[bloomca]

I don't think there is such a great divide. The greater divide is between people who own a car (or cars) and who do not, however, seems for USA it is a divide between New York City and the rest of the country.

Also, I can comment on one thing I personally enjoy a lot – walking. I lived in many European cities, and recently moved to USA, so I can comment on it. To be able to walk, you need to live close enough to your work / some places of interest (like ~3–4 km is a threshold usually), the path should be interesting and beautiful.

USA fails miserably at "interesting and beautiful" part. Grid system makes it super boring, a lot of buildings are just a relatively small building and huge parking space around. There are no parks in between, no yards – moreover, you can bump into unsafe places!

Architecture (in downtowns) is straight up horrible (although it is subjective). So, after couple of walks I have no desire altogether to walk around anymore – it is dirty, ugly, in some places overcrowded (since everybody works at the same spot in the downtown and time, essentially).

[uxp100]

You probably should specify the city you're talking about. Those seem like pretty specific complaints. I think the main thing that can be generalized across most of the US that you mentioned is the grid system, with parking lot islands in second place, but they're not common in the center of many cities. They are quite common on the edges.

For example, many readers here may be familiar with San Jose, and itis not a good walking city, but it is not true that it has no yards or parks, and I think the residential architecture is lovely. In portions it suffers very much from parking lot islands, and the businesses are very centralized, not much mix of housing and business.

But if you want to stroll nowhere in particular it ain't bad. On the near north side you can look at the foothills from that park by the elementary school on 22nd ish, then walk down Empire, stop at 13th street, grab a donut and watch people play tennis, handball or volleyball in the park. Then you couldstay there or head south to Naglee Park Garage for dinner (well, maybe that place closed), southwest to downtown for a drink, or just over to 6th street and get groceries or walk around in the little japantown.

[chrisseaton]

> grab a donut

Funny question, but in the US does 'grabbing' something not have a bad connotation? When I hear 'grab a donut' my English mind sees you smashing your fist through the glass of the counter, taking a doughnut, and running off.

[swozey]

"Wanna grab a beer/drink?" is one of the most common invites I've heard for going out. So no, no negative connotations.

[taormina]

'Snatch' might be more of a negative connotation? Grab feels pretty neutral.

[yellowapple]

It definitely depends on context, and possibly locality/dialect. I have heard (and used) "snatch", "snag", "grab", and "steal" here quite often.

[BenjiWiebe]

It has no negative connotation to my born-and-raised-in-the-US mind. The only thing it implies to me is being in a hurry.

[Retra]

It may even have that connotation, but even so, using it for flair is perfectly acceptable. In fact, there's nothing bad about your mental image, as it would only be humorous.

[aswanson]

I legit got a laugh out of that. Thanks.

[aswanson]

There is however, a "smash-and-grab" phrase in the US which fits your imagery perfectly.

[rexpop]

Not at all. It convey's minute commitment; both brief and trivial.

[ChuckMcM]

I too enjoy walking around European cites much more than US cities. On a Brussels trip I commented on how interesting and winding the streets were to a family friend, she pointed out that it made it harder for tanks to drive through a city. That matter of fact response brought into sharp focus the disparity between cites that had been rebuilt several times and those which haven't.

There was also the adaptation from cities that were built when walking and horses were the main transportation modes which remain amenable to walking today.

All said, it seems like a renewed interest in the impact of urban design on things like walkability and livability have come back into fashion and some cities are taking their cues from that with their urban renewal projects. As a really interesting example of that has been the evolution of zoning laws which allow for mixed use buildings (commercial and residential) which are sprouting up all around the Bay Area. This is something that was pretty much unthinkable in the late 90's.

[kaybe]

There are more reasons:

- For pre-tank times, makes it a lot harder for strangers (e.g. intruding enemies) to get oriented.

- For more modern neighborhoods, make the roads confusing so cars won't take a shortcut through and bypass the main road. (--> keep unnecessary cars out of living areas since they are dangerous to kids on the street and the noise and air pollution is bad)

[biztos]

> For more modern neighborhoods, make the roads confusing so cars won't take a shortcut through and bypass the main road.

Alas Waze and its ilk are breaking that system in a lot of European cities. It's now quite common to have quiet residential streets suddenly turn gridlock when some algorithm has correctly-but-malevolently decided it's a good shortcut for everyone getting from the office to the freeway.

When I think of a future powered by AI, I think of that kind of logic casually extinguishing all life on the planet.

[SllX]

Those who live by the algorithm will die by the algorithm.

I wonder when it is going to be fashionable to intentionally do shit again rather than passively half-living through digital agents.

