[CogitoCogito]

My girlfriend is Slovak and says she never wants to live in a high rise like those in her hometown. When I finally visited there I was a bit surprised. Sure there were many buildings and apartments that all looked the same pretty devoid of any individual character, but there were also bars, restaurants, stores right in the middle of all of it. I laughed and told here that regardless of what you think of the buildings, I'd say I've _never_ seen amenities placed better anywhere I'd ever lived in California.

Honestly I don't even disagree with your criticisms (broken elevators, bike theft, etc.), but that only makes it seem more pathetic that a place like California with so much more money can't do so much better. The zoning in California (and most of the US for that matter) really is terrible.

Edit: I want to be clear that I'm talking about the _wealthy_ areas of California. I'd say that this regular crappy building complex in a random city in Slovakia does better than almost all the rich parts of California. The poorer and/or more rural parts of California I'm totally ignoring here (though they're even worse).

[muro]

Hello from Slovakia :)

Fair point. I never lived in an apartment complex in California, so hard to compare. I stayed in a few in the bay area when on business travel, but those were very nice - shared space with a pool, gym, a coffee shop part of the building. No idea how those compare to normal apartments. I did live in apartments elsewhere: in Australia (except for really bad building quality), in Switzerland, Germany, Austria. They were nice, as long as they stayed reasonably small. Once they hit some 5 floors and 20+ apartments, they stopped being a place where I'd like to live. With up to 10 apartments, they were almost universally nice, no matter where.