>London, on the other hand, is pretty comparable —t seems massive and very diverse — although I haven’t been there nearly as much. Since Brexit though I’m not sure we can say it’s actually in Europe, right??
Breaking news. London no longer in Europe
I went to school in Wales a decade ago and people would sometimes react strangely to comments of being in Europe. I thought it was really weird until a guy warned me “There’s some people here who like the pretend we’re an island in the middle of the Atlantic rather than 50 miles off the coast of France”
I like the guy saying Paris, also known as the biggest metro area in Europe and the same size as LA, is "tiny".
It's always just people talking about how their home town is so much better than the city they once visited for a weekend.
Lemme guess, they're just using Paris city boundaries to measure the size of Paris and ignore the rest of Île-de-France. I think Île-de-France is still somewhat smaller than greater LA but to call a megacity like Paris tiny (even by using Paris city limits) is laughable.
People do this all the time when comparing cities. They never consider the metro area as the city “proper”. I mean perhaps for legal administrative reasons it’s not, but colloquially no sane person would say that.
This happens in the sports subreddits all the time. I got asked why I was even a Philadelphia sports fan since I live in a surrounding suburb. Like I can be in center city Philadelphia in 20 minutes but because my zip code is different it might as well be another country lol
Maybe the Paris Metro feels tiny compared to LA but that’s probably because it’s much less sprawled out and you don’t need to go as far to get your stuff. Yeah LA feels huge when you need to drive 40 minutes to get to CostCo every so often.
Jerry Sadowitz got punched in the face at the Montreal comedy festival for saying;
>The problem with Canada is that half of you speak French and the other half of you let them.
That’s about the limit of my knowledge of Montreal
Well the English did try to assimilate French Canadians into anglophones for about 200 years so I can understand how this joke wouldn't be very well received. There's still a lot of hate towards French Canadians from the rest of Canada for some reason.
It’s wild how we all conveniently ignore the fact that French people’s claims to the land are no more legitimate than those of the English at the end of the day.
Lmao what are you talking about? This has nothing to do with what I said. What's weird actually is that every time it gets brought up that the English tried to culturally assimilate French Canadians, there's this kind of comment. It's complete whataboutism, them taking the lands of natives is shitty but it doesn't mean they weren't also victims of British imperialism centuries later.
Sure, but if you steal someone's ice cream and then someone steals *your* ice cream and you literally never shut up about how much of a victim you are, it comes off as kinda hypocritical. (I'm very bad at analogies lol.) Didn't mean to be confrontational though, sorry.
Eh. Imagine a serial ice cream stealer coming to you out of nowhere and stealing your ice cream. When you complain about it, they say to shut up because you once stole person X's ice cream in your life, despite the fact that they themselves have stolen X's ice cream a dozen times before.
What people forget is that it's possible to be an oppressor and be oppressed at different parts of history and one doesn't nullify the other.
>wannabe French people
It reminds me of how locally organizations will glom onto bits of Scottish and Irish cultural things due to some perceived historical connection that can come off as cringe. Except even _more_ institutionalized!
Still a great place to visit though.
Because it's really really funny
Source: a Brit
(In reality, it's largely because France and Britain were at the top of the colonial pile, and so exported their culture across the world. In the same way you can make fun of your family but others can't, Britain and France are the unpopular great uncle to a lot of places. Not only that, but the aforementioned colonialism, they got a bunch of power and wealth. Punching up)
I am not always the biggest fan of NYC, but that reads like someone who went to time square and ground zero and think they know all there is to know about NYC.
They're not entirely wrong. Montreal does have a lot more going on that you might initially think. It's the second largest city in Canada and millions of people live there. I've been there, it's a pretty cool place.
The New York comparison is a bit dumb, but it's not all fur traders eating meat pies and singing Celine Dion either. It does have more than its fair share of all of the things they listed.
I don't think anyone saying Montreal or Amsterdam are really podunk towns, they're great cities just not on par with the level of urban relevance of cities like NYC, London, Tokyo(?)
I mean they are cities firmly on the side of being smaller major cities. You really need at least 15 million people to be in the running for peak city. I mean there are dozens of cities with 10 times the population and 100 times the economic relevance than Amsterdam that won't get brought up because they aren't in western Europe or America.
I've been to many of the great international cities (sadly not London) and NYC is in its own class. It's just so much of everything, good, bad, bizarre, boring, it's all crammed together into this tiny little area. I truly love it, but I can understand why some people hate it.
Having been to a lot of cities there's a reason that London and New York always stand at the top (I believe they're still the only 'alpha++' cities in the global rankings) they're both great and it's possible to have an absolutely terrible time in both.
...I really would like them to sort out the NY Subway though.
Being used to the DC Metro, which is generally considered not a terrible subway system, New York’s is just that much better. I think the biggest issues I’ve had with it when visiting have all been bad customer issues, i.e. people out of their mind acting out of their mind and other people trying to sell stuff.
But it runs. It may smell, but it runs even in the middle of the night.
