[kartan]

> My old house was 900sf, perfect for 1 to 2 people

That is 80m2. I grew up in a 75m2 apartment (810sf) with my parents and two brothers.

I guess that "cramped" is a matter of perspective. :)

> Not sure about other large cities, but mine (Portland, OR) has a pretty big homeless and crime issues as of lately.

It makes me sad to hear about that. We are in the XXI century and we have good ways of helping homeless people and reduce crime. I understand that you leave to a better place, but that does not solve the problem.

> confronted in our driveway by a homeless individual, who said that he was considering suicide.

I hope that you have find a good place for you and your family but do not forget the people that you left behind. Their lives are a tragedy that can be averted.

[afthonos]

> That is 80m2. I grew up in a 75m2 apartment (810sf) with my parents and two brothers. I guess that "cramped" is a matter of perspective. :)

Also a matter of layout. The expected amenities in US apartments live little room for living space, particularly pantries and walk-in closets, and large appliances. Large bathrooms are also common. Having just moved to Europe, I am acutely aware of the trade offs; we have a lot of living space, but we also have had to buy wardrobes, get used to a much smaller bathroom, and generally adapt to different expectations.

[closeparen]

I often wondered while seemingly 20% or more of a small apartment's floor plate would be dedicated to the bathroom. Turns out the answer is simple: ADA requirement.

[benj111]

Built in wardrobes are a thing. More space efficient than a separate wardrobe. I've had them in half my prior rentals.

[vinay427]

For some anecdotal evidence, I've never seen an actual walk-in closet in Switzerland or Spain where I've traveled and/or lived so far, though I'm sure they may exist somewhere.

[pwagland]

To be fair, a builtin wardrobe is different to a walk-in wardrobe. The latter _tends_ to be builtin, the former tends be built into "the space between walls". I'm not 100% sure I would call them more space efficient, however they don't poke out into the room, and so you end up two rectangular rooms, and with their wardrobes next to each other, as opposed to two non-square spaces with the wardrobes (typically) backing onto each other. So you typically end up with extra usable space.

A walk in robe on the other hand typically wastes space since it (in effect) introduces a new hallway into your house, since that is effectively what the wakling area in your walk-in robe is.

[dccoolgai]

It would be kind of selfish to put the burden of "fixing societal problems" on a little kid. You're _most_ responsible for your children, full stop. Doesn't mean you stop trying to help, but trying to make OP feel bad for making a choice for the safety if their family is pretty weak.

[adreamingsoul]

I think this comparison is interesting. I recently relocated to Norway from Portland, OR and find the design and use of space in Oslo to be excellent. However the way space is utilized back in Portland isn’t that efficient and/or is poorly designed.

[noobermin]

The same force that enables suburbs is the same force that leads to wasted space in America: cars, cheap oil, and large swathes of land.

[microcolonel]

Also extremely intrusive urban planning, which put into place minimum parking capacity, minimum house sizes, single-family dwelling zones in the middle of what should have been highly developed cities, residential neighbourhoods with no commercial space (and thus very few amenities), etc..

[kartan]

> Also extremely intrusive urban planning

I agree partly.

In most European cities there is a lot of planning and regulations to follow. Barcelona Example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample) is an example of 19th-century planning.

In most Europe, you can't build a tall building in a rural town, a skyscraper without the proper open space around it or a factory in a residential neighbourhood. But, those rules have been more sensible to the city needs and have had less pressure from car makers. Old towns are usually compact and easy to walk because they predate cars. Cities have very good public transportation systems as cars were too expensive for most of the population. Living in the city centre has been seen as a luxury. At least for me, "suburvio" (a suburb in Spanish) has always had a negative connotation. Nobody wanted to live in the outskirts of a city.

So, I agree that American cities are, in general, poorly designed. And public transportation is almost nonexistent. The problem is not urban planning but that the cities are designed for cars, not for humans. Carmakers had too much power for too long. Urban planning worked really well to achieve its goal: to sell more cars.

[microcolonel]

> The problem is not urban planning but that the cities are designed for cars, not for humans.

That is part of urban planning here. Public transit simply can't be both good and cheap at these densities, which were mandated explicitly by urban planners. You complain about height limits, but there are many places which you can't (or recently couldn't have) house more than one family in a certain amount of space by law.

There are lots of post-car places where you can get around great on foot, it's just that a lot of the post-car places in the U.S. and Canada have many layers of planning and regulation which make you dependent on a car.