[skh]

I lived in Berlin for a while and when I came back to the U.S. the two things that stood out were the massive parking lots and billboards. American cities are hostile to humans. Way too much space taken up by ugly parking lots. Go out West and so much land is fenced off. Access to lakes and rivers is hard since so much of the surrounding land is private and fenced off.

[justaguyhere]

Outside of cities like NY, it is actually dangerous to walk. There aren't sidewalks, drivers are actually hostile towards those on foot and on bikes. American cities are built for cars and cars only.

[AnimalMuppet]

The one city I know well definitely has sidewalks, both downtown and in the suburbs. (I can't comment on hostility to bikes, though.)

[njarboe]

Almost every city in America has sidewalks. I guess you might be technically correct that "Outside of cities like NY" if "like" means "has sidewalks", but that would exclude almost 100% of cities.

[ArtDev]

I have lived exclusively in the Western Coastal states and 100% of the cities I have lived in do not have consistent sidewalk coverage. For example: Seattle, Sacramento, Olympia, Portland and especially other rural cities I have lived in.

American cities are designed for cars. Not people or people on bikes.

You would think that new developments would not continue this insanity and yet they are still allowed by city planners to cut corners.

[yellowapple]

I grew up in/around Sacramento. The new residential construction is almost always accompanied by new sidewalks, from what I've seen. It's usually the older areas that have spotty sidewalk coverage, but those are getting patched up (especially now that Sac's more-or-less recovered from the housing bust).

[bobthepanda]

How far do you have to go out to reach an area without sidewalks, though? Even many suburban developments don't necessarily have those.

I went to a college in the suburbs of Long Island and the road outside campus was a two-lane road with a speed limit of 55 with no sidewalks. To walk outside of the cities is to invite death.

And this is before we get into things like the lack of adequate marked, signalized crosswalks that are common throughout America: https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/01/17/between-your-bus-stop...

[yellowapple]

Nearly all suburban developments I've seen that were built within my lifetime have had plenty of sidewalks and signalled (sometimes even stoplighted!) crosswalks. The exceptions are old rural roads that became suddenly suburban when they got surrounded by housing developments, but the developments themselves always had plenty of sidewalks, and quite a few of the roads in my hometown of Elk Grove have sidewalks even when they didn't before (though sometimes with gaps, admittedly).

I've spent nearly all my life in (Northern) California and Nevada, though, so YMMV elsewhere.

[souprock]

Normally, you just step off the road when a car comes. I suppose this doesn't work for high heels, but those can't handle storm drains either. You can even walk off the road.

Sidewalks, signals, and crosswalks all give the illusion of safety. Either the cars are behaving well and you can just step aside, or they are misbehaving and you'll need a concrete barrier to stop them. The signals and crosswalks mean that cars are revving their engines near me, making the air I breathe worse, so I'd rather do without.

[bobthepanda]

> Normally, you just step off the road when a car comes. I suppose this doesn't work for high heels, but those can't handle storm drains either. You can even walk off the road.

This is assuming that the road something you can walk next to. And it's not amazing advice for roads with blind corners and such.

Sidewalks do actually help; drivers respond to their built environment, and most drivers do not want to scuff their cars by hitting the curb or other obstacles in the road.

The real crux of the problem is that the suburbs have become surrounded and cut across by massive high-speed traffic moats which are inherently unsafe for pedestrians because of the speed differential. Yet to walk in the suburbs you can't avoid these moats. And dissuading people from walking is near impossible, since the poor are now migrating to suburban areas and they are the ones least likely to have cars due to the cost.

[yellowapple]

Depends on how far West, and which parts. A lot of Nevada is publicly-accessible, for example.

[rst]

It's not just New York; there are a few other urban areas with significant numbers of commuters by transit -- Boston and San Francisco (with the crowd traveling on the "Google buses", and the number of tech jobs downtown) both come to mind. But there are lots of cities (Los Angeles most notoriously) where a car-free life is nearly impossible.

[seanmcdirmid]

I did car free in LA for awhile, it’s becoming an increasingly popular option actually. I did it by living close to work in a mostly urban area (Westwood), but one of my colleagues commutes in from Hollywood somewhere, he seemed happy with how it worked out.

[decebalus1]

The only city I lived in which resembled the pedestrian friendliness I grew up in Europe was Portland. Although distances are generous, a combination of public transit - bicycling and walking made Portland a pretty nice and safe place to be a pedestrian.

[ArtDev]

Lots of parts of Portland do not have sidewalks. Luckily, for now, there is not enough traffic for it to be dangerous.