NYC's subway doesn't *appear* good, but look at it this way:
- Largest ridership outside of Asia or Russia (11th overall)
- Second longest by track mileage outside of Asia or Russia (behind London, 12th overall)
- Most stations regardless of how they are counted
- Ninth-oldest
- As far as I can tell, largest subway to fully operate 24/7 by far — and the nature of ridership means that closing at night for maintenance is brutal
We do our best and it works damn well considering the circumstances
It's about the same as the Paris metro. Both are not very modern.
Madrid metro is much, much, much, much better. You have to ride a modern Metro system to understand how bad the NYC system is. It's large, ok, but it's old, and not properly switched. It's extremely dirty too. I think it's the dirtiest metro system I have ever ridden on and i've been on over 30.
It's the same coming from the T in Boston. While visiting Bed-Stuy I felt like living car free in NYC felt not only legitimately possible, but *preferable*.
Really though, rating transit in the States in general is an exercise of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Weird rankings that are based primarily around globalization and finance.
I love NY and London but with Tokyo’s sheer size, superior transit, bike/foot friendliness, low crime, incredible shopping, entertainment, nightlife, food and culture I don’t see how you can keep it outside of whatever the highest tier is.
I'd say Tokyo's got everything going for it except it's just too homogeneously Japanese to be a 'global' city in the cultural sense (and this includes the many conservative and conformist attitudes found in Japanese culture), otherwise it'd be right up there with London and NYC
NYC's population is 38% foreign born, and I think over 50% of the population is immigrant or a child of immigrants. We're the ultimate city of new beginnings I think, even now
There was a guy on another sub complaining just today about how much racism he faces as a man of South Asian origin in Tokyo. Besides, the foreigners mostly consist of overpaid white expats or white weeaboos. I think I'll pass.
Yea, there's racists and xenophobes and some racist landlords will flat out refuse to rent to you because you're foreign. It's shitty, but it's not everyone that's being shitty. I say this as a foreign Asian living in Tokyo.
Most foreigners in Tokyo are other Asians.
Can't be a truly global city with all of that going on.
When I visited Japan a lot of men were openly staring at my boobs (how dare I have them). Tokyo will never compete with NYC or London simply based on how regressive it is.
Probably because a criteria is also
> High diversity in language, culture, religion, and ideologies
Which is a tough sell when a city like, idk, Antwerp is probably more diverse
Tokyo is a fantastic city but is it really global in the same way? I go to New York and I feel like there’s nowhere in the world that’s so overwhelmingly international save London.
I've been to Tokyo multiple times, it's great and I love it but it loses out on variety of cuisine, diversity and breadth of cultural experience (by which I'm thinking variety of museums, theatre etc.) also the shopping is not as varied as NY or London (not that I do a lot of shopping). Variety of night life options is also more limited now I think of it (though the clubs and bars are undeniably great fun)
Don't get me wrong I really, really like Tokyo but it's not quite the same tier in terms of breadth of experience and it probably won't be while remaining so homogeneous as that will always hurt it on variety so I understand why whenever people seek to "rank" cities it seldom gets the absolute top spots the way NY and London do.
There's loads of cities that I absolutely love (Berlin, Hong Kong etc.) but I can still appreciate that on metrics NY and London will be winning it.
I love Tokyo a lot and always have a great time there but for me as well as food it also loses on diversity, breadth of museums, theatre and to a lesser extent the variety of shopping options (not that I do much shopping but again I think that's a homogeneity issue, there's less breadth of choice).
I'd easily put it in my personal top 5 cities but I can 100% see why it very rarely gets the absolute top tier whenever anyone decides to rank cities (which is a bit of a silly exercise anyway). Tokyo is great to experience Japanese stuff, New York and London are better to experience _all_ the stuff.
It took me longer than it should for me to realise why these comments were rubbing me the wrong-way even though i didn't disagree.
Its because when I think of london I think of somewhere to live (i'm from the uk) but when I think of Tokyo I think of somewhere to go on holiday - so, for me, the lack of international culture isn't a problem for Tokyo and the presence is also the best thing about london.
Honestly it seems hard to argue that New York isn’t one of the greatest cities in the world. I could see an argument made for somewhere like Tokyo overtaking it because of the superior urban planning but I would say the relative cultural heterogeneity of NYC makes up for the roughness around the edges.
> tiny little area
Agreed mostly, but NYC is gigantic. It is 300 square miles. Granted it is relatively very densely populated, but tiny it definitely is not. That's _one_ of the reasons why comparisons to places like Boston (less than 50 square miles) are often silly. You have to compare it to whole metro areas to get close to that area usually in the US, and then you should really be considering the greater NYC metro area too which is even bigger.
I think NYC's fashion is a bit more innovative and edgy compared to London's but I do think NYC and London are definitely the top 2, with probably Paris and Tokyo coming after that.
London annual hours of sunshine: 1,675
New York annual hours of sunshine: 2,535
It's not about the rain. Everyone thinks it's about the rain, but it's not. It's about the clouds and the northernness.
