comment by raverbashing | Hacker News Reader

Well, Boston, NYC, amongst others in the USA have nice downtowns. Not to mention Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and other cities in Canada.

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Toronto downtown is nice but it is the only exciting, interesting party of the city. I wish some of the surrounding areas had their own centres that didn't revolve around a mall or a Wal-Mart (Scarborough, Etobicoke, Mississauga, Vaughan)

Vancouver. Even some of our smaller cities have pretty OK downtowns (Kingston, Nanaimo...)

Liveable downtowns are definitely a matter of policy, not history.

Native New Yorkers absolutely looooooove Time Square...

Times Square is not downtown new york.

Union Square is the heart of NYC. Almost all lines intersect there, (the L from Brooklyn as well), and it is next to (within 10mins walk) of East Village, West Village, Lower East Side, Chelsea, FlatIron, Kips Bay, etc, which are the most interesting parts of NYC and have both commercial and residential buildings

It used to be a dangerous dump 20 years ago, and now it is awesome.

Ehhhh, that area is a bit B&T at night...

Really? I lived close by and never got a B&T vibe from Union Square.

>> "...the Union Square area."

The Union Squarea?

For anyone else that didn't know: a bridge-and-tunnel (B&T) person is one who lives in the suburbs and is perceived as unsophisticated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridge_and_tunnel

I'm perpetually amazed at what people can be condescending about.

It's interesting that this idea seems to be somewhat pervasive though. The north shore / North Sydney for example is often seen as pompous and never wanting to 'head across the bridge' to attend events etc. Again with the same separation that you need to be on trains/tunnels/bridges to cross the harbour.

Same in many places. "South of the river" in Londen, "Noord" in Amsterdam.

Maybe B&T was an insult 30 years ago but since some of the most trendy neighborhoods in NYC today are in Brooklyn....yeah not so much.

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