[jomamaxx]

FYI I should say 'large cities' - especially North American ones.

Please like Munich, Frankfurt feel pretty 'small town' relatively speaking. People tend to stay put a lot longer (like forever, even hundreds of years over generations), and the geography of those cities are completely different as well.

[TillE]

So really you're just talking about New York (which is absolutely a rat race nightmare) and some dysfunctional, badly planned American cities.

Because I look at this:

> 'City people' are definitely more about the money.

And then I look at Berlin (3.5 million people!). And I just laugh.

[jomamaxx]

No, I mean most American cities.

Berlin is not like Munich or Frankfurt - and does not fit the template of most other German cities. It's quite a bit bigger and spread out. That said - it's more like Frankfurt than it is LA. Also - 'Greater Berlin' is more than 5 million.

Also important to note: many European cities don't have 'suburbs'- what they have is 'city core' then 'dense surrounding'- which is not that much - but instead of suburbs, they have tons of 'surrounding towns'. It's really quite hard to describe.

Frankfurt - I could almost run across it in my daily run - and it has big skyscrapers. It has the busiest Airport in Europe!

Imagine taking all of Maine + Vermont - and instead of 30Km between each small township - make it 3km. So basically, you have tons of 'mini, distinct communities'.

Many of those 'mini communities' are 1000 years old type thing, and people are not very transient.

Within those communities - generally things are walkable, you have unique local restaurants, often high quality, artisans, small businesses, sometimes Universities.

Much of Europe - and to some extent Asia - is like this.

It's hard to describe but obvious when you see it.

It's the model I think we, in North America, should have used for urban planning - instead of the mega-city model.