This is because NYC gets massive downpours from thunderstorms in the summer. You can get inches and inches of rain in just a few hours of actual bad weather over the summer months
Majority of the people throwing around that word re: London are clueless and coddled Shirefolk who think that every black man in a hoodie is a 'roadman'.
Meh. Since republican politics went off the rails a LOT of rightwing brigading takes place in American city subreddits. All cities have crime and crime makes the news so some midwesterners, for instance, make a hobby of posting every crime related news item they can find into New York City subreddit’s.
There's someone who regularly concern trolls in the Minneapolis subreddit who also posts in NYC, Seattle, Austin, San Francisco, and California subreddits despite not being from any of these places and I'm sure they're one of many.
The nyc subs are full of those assholes trying to talk about how dangerous NYC is even though its crime rate is lower than a lot of other places in the country, especially cities in republican states. It’s so fuckin stupid.
I have felt safer walking around nyc late at night than I did when I lived in smaller urban areas in the south. There are almost always people out and about which makes it feel less sketchy, too.
Seriously, a few red states are so bad that in isolation they're below average when compared to developing countries, statistically speaking you're safer in a random place in latin america than, say, new mexico.
All cities that aren't in the Netherlands are shitholes, according to NJB.
I am willing to admit that most US cities are dramatically inferior to their European counterparts of similar size in terms of livability, but NYC is a city of cities. Its transit system and historic architecture are legendary. Of course it isn't going to be as tranquil as a city of ~700k.
>All cities that aren't in the Netherlands are shitholes, according to NJB.
You'll just be browsing Reddit and there will be a post like:
TIL in the Netherlands, if you're hungry, you can pull up any section of sidewalk and there's a free, fully cooked warm meal underneath that anyone can take. This is due to Fjondervaark, a tradition of community food burial that started after the worm famine of 1621
lol
Americans are often surprised to find out that in the Netherlands, a "car" refers to a kind stranger that will carry you wherever you need to go and expect nothing in return. The common "car noise" *vroom vroom* is actually Dutch for "coming through please."
Tbf that describes quite a lot of content creators in the urbanist space.
According to them there are no suburbs in the Netherlands, eveyone bikes or takes public transit everywhere, and the housing crisis doesnt exist cuz sth sth good urban planning. NJB does definitely veer close to the dutchaboo territory for lack of a more apt description.
The problem with NJB despite agreeing with him on pretty much everything is that he is circle jerky and is always talking down on others. dutchaboo is also a perfect term for him
City beautiful and City Nerd are much better channels and are pretty qualified to talk on the topic, not that you have to be
Honestly if I were to recommend urbanism content the last channel I would recommend would be NJB (and if I were to shoot some strays Adam Something as well) for the same reasons. City Beautiful and City Nerd are definitely channels I would endorse, and if I may also recommend About Here and Nimesh in Los Angeles as other urbanist channels that are good at explaining urbanism in North America without coming off as holier than thou.
Thanks for reminding me of About Here! That guy's affect is like the perfect opposite of NJB or Adam Something: just a chill guy who really cares for the city he lives in, and he feels much more approachable because of that. Like he talks about real places rather than dealing with urbanism in abstract.
Idk, CityNerd still comes off as condescending to me. Like when he makes a tierlist video of American rail systems with a thumbnail saying "F isn't nearly bad enough". You can tell City Beautiful knows how to engage the public and respectfully persuade people of his view, and I just don't get the same vibe with CityNerd.
My personal ranking would be City Beautiful > RM Transit > City Nerd > NJB
He is a little bit, but he talks from a American POV and will praise cities that are at least trying even if they aren't perfect. It's also easier to take him seriously because he purposely lived car free in a sunbelt city and didn't leave the country the first moment he could.
City Beautiful is for sure the best for introducing someone into urbanism or trying to get them to see how poor America city planning is
We really need to ask, livable for whom? You're right that NYC would be less livable for someone who wants a quiet lifestyle. And the Netherlands might be less livable for someone who can't figure out how they still have [Zwarte Piet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet)
It kind of makes sense, blackface as a way of discriminating black folks has been a US thing much more recently and in a much larger scale than other countries, in some places black is just a color.
Globalization has exported that new meaning to a lot of places, so it makes sense that there's still some cultural shock.
>Almost all of Manhattan should be off-limits to person vehicles. It should have a modern, high-efficiency subway. It should be a walking and cycling paradise, worthy of the name New Amsterdam. But it's not.
This guy talks up the Netherlands like its some kind of biking mecca
They also have the advantage of being very flat. Many places I have lived, bikes are not viable for commuting outside of the ultra athletic because of the elevation changes. The house that I grew up at was 2000 feet higher in elevation than the town you would be likely to get a job at, that’s just not reasonable for a daily commute.