[alanbernstein]

In my experience, grid systems actually facilitate walkability, at least in contrast with curvy subdivision streets that are common in any US neighborhoods built in the last 60 years. US subdivisions tend to be anti-mixed-use. Grids encourage mixed use, for example by zoning one big commercial street for every three smaller residential streets.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Our country is only 243 years old, we didn't have hundreds of years of master craftsmen making stone buildings. We fast forwarded from log cabins to awful steel buildings and strip malls made as cheaply as possible. You'd have those same ugly steel buildings if there were no stone cathedrals etc. standing there already.

[Finnucane]

In the 19th century many American urban centers become quite densely built up with all manners of buildings. These urban centers were also prone to fire. A number of cities experienced major fires that wiped out large swaths of what had been built. So they got rebuilt with more modern structures.

[bobthepanda]

Most of the terrible modernism comes from the postwar era, when city planners would drive concrete highways through minority neighborhoods and bulldoze "slums" for modernist housing projects that were supposed to cure society's ills.

[Finnucane]

I’ll take “what is Scollay Square “ for $500. The point being that it’s not a linear progression. And we won’t mention what two world wars did to cities in Europe.

[Izkata]

For a great example of this, check out some of the buildings that survived the Great Chicago Fire: http://chicago-architecture-jyoti.blogspot.com/2009/02/six-s...

[the_snooze]

Agreed, a walking commute needs to be reasonably safe. I'm fortunate enough to live and work somewhere that has a few "interesting and beautiful" places along the way, but still, a significant portion of my walk goes through places where armed robberies and property crimes are a common occurrence.

[fatnoah]

>USA fails miserably at "interesting and beautiful" part.

It depends on where you are. I lived in downtown Boston and walked everywhere. I had a choice of walking along the river, down the Commonwealth Avenue mall and through the public gardens, etc, etc.

[basementcat]

This made me think of this documentary

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_world_before_your_feet

[thirdsun]

"Playing in select cities" - from the official website.

That's what's wrong with indie cinema, documentaries and small movie projects. Another film I'm interested in, I'm ready to purchase and watch, yet I can't since it's not available anywhere, except for some screenings in a handful of places worldwide. So it ends up as an easy to miss entry on my ever growing to do list hoping to be re-discovered and some day.

I understand (though not agree with) the argument for theatrical windows for big, mainstream blockbuster movies. However what is the point of artificially and severly limiting the availability of niche releases like these? Your target audience is already tiny - unnecessary barriers certainly don't help.

[basementcat]

I think part of the problem is that low budget indie releases have to _pay_ theaters to be shown. The consequence of their small budget is they can often only afford to screen in a small number of theaters in major cities.

In contrast theaters literally beg studios that make blockbusters to let them project the film on as many screens as possible since these movies are expected to draw large crowds and popcorn and drink purchases.

[thirdsun]

That's an even bigger argument for the point I tried to make. I don't want the see the film in a theater, which (in my case) would require about an hour of driving, overpriced drinks and all the other annoyances of a theater visit. Meanwhile I have a projector and good audio system at home, which is why I want to buy and download the film digitally to watch on my own terms.

And needless to say that it doesn't require a fancy projector to have a fine movie experience - most households have a big TV that comes close enough. For this kind of movie, however, audio/video equipment shouldn't be a concern at all.

What I'm trying to say is: Why screen the film at a very limited number of cinemas, which you might even have to pay when you could get paid by viewers directly?

[basementcat]

Screening at a theater is a required step before a film can be considered for certain prestigious industry awards, qualify for certain production tax incentives or fulfill cast/crew contractual requirements. There exist theaters the sole purpose of which are to fulfill that specific function (they generally screen low budget indie films each for a day or so-- it is not usual for the size of the audience to be zero).

Personally I don't really disagree with you; it would be great if good films were available on Amazon, Netflix, etc sooner.

[KarenSatantsby]

Columbia SC has some nice walks. It does depend on the neighborhood and you have to contend with the car traffic but I would say I walk a lot. It is not like Montreal or Bergen for sure but im not so unhappy

[techiferous]

> USA fails miserably at "interesting and beautiful" part.

> Grid system makes it super boring

> Architecture (in downtowns) is straight up horrible

Sounds like you've never been to Boston! Come on over, you'll love it. :)

[ticmasta]

biking in Boston is... interesting? drivers are not outwardly violent, but don't seem to appreciate bikes much. People seem to (reluctantly) tolerate you but can't resist some passive-aggressive behaviors and lots of honking.

It was still better than cities where the drivers are so oblivious of bikes (and pedestrians) that they wouldn't even notice if they ran you down. (looking at you Montreal)

[joey-bob]

Where do you live in the US? It sounds like California, specifically the concrete desert of LA.

