Comment by antirez
11 days ago
"West" when we talk about urban spaces, walk-accessible cities and public transportation is, IMHO, the wrong category. Europe and USA are very far apart.
11 days ago
"West" when we talk about urban spaces, walk-accessible cities and public transportation is, IMHO, the wrong category. Europe and USA are very far apart.
Europe and USA are both huge places so it depends what you mean. If you compare major east coast cities - Boston, DC, and NYC to European metros like Paris/ Madrid/ Lisbon the biggest tax on the citizens is the same in that it’s impossible to build anything so a huge % of income needs to go to housing.
Well, Japan isn't much different in terms of the share of income that goes to housing: https://housingpolicytoolkit.oecd.org/2.H_conso.html
Japan and the US are huge - we’re taking about metros here. The situation in NYC is much worse.
East coast cities were built before modern building codes.
Something that, for some reason, people in the states don't want to accept is that - when given the choice - the vast majority of people prefer living in dense urban environments.
OP addresses that. Japan is not particularly dense, especially outside of core downtowns.
You see the same dynamics in London and Paris.
People do not "prefer to live in dense urban environments" by urbanist standards.
They prefer to live in dense urban environments by North American standards, which can still be far less dense than urbanists really want.
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>the vast majority of people prefer living in dense urban environments.
The vast majority of people REQUIRE to live NEAR their employment which happens to be in cities.
Look what happened to NYC real estate rent when you gave people the choice of NOT doing that. Look what happens when you force them back to the office, they come back, but not by choice.
It takes under a minute to find reputable sources which say that something on the order of 3 out 4 people prefer a suburban city environment. The remainder splits between preferring rural or dense urban.
Do you have a source for this? What threshold is needed for it to be 'dense'?
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Great point.
Granted I’m approaching it from the perspective of a tourist or business traveler, but 6/6 of the European cities I’ve been in were fully navigable for my purposes via transit. I’d probably guess half or less in the US.
Even in NYC or SFO, the metro areas are so large it really makes the success rates low depending on the trip.
they might mean west of japan ;)
Go far enough and Japan is west of Japan, several times over. You can always keep heading west.