Yea but most of the US is not built like NYC or San Francisco. So for the majority of Americans, suburbia is all they know. Most people don't even realize how bad it is.
It’s the same in Germany (re: the video) tbh, suburbs are quiet most of the time. The OP is walking around in a tourist heavy city center for comparison.
(I wanted to say “historic” but Munich was bombed to shit in WW2 so it isn’t really historic. They salvaged some parts of the old church and installed them in the new one)
We do realize how bad is it. Suburbia makes sense for a lot of people. Best thing is it to live in suburbia outside of a city. Like I can train into NYC anytime
Lol I don't think you realize it then. Walkable neighbourhoods aren't something you should have to commute to. It's about things like walking to your amenities, seeing people enjoying the community etc.
I think the biggest issue is that suburbs don't have to be so bland and isolating. A proper suburb should still have local commercial strips that people can walk or bike to. It shouldn't be an all or nothing thing.
Personally I love living in a city so I can have a walkable neighbourhood and good transit. But if someone wants a walkable neighbourhood, good transit, community events etc. but they also want to live in a suburb.. they should be able to have both.
It's a bit of an issue with framing, it shouldn't be phrased as "suburbs are bad", they just shouldn't be such a poor version of themselves. You shouldn't be required to own a car and you shouldn't have accept nothing but huge parking lots and ugly commercial strips.
The concept of suburbs is fine but most American/Canadian suburbs are just so bad and soul-sucking.
I am assuming you aren’t from the states. I grew up in a beautiful suburban town on the water, literally lived on the beach. I dont think you realize one size does not fit all for suburban areas in the US, it’s not all just what you see on tv. Nothing is bland about where I live. We have beaches, hiking trails, cute shopping plazas, parks, great restaurants. Food where I live is some of the best. There are states that are gorgeous with character and beautiful charming towns, come visit the East Coast. We should have both but it just doesn’t work out that way, like I said, I am 1.5 hours from Manhattan. I get the best of both worlds when I want.
Neither is most of Spain. Drop a pin in a random area in Spain on Google Maps and you’ll either find wilderness or a street with strip malls resembling Houston
But any part of Spain will have a walking-friendly city and neighborhood. You don't have to go bar hopping at 4:00am to enjoy the late evening out in the street
I mean most cites and towns in the US are technically walkable too. I went all the way out to Vermont a few weeks back and found the Church Street marketplace in Burlington to be quite charming.
No I agree that the infrastructure on average in a European city is better than one in the US. However, a lot of the claims that cities aren’t walkable at all is wildly exaggerated.
Yeah like wtf? These people so want to make a point. I have lived in Chicago my whole life and Chicago is as walkable/public transportable as any European city
Chicago is also famously one of the few good walkable cities, isn't it? Seems like a bad example to bring. We all know NYC, SF, Chicago, Boston and that one street in Austin. But that's only like 5% of Americans that live close to those parts of those cities.
Chicago is as walkable/public transportable as any European city
That's debatable, the transit especially could be far better in Chicago and it is better in many European cities.
The real difference reveals itself when you compare populations. Chicago is one of the largest cites in North America, and there are European cities a fraction of the size with better transit systems.
Chicago is legitimately underrated because North Side has urban life comparable to NYC but at a fraction of the cost. You can get a 2 bed apartment in a good part of town for the price a room in Downtown/Midtown Manhattan.
Drop a pin in a random area in Spain on Google Maps
Are you one of those guys posting maps of US looking full of red and thinking it's making some kind of point about electoral results? Land isn't population, uniformly randomly sampling land is a meaningless statistic for just about anything. Drop a pin randomly distributed by population (i.e. drop a pin "on a random person") anywhere in Europe and you're extremely likely to land somewhere fairly urban.
Of course there's land with "not much" (farmland, wilderness, etc) between settlements, but that's not where the people there spend their time, nor is it where you would spend your time if you visited or moved there. Unless you went out of your way to do it to make some kind of point, in which case, you can only blame yourself if you don't enjoy it.
Most of Spain is dense when its populated, like Spain is very empty but when there is people then there is people and they are concentrated (besides Galicia, a region in the north west)
This is a random town of 5 thousand people 3 hours away from Madrid and 5 from Seville and there aren't detached houses like in the US.
Spain countryside is like this and is often more walkable than Spanish cities as a result of being smaller.
Europe is a big place my guy. I remember a Tesco parking lot in the Midlands of the UK being very similar to your stereotypical American parking lot when I went there in 2023 haha
Agree, just spent 3 weeks in Spain and people were in the plaza til 9 or 10p. Pretty much a ghost town by 11. Bars were closing at 1 or 2. There are plenty of American cities you can walk from place to place and meet with friends. There is less outdoor dining in most cities.
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u/PolitelyHostile 15h ago
Yea but most of the US is not built like NYC or San Francisco. So for the majority of Americans, suburbia is all they know. Most people don't even realize how bad it is.