[clairity]

do you live in LA and know this firsthand or are you repeating a cliché?

i live in LA and walk often. it's great. the weather is awesome (60's and sunny today, in the middle of winter), i have dozens of good restaurants and cafes within walking distance, as is most of my shopping needs. parks, theaters, museums, bars, and other entertainment can be easily reached by walking. LA is a big city so not everything is right there, but everything i need day-to-day is.

[zjaffee]

Sounds like you live in downtown, as that's the only neighborhood that fits all of those things within walking distance.

The majority of people who live in LA, live somewhere nestled into the bigger sprawl that is the region. While there are plenty of neighborhoods that have walkable aspects, the city is by no means walkable (even with transit) to huge portions of the city.

[seanmcdirmid]

Actually, it sounds like he/she doesn’t live downtown.

I had all that when I was living in Westwood, which is far far far aaay from downtown, but I could have had that in belverly hills, or Culver City, or even (but just barely) Brentwood.

[zjaffee]

What museum is walkable from westwood?

[seanmcdirmid]

That is kind of a weird question to ask when Westeood is right next to UCLA. So besides the hammer, there are a bunch of smaller galleries on campus, including one with meteorites.

There is also a giant robot art gallery in sawtelle japan town, which I think is walkable, definitely bikeable.

[clairity]

the hammer (it's free now too): https://hammer.ucla.edu/

[clairity]

i don't. downtown is dense but isn't remarkable for walkability in LA (until relatively recently it wasn't even particularly walkable).

my listed criteria wasn't even complete, just what came to mind in the 30 seconds i thought about it. there are plenty of neighborhoods that are walkable in LA (silverlake, hollywood, highland park, even north hollywood, etc.). the whole city doesn't need to be reachable by foot to be a walkable neighborhood.

sounds like your bar may be set particularly high or your assumptions about what you need to walk to may be extraordinary.

[zjaffee]

None of those neighborhoods are walking distance to museums unless I'm forgetting something. Additionally, I wouldn't call silverlake a walkable neighborhood but I'll give you the other ones.

My definition would be could you live comfortably without ever using a car, such as being able to go grocery shopping without having to walk a ton, be near enough to the rail system such that you can get around easily, be in a neighborhood where going clothes shopping doesn't mean an inconvenient trip to a mall, ect.

[clairity]

silverlake: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/holyland-exhibition

i'll leave it to you to find the others, but one of my faves in culver city is the museum of jurassic technology (has a rooftop aviary): http://mjt.org/

> "My definition would be could you live comfortably without ever using a car"

that's a pretty high bar. how would you move in/out without a car/truck/van? carry everything by hand? i don't own a car but i use one periodically.

[briandear]

West Hollywood, Hollywood, Sunset, Santa Monica, there are a lot of walkable areas in the LA metro.

[zjaffee]

Sunset is hardly part of a broader walkable neighborhood, it's a single street where there are various gaps along it where there's little built for the pedestrian. Parts of Hollywood, Downtown Santa Monica, Koreatown, Downtown, and Westlake are in my experience the only truly walkable areas. There are a few more where you can walk for some things, but you'd likely still need a car unless you were to order everything you buy online.

[ilaksh]

Who can afford to live in those areas?

[wasdfff]

You can find a 1br all over LA for ~1500 you know. Studios even less. Go on craigslist and check it out.

[joey-bob]

I lived in San Diego, and would visit friends in LA somewhat frequently. My interpretation is based off of my experiences in the northern slice of the area, San Bernardino to Venice Beach. Also I had to drive through LA to go anywhere, which might have colored my experience a bit.

[dima55]

Your interpretation is based on a slice that's 80 miles long, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you don't have a good sense of even that slice. LA is fantastic. There's plenty of suburbia to be sure, but living there is a choice some people make. Others make a different choice.

[joey-bob]

I suppose you are correct. Similar to the original comment, who was shocked coming from a European perspective to US, I was a bit shocked coming from an East Coast perspective, and have made too broad a generalization. What areas would you suggest I visit in the future?

[dima55]

Depends on what you want to see; the city is incredibly diverse. The denser, more urban areas are the ones developed before the car was the dominant form of transportation. Downtown, Macarthur park, koreatown, hollywood, etc are very dense. Some parts of the westside are too. The trains generally go through the denser areas. Much of it is gritty, but the architecture is cool, there's lots of fantastic food everywhere, and it's generally interesting. Go explore :)

[clairity]

gotcha. san diego is probably the only place with better weather, if that's possible, and seemingly with more intermingled trees (a good portion of LA's trees are in the hills dividing the valleys and basins).

venice is super-walkable, and i'd guess it's better to live in the venice/santa monica bubble without a car than with, because getting out of the westside is awful by car for large parts of the day. within the bubble you can walk, bike, run, skate or scooter to just about anything you need.

but outside of LA proper, it's true that san bernardino, the inland empire, and the san fernando and san gabriel valleys generally are car-oriented, and it's unwieldy to live in those areas without a car (although there are pocket exceptions, particularly in the valleys).