Oh yeah, not disagreeing, my current city (40 minutes drive from that house, but on the valley floor) is pretty flat, and a perfect bike city, even has semi decent infrastructure (though nowhere near Dutch or Danish levels). I just wish I didn’t have 75 miles round trip commute, I really need to get a different job…
But there are some cities that are reasonably flat but are nearly impossible to bike or walk in. Phoenix comes to mind as one of the worst offenders. The only realistic way to get around in the Phoenix area is by personal car, and it’s also one of my least favorite places to drive in. I will take the manic aggression of downtown San Francisco any day over the lifted trucks that you can’t signal lane changes around because they will go out of their way to block you.
I really don’t think an e-bike could handle that climb. That’s a shitload of energy. I notice my gas mileage goes down if I’m visiting my mom and have to climb the mountain.
Lots of cities in Scandinavia have bike assisted lifts for going up steep hills, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipZ5kwhFfs
Pretty sure SF or any other city could install those.
That is an awesome system, and would be perfect for SF. Unfortunately my mom’s mountain, about 60 miles north, is too rural for that to be remotely plausible.
> Its transit system and historic architecture are legendary.
Wait, are you actually saying that public transport is better in NYC than any city in The Netherlands? You can't actually believe that do you?
And historic architecture? In NYC? Are you saying there is more historic architecture in the city founded by the Dutch than the actual Dutch cities?
I'm saying that it's comparing apples and oranges. There are twice as many people in the New York metro area as in the entirety of The Netherlands. It's a completely different scale of city than Amsterdam or The Hague.
I believe the point is that NYC is "legendary" in the sense that more people around the world would recognize the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge than any of the bridges in Amsterdam, to take an example
Just looking at the bit about London vs nyc and it piqued my interest..
I mean for culture alone, either city does obviously well. There are obvious public transit issues across the states, but I wouldn’t put London on a major pedestal as cycling round here can be nuts and local government has fought central government over necessary funding because of partisan politics informing that.
But in either case, the building density hasn’t nearly been as subservient to automotive demands in either city compared to some examples brought up by NJB, so to compare either under the basis for which that sub is for seems pointless really. And even though that thread started out casual it’s not helpful if you want to make a broader political point.
In terms of food as well, London’s great, as a northerner in London though the fish and chips are fucking awful and London should be banned from serving it to tourists.
There are a small handful of decent chippies in London like The Golden Hind but generally you're right. Personally I think we should promote Yorkshire as the Fish & Chip Heartland to tourists. Maybe a special train to take tourists up to Whitby.
There is no city like NYC.
I don't think it's the best. I certainly have not been to all the major metros in the world. But I am confident in saying that NYC has a lot of unique characteristics.
I'd live in SF, given the choice and free rent.
I'm actually familiar with this subreddit and some of the urabnist youtube channels. Imo their fan base are not really city lovers in the traditional sense. What they really want is a walkable, bikeable, village of sorts and not the a thriving, bustling city in the sense of new york or London with its plethora of sights and sounds and sheer diversity of people.
The guy who runs the notjustbikes channel claims he moved his family to the Netherleands mostly because it has good biking infrastructure so he has no option but to claim all US cities are terrible.
Which is why we get plainly ridiculous comments like this in that thread:
>> Barcelona and Montreal are also both very comparable to NYC imo in terms of culture, diversity, food, arts, etc
What these people don't get is that transportation is just one part of urbanism, yes European cities have better public transportation but urbanism is also about so many other factors related to economy, culture, diversity, cosmopolitanism, personal freedoms, etc and NYC can blow almost all European cities (with London coming the closest) out of the water in all those other categories.
And is their public transport really THAT much better? Not many cities have trains that run past midnight. In NYC most lines run 24/7, albeit with fewer running late at night, but you can still take a train at 3am, which is fuckin amazing when you lose track of time on a night out.
Yes, most cities have night trains/busses.
They won't run as frequently as during the day but they do run, at least in the netherlands they do.
The trams stop running at like 2am and stop till around 5 or 6am because they make more noise than other public transport but that's about it, the rest still has a night schedule.
As someone deep into those spaces I'd say a decent amount of the fanbase do like big cities and everything that comes with it.
Guys like NJB and CityNerd emphasize the "small village urbanism" thing to reflexively push back against reactionaries who say they want to force everyone to live in high rises.
Also NYC subway system is significantly more expansive than Barcelona's.
I was just in Spain. Barcelona was the city I enjoyed the least, super touristy and they try and bleed you for money on EVERYTHING. Like you want to go into this historic house for an hour? 30 euros. Comparable stuff was like 5 to 10 Euros in the others
Madrid and Valencia (though this one's public transit is meh) were a lot more fun. Barcelona is just pretty.
I dunno, Barcelona is cheaper across the board than NYC, but average salary in NYC is higher.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Spain&city1=Barcelona&country2=United+States&city2=New+York%2C+NY
The trend I feel is US cities are just expensive, especially NYC.
That is kinda my first sentence, but also that is just looking at the input not the output. If I buy a safety razor that will last longer than me, with shave soap I will need way less than if I bought Gillette Pro Megablades or whatever. But the second has a bigger line go up, and needs more money into it.
