[kijin]

Most parts of American cities (and their suburbs) are covered with nothing but hundreds of blocks of dreary, monotonous, cookie-cutter single-family homes. Outside the city center, the population density drops dramatically. How many people do you think in a block full of single-family homes? A couple hundred at most.

Contrast this with a city like Seoul, where nearly every block is filled with condos and apartments, right up to the edge of the green belt. Each block could house at least a thousand people. Seoul has a population density of 43K per square mile. New York City has only 28K. San Fran has 17K. Tokyo has 16K. Los Angeles has 8K. Dallas has 1.4K. Even the suburbs of Seoul have higher population density than most American cities.

Near every street in Seoul has a bus route going through it and/or a subway line below it. There is no gap for private shuttles to fill. But this convenience comes at a price: everyone must live in dreary, monotonous, cookie-cutter apartments and condos. Maybe that's better than living in dreary, monotonous, cookie-cutter single-family homes; at least the buildings are better maintained, and it's certainly better from a carbon footprint point of view as well. But it does get a bit suffocating, and the tightly packed structure leaves little room for experimentation and disruption.

[WildUtah]

But it does get a bit suffocating,

Doesn't Seoul have a huge belt of mountains to go skiing and hiking in just a couple miles outside the outer subway stations? Maybe even closer around places like Seouldae? That's a pretty good option for open space.

I agree that US suburbia is stifling in its own way and hostile to transit and dollar vans. Still, LA, SF, Chicago, and NYC have plenty of places they could work.

Those density figures are misleading. You've chosen San Francisco County, LA county, and the five central NY counties, but included only the populated part of Seoul and most of the Kaanto for Tokyo. The populated parts of Tokyo and Seoul are of similar density (as is Mexico City), around 40k/mi^2, fairly consistently through their metro areas. New York varies from 110k in central Manhattan to miles low density 4k sprawl on the outskirts. SF tops out around 17k and then sprawls. LA is similar but slightly more consistent. The pretty parts of Paris are at 80k but everyone finds them liberating and exciting rather than stifling -- maybe because it's done without high rises.

[kijin]

> Those density figures are misleading ... The populated parts of Tokyo and Seoul are of similar density (as is Mexico City)

I'm not disputing that. The difference is that the "populated parts" of Seoul comprise the entire habitable area of the city, which is what makes public transit so affordable even for those who live in the outskirts.

There is no low-density "sprawl" in or around Seoul. It's all high-rise apartments and condos until you abruptly hit some sort of obstacle (like a mountain). It makes little difference which counties and districts you pick. Of the 25 wards that make up Seoul, the one with the lowest population density has 25K per sq mi. The highest has 74K. So the peak is lower than NYC, but the standard deviation is much lower as well. In other words, there's less diversity of living arrangements.

A random residential area in the outskirts of Seoul looks like [1].

A random residential area in the outskirts of NYC looks like [2].

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@37.564524,126.846419,3a,75y,186...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@40.706197,-73.754464,3a,75y,172...

[paul_f]

One person's "dreary monotonous" is another person's paradise. Be careful with the value judgments. Plenty of people want the room to spread out and raise their family away from the urban density.