[zjaffee]

Venice is far from super-walkable, it's just walkable by American mid-density standards. I don't know how much time you spend there, but the sidewalks in Venice are pretty poor quality, walking to and from the grocery store would be difficult depending on what part of Venice you live in, and getting to other parts of the city is incredibly difficult to do so by public transportation in Venice. Some of this stuff can be supplemented with a bike, but it's still not an area I'd recommend not having a car in, especially should you not have a job in the immediate area.

The problem, is that Venice is what a regular suburban area should be like in terms of walkability, when for the most part, suburbs have nowhere to walk too.

[ilaksh]

How many people can A) afford to live in Venice Beach and B) manage to get a job within walking distance?

[clairity]

a bunch on HN? those two things are now correlated since tech took over venice (particularly snapchat) and prices skyrocketed. venice was actually somewhat affordable for a beach area not that long ago (unlike santa monica or malibu).

[chrisseaton]

> i live in LA and walk often. it's great.

Doesn't LA have literally the most polluted air in the country? Doesn't sound great for walking.

[biztos]

I visited Santa Monica (basically LA unless you live in LA) several times and walked almost everywhere, only taking a Lyft when I really wanted to go across town (the Blue Bus comes eventually, but it isn't fast). Air quality was fine and there was a 4-mile beach to walk on if you wanted to really Walk.

I know people who live in Downtown LA and don't own cars.

I get the impression there are several parts of LA you can live in without regularly driving, and still have a very normal lifestyle. Not sure about the air quality downtown but my friends didn't complain about it.

[thirdsun]

> Air quality was fine

> Not sure about the air quality downtown but my friends didn't complain about it.

I think unhealthy air quality is dangerous long before you actively notice it. I'd rely on measurements instead of subjective impressions.

[ilaksh]

It is incredibly expensive to live in downtown LA or Santa Monica. Especially if you actually want to own something.

[gnopgnip]

It isn't great, but it is not any worse than other large cities since the 90s. You can see the current and forecasted cities with the worst air quality here. https://airnow.gov/

[seanmcdirmid]

No, not unless there is an inversion or a nesrby forest fire going on. LA has really cleaned up a lot since the 70s, even SLC has worse air now.

[clairity]

nearly - 4th according to the american lung association annual study (via cbs): https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/air-pollution-worst-us-citi... (fairbanks is #1)

but it's the worst for ozone, where it's 80's reputation for smog comes from. to be fair, LA's air quality is far better than the 74 major cities in chinaa: https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-la-smog-stats...

which is where a significant portion of the air polution comes from (enough to go from good to bad): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution_in_the_United_St...

[ctrl-j]

Its not like there are black clouds of smoke hanging in the air or anything... Your average person is more likely to have allergies and asthma, but it's not like breathing the air hurts or your skin burns or anything...

[scarejunba]

Sounds like practically anywhere in the country to be honest.

[joey-bob]

The only place where I've lived that didn't have yards, parks within walking distance, and could be considered overcrowded was in California. I briefly visited Dallas once, and I could see that as being similar.

[bluGill]

There are parts of any city (including California cities) that are walkable. There are parts of any city that are not walkable (this includes Europe). In some areas the walkable area is pretty large, and others it is tiny.

[jstanley]

> moreover, you can bump into unsafe places!

Can you elaborate on this? Are there places that are unsafe because they're full of knife-wielding maniacs? Or unsafe because they're full of un-signposted holes in the ground? Or some other kind of unsafe?

[influnza]

Unsafe, when side walk suddenly ends, but you see that it continues after the next block and you have a choice: turn around or walk on the road and get hit by a car potentially. I live in such a neighborhood now. I can walk to work, but sidewalk ends a block from my house and there are no street lights, so it is MUCH safer to take a 2 minute drive.

[gautamdivgi]

It’s also that motorists are often times hostile to pedestrians. Case in point - the elementary school my daughter goes to is a quarter mile away. So I’m trying to get the second grade kid to come back home on her own. She needs to cross streets in a subdivision. There is a crossing guard to help. But still - people honk at my 8 yr old when crossing. Ultimately I’ve decided to drop and pick her up myself.