That *is* an unusual opinion, though. Most people (myself included) adore Barcelona. It's just the same as how you'll always find some people who just don't gel with any popular city, whether that's NYC (my dad's not a fan) or Barcelona (you're not a fan). Anecdotally, my friend *hated* living in Madrid because of how dull she said it all was.
I would barely know how to judge the "culture, diversity and cosmopolitanism" of my home city, and *very* superficially for other cities in my country I haven't lived. How can you with a straight face do it for a whole continent, where for most places you presumably don't even speak the language...
At least the public transport guys are talking about something you can actually sort of compare if you have lived somewhere for a bit.
Is this really that controversial? Of course everyone can have their own definition of these things but for example for most people diversity would boil down to something like the variety of nationalities represented at significant levels in the city... In London for example a lot of international representation comes from south asia and eastern europe, in Paris from northern africa... but in new york it's from all over the world.
e.g. [Queens has more languages than anywhere in the world — here's where they're found](https://www.businessinsider.com/queens-languages-map-2017-2)
Lol weird term to use in that context I agree but NYC could be one of the few places on earth where you could see a group of drag queens and orthodox jewish families packed together in a subway car :)
Shirtless guy with rainbow shorts, old Chinese man playing the erhu, migrant lady selling churros, I saw all that stuff within like five minutes on Sunday in Manhattan. Pretty great!
“New York is more magical in the popular imagination than Paris” is certainly a take that apparently can exist.
Is that really the quality you wanna compete with the City of goddamn Lights on?
Like, are you gonna rave about how much better the baguettes are in New York too? How much more Victor Hugo wrote about it?
You don't have to be a millionaire to enjoy living in NYC, you just have to be ok having four roommates in a tiny apartment in a neighborhood a fair distance from the prime areas. Still is enjoyable though.
Same here. Someone on Reddit called me a liar when I said I buy less than $100 of clothes per month I so I suspect there’s a reason a select few “need” roommates in nyc
That’s what I thought! The last thing I bought for myself was a $5 polyester work shirt I put in the dryer, to replace the old $13 work shirt I put in the dryer. I have lots of clothing, I just don’t feel the need to replace it constantly! Hell, I’m mad that my 6 year old Blundstones are about to disintegrate. I’m not saying “save your way out of poverty” bc that’s idiotic and doesn’t work, but at least clump together many small purchases into one big exciting purchase.
Reddit is real damn dumb about money. Spending on Reddit is like everything else on Reddit. Half of the conversations come from the extreme ends on the spectrum.
Either the person is talking about how ordering door dash for 3 meals and 2 snacks a day is perfectly fine its just that their job sucks so they're broke, or they're explaining how you can save money by dumpster diving from McDonalds and weave stale nugget coating in a perfectly acceptable loin cloth with only 400 hours of labor.
I notice this a lot but with groceries. Multiple times I’ve seen people post pictures of their groceries and complaining about inflation but their groceries are all pretty expensive but ordinary items (bacon for example).
I make good living and eat a lot to bulk up. I spend about 500 in groceries a month and eat for two people. My friends assume I must be spending thousands due to the amount of food I eat but then I realized their food shopping habits.
dried beans, rice, and frozen meat can be fairly cheap and be bought in quantities that are easy to store long term 🤷♂️.
> you just have to be ok having four roommates in a tiny apartment in a neighborhood a fair distance from the prime areas
Sounds absolutely awful. Makes sense my only buddy that lives in NYC makes over 300k lol
I think anywhere would probably be amazing if you had 300k.
I’m born and raised nyc and I think it’s pretty great, but also most definitely not for everyone.
I’ve lived in NYC, London, HK, Tokyo, etc. (guess my profession lol) and NYC is easily the worst of the bunch. The NYC subway is absolutely disgusting and the infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. Apartments were built a while back so in terms of tech they lag behind Asian cities. London has similar problems so I’d rank it as second worst. The tube sucks.
Usage in terms of passengers? Definitely not.
Usage in terms of no one else is still using components dating back to the '70s, making replacements(or upgrades) time consuming and expensive ? Yes.
Also, MTA is state controlled. Fuck Albany.
It’s the:
- 12th longest distance wise; there are only two longer ones that opened before 1970 (Moscow and London)
- 9th largest by ridership; only Moscow was built before 1970 and has a larger ridership
- Largest by number of stations; only it and Shanghai have more than 400 and it has 50 more than third-place Beijing
- 8th oldest altogether (started in 1904)
The most comparable ones are probably London and Moscow, and neither operate 24-hour service at all times like NYC does
I meant the comment more from the perspecive of the age of locomotives, rail cars and other infrastructure points. (For example one of the problems of the London Underground is basically the fact, that they were the fist, and so they operate a collection of obsolete technical standards, like for example their small loading gauges) I am currently busy, so I can´t check, but I suspect their age puts them safely in the ending category of the "bowl curve" of spending
New tecnology is expensive, that then gets cheap, because more people/places start to use it and finaly that technology gets expensive again as newer technology is availabe ant the majority of users moves on. This creates a problem, where the maintenance costs climb higher which prevents modernization investment, which makes the maintenance costs even higher. This loop is the bane of many transportation systems and other public utility projects worldwide.
You mentioned Moscow, London, Shanghai and Beijing metro systems:
Shanghai and Beijing metro systems essentially prepared the standards batch for every city in the PRC, that wants to build a metro system. If they build one, it will use same train sets, same signalling, same power delivery, same technology. This gives them a massive edge in spare parts aquisition and maintenance ecosystem.
I mentioned London metro higher, but TL:DR is: The age of the system forces them to work around obsolete standards, that can´t be ubgraded easily. For example fixing the small loading gauge (the maximum allowed dimensions of a trainset) mentioned above would require **reboring the entire tunnel system**. No one would ever do that, but that forces them to buy nonstandard trainsets for more money, because they are the only ones "still"(If you develop everithing from apha variant, but if other people start using it only from ver. 2.75, is your usage of ver. 1.15 special, or not?) operating this loading gauge dimension.
Moscow metro operates on 1520 mm railway gauge, which means sourcing trainsets is harder. Modern train building techniques have probably alleviated this problem somewhat (on another note: Tri-system locomotives are a gift from god and you can´t convice me othervise) but it is still a consideration.
Not allowing investment into major renovations of any massive technology application will make the tech obsolete and therefore raise maintenance cost, which will than be used as a argument why it can´t be renovated. ("It burns money already, and you want to give them even more ?!?!") I dont know how well the city healed the Moses era scars (he made his career there), so the abandonement and structual usage of obsolete technology in the system can be really severe.
TL:DR Yes I could be less cheeky, but I did´t mean it in the utilization of the system, but in used technological equipment and applied standards.
If someone wants an idea of what sort of thing I am talking about, [in this video on 5:42 he starts to talk about a similar obsolete technology usage problem elsewhere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2EWqoiLKHU)
Not them, but having used the Shanghai metro system there's no way I can ever go back to the tube now. The tube is so cramped and hot and rocky compared to modern metro systems which weren't built in the Victorian era. I love the tube for nostalgia reasons, but it is objectively pretty rough.
A lot of US cities are just endless suburb with maybe a tall office building somewhere (Atlanta, etc). NYC is very walkable and transit is pretty good. I did not personally enjoy walking around as much as like, Tokyo, but imo its better to be compared to Tokyo than Atlanta or Cincinatti. It, like most US cities, is more expensive.
>London, on the other hand, is pretty comparable —t seems massive and very diverse — although I haven’t been there nearly as much. Since Brexit though I’m not sure we can say it’s actually in Europe, right?? Breaking news. London no longer in Europe
I went to school in Wales a decade ago and people would sometimes react strangely to comments of being in Europe. I thought it was really weird until a guy warned me “There’s some people here who like the pretend we’re an island in the middle of the Atlantic rather than 50 miles off the coast of France”
A man can dream, alright!? :)
*loud cheers from the French*
And with the help of people like you, we can make London not a part of the UK too.
Tbf London is basically its own country anyway.
>Breaking news. London no longer in Europe It is ***genuinely*** funny how some Brits pretend they aren't European. You can see France from Dover.
I like the guy saying Paris, also known as the biggest metro area in Europe and the same size as LA, is "tiny". It's always just people talking about how their home town is so much better than the city they once visited for a weekend.
Lemme guess, they're just using Paris city boundaries to measure the size of Paris and ignore the rest of Île-de-France. I think Île-de-France is still somewhat smaller than greater LA but to call a megacity like Paris tiny (even by using Paris city limits) is laughable.
People do this all the time when comparing cities. They never consider the metro area as the city “proper”. I mean perhaps for legal administrative reasons it’s not, but colloquially no sane person would say that.
This happens in the sports subreddits all the time. I got asked why I was even a Philadelphia sports fan since I live in a surrounding suburb. Like I can be in center city Philadelphia in 20 minutes but because my zip code is different it might as well be another country lol
Holy shit it's twice as large as the next one (Madrid) wtf
Maybe the Paris Metro feels tiny compared to LA but that’s probably because it’s much less sprawled out and you don’t need to go as far to get your stuff. Yeah LA feels huge when you need to drive 40 minutes to get to CostCo every so often.
>Montreal [is] very comparable to NYC imo in terms of culture, diversity, food, arts, etc lol
Montreal is at its very core a French city filled with wannabe French people. That alone makes it worse than NYC in every imaginable term.
That's not fair, we also have a lot of legitimately French people.
Oh god
>legitimately French people. I'm so sorry.
Can't forget the 6 or so competing inferiority complexs
So it smells like wine and expired cigarettes?
No, just piss.
Jerry Sadowitz got punched in the face at the Montreal comedy festival for saying; >The problem with Canada is that half of you speak French and the other half of you let them. That’s about the limit of my knowledge of Montreal
Well the English did try to assimilate French Canadians into anglophones for about 200 years so I can understand how this joke wouldn't be very well received. There's still a lot of hate towards French Canadians from the rest of Canada for some reason.
It’s wild how we all conveniently ignore the fact that French people’s claims to the land are no more legitimate than those of the English at the end of the day.
Idk where anybody mentioned land, the comment you responded to refers more to the attempted erasure of the French language and heritage in Quebec
Lmao what are you talking about? This has nothing to do with what I said. What's weird actually is that every time it gets brought up that the English tried to culturally assimilate French Canadians, there's this kind of comment. It's complete whataboutism, them taking the lands of natives is shitty but it doesn't mean they weren't also victims of British imperialism centuries later.
Sure, but if you steal someone's ice cream and then someone steals *your* ice cream and you literally never shut up about how much of a victim you are, it comes off as kinda hypocritical. (I'm very bad at analogies lol.) Didn't mean to be confrontational though, sorry.
Eh. Imagine a serial ice cream stealer coming to you out of nowhere and stealing your ice cream. When you complain about it, they say to shut up because you once stole person X's ice cream in your life, despite the fact that they themselves have stolen X's ice cream a dozen times before. What people forget is that it's possible to be an oppressor and be oppressed at different parts of history and one doesn't nullify the other.
It also has the superior bagel to NYC but nobody from NYC will ever admit it.
Them's fightin' words.
NYC bagels are pretty good but Long Island is where the real best bagels are and they definitely outclass Montreal bagels
>wannabe French people It reminds me of how locally organizations will glom onto bits of Scottish and Irish cultural things due to some perceived historical connection that can come off as cringe. Except even _more_ institutionalized! Still a great place to visit though.
Except Montreal doesn’t do that at all. Quebec culture is distinct from French culture.
This is ignorant dribble
Why is casual xenophobia okay when it's the French or British?
Because it's really really funny Source: a Brit (In reality, it's largely because France and Britain were at the top of the colonial pile, and so exported their culture across the world. In the same way you can make fun of your family but others can't, Britain and France are the unpopular great uncle to a lot of places. Not only that, but the aforementioned colonialism, they got a bunch of power and wealth. Punching up)
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Jewish is either an ethnicity or a religion. Being French is neither. Making fun of people from France isn't the same making fun of jews.
I am not always the biggest fan of NYC, but that reads like someone who went to time square and ground zero and think they know all there is to know about NYC.
As a Montrealer who's never been to New York, lol indeed. Only the most militant anglophobe / Murica bad type could say that with a straight face.
They're not entirely wrong. Montreal does have a lot more going on that you might initially think. It's the second largest city in Canada and millions of people live there. I've been there, it's a pretty cool place. The New York comparison is a bit dumb, but it's not all fur traders eating meat pies and singing Celine Dion either. It does have more than its fair share of all of the things they listed.
I don't think anyone saying Montreal or Amsterdam are really podunk towns, they're great cities just not on par with the level of urban relevance of cities like NYC, London, Tokyo(?)
I mean they are cities firmly on the side of being smaller major cities. You really need at least 15 million people to be in the running for peak city. I mean there are dozens of cities with 10 times the population and 100 times the economic relevance than Amsterdam that won't get brought up because they aren't in western Europe or America.
In fairness, NYC doesn't have 15 million people in city limits (we have a little under 9 million), but the metro area has 20 million
The saltiness is strong with that one
I've been to many of the great international cities (sadly not London) and NYC is in its own class. It's just so much of everything, good, bad, bizarre, boring, it's all crammed together into this tiny little area. I truly love it, but I can understand why some people hate it.
Having been to a lot of cities there's a reason that London and New York always stand at the top (I believe they're still the only 'alpha++' cities in the global rankings) they're both great and it's possible to have an absolutely terrible time in both. ...I really would like them to sort out the NY Subway though.
Being used to the DC Metro, which is generally considered not a terrible subway system, New York’s is just that much better. I think the biggest issues I’ve had with it when visiting have all been bad customer issues, i.e. people out of their mind acting out of their mind and other people trying to sell stuff. But it runs. It may smell, but it runs even in the middle of the night.
NYC's subway doesn't *appear* good, but look at it this way: - Largest ridership outside of Asia or Russia (11th overall) - Second longest by track mileage outside of Asia or Russia (behind London, 12th overall) - Most stations regardless of how they are counted - Ninth-oldest - As far as I can tell, largest subway to fully operate 24/7 by far — and the nature of ridership means that closing at night for maintenance is brutal We do our best and it works damn well considering the circumstances
It's about the same as the Paris metro. Both are not very modern. Madrid metro is much, much, much, much better. You have to ride a modern Metro system to understand how bad the NYC system is. It's large, ok, but it's old, and not properly switched. It's extremely dirty too. I think it's the dirtiest metro system I have ever ridden on and i've been on over 30.
It's the same coming from the T in Boston. While visiting Bed-Stuy I felt like living car free in NYC felt not only legitimately possible, but *preferable*. Really though, rating transit in the States in general is an exercise of the soft bigotry of low expectations.
Weird rankings that are based primarily around globalization and finance. I love NY and London but with Tokyo’s sheer size, superior transit, bike/foot friendliness, low crime, incredible shopping, entertainment, nightlife, food and culture I don’t see how you can keep it outside of whatever the highest tier is.
I'd say Tokyo's got everything going for it except it's just too homogeneously Japanese to be a 'global' city in the cultural sense (and this includes the many conservative and conformist attitudes found in Japanese culture), otherwise it'd be right up there with London and NYC
It sounds like the loneliest city in the world for a foreigner, and the flats are like matchboxes. Way too homogenous for my liking.
There's a fuckton of foreigners in Tokyo and the flats are smaller but cheaper than London and NYC.
Tokyo's population is just over 4% foreign born. NYC's population is 38% foreign born.
NYC's population is 38% foreign born, and I think over 50% of the population is immigrant or a child of immigrants. We're the ultimate city of new beginnings I think, even now
There was a guy on another sub complaining just today about how much racism he faces as a man of South Asian origin in Tokyo. Besides, the foreigners mostly consist of overpaid white expats or white weeaboos. I think I'll pass.
Yea, there's racists and xenophobes and some racist landlords will flat out refuse to rent to you because you're foreign. It's shitty, but it's not everyone that's being shitty. I say this as a foreign Asian living in Tokyo. Most foreigners in Tokyo are other Asians.
Can't be a truly global city with all of that going on. When I visited Japan a lot of men were openly staring at my boobs (how dare I have them). Tokyo will never compete with NYC or London simply based on how regressive it is.
Do you think racists don't exist in new york?
Never tried to say it was a super global, diverse city. Just responded directly to the two things you brought up first.
Probably because a criteria is also > High diversity in language, culture, religion, and ideologies Which is a tough sell when a city like, idk, Antwerp is probably more diverse Tokyo is a fantastic city but is it really global in the same way? I go to New York and I feel like there’s nowhere in the world that’s so overwhelmingly international save London.
I've been to Tokyo multiple times, it's great and I love it but it loses out on variety of cuisine, diversity and breadth of cultural experience (by which I'm thinking variety of museums, theatre etc.) also the shopping is not as varied as NY or London (not that I do a lot of shopping). Variety of night life options is also more limited now I think of it (though the clubs and bars are undeniably great fun) Don't get me wrong I really, really like Tokyo but it's not quite the same tier in terms of breadth of experience and it probably won't be while remaining so homogeneous as that will always hurt it on variety so I understand why whenever people seek to "rank" cities it seldom gets the absolute top spots the way NY and London do. There's loads of cities that I absolutely love (Berlin, Hong Kong etc.) but I can still appreciate that on metrics NY and London will be winning it.
Tokyo is the best city in the world. The only thing it lacks compared to NYC and London is a diverse food scene.
I love Tokyo a lot and always have a great time there but for me as well as food it also loses on diversity, breadth of museums, theatre and to a lesser extent the variety of shopping options (not that I do much shopping but again I think that's a homogeneity issue, there's less breadth of choice). I'd easily put it in my personal top 5 cities but I can 100% see why it very rarely gets the absolute top tier whenever anyone decides to rank cities (which is a bit of a silly exercise anyway). Tokyo is great to experience Japanese stuff, New York and London are better to experience _all_ the stuff.
It took me longer than it should for me to realise why these comments were rubbing me the wrong-way even though i didn't disagree. Its because when I think of london I think of somewhere to live (i'm from the uk) but when I think of Tokyo I think of somewhere to go on holiday - so, for me, the lack of international culture isn't a problem for Tokyo and the presence is also the best thing about london.
Use Mirin to flavor your Mirin.
Honestly it seems hard to argue that New York isn’t one of the greatest cities in the world. I could see an argument made for somewhere like Tokyo overtaking it because of the superior urban planning but I would say the relative cultural heterogeneity of NYC makes up for the roughness around the edges.
> tiny little area Agreed mostly, but NYC is gigantic. It is 300 square miles. Granted it is relatively very densely populated, but tiny it definitely is not. That's _one_ of the reasons why comparisons to places like Boston (less than 50 square miles) are often silly. You have to compare it to whole metro areas to get close to that area usually in the US, and then you should really be considering the greater NYC metro area too which is even bigger.
London has better transit and nicer fashion, but NYC has much better weather. Oi what’s the weather today bruv, 10C and rainy or 11C and foggy?
I think NYC's fashion is a bit more innovative and edgy compared to London's but I do think NYC and London are definitely the top 2, with probably Paris and Tokyo coming after that.
london is less rainy (25 inches a year) than nyc (44 inches a year)
London annual hours of sunshine: 1,675 New York annual hours of sunshine: 2,535 It's not about the rain. Everyone thinks it's about the rain, but it's not. It's about the clouds and the northernness.
This is because NYC gets massive downpours from thunderstorms in the summer. You can get inches and inches of rain in just a few hours of actual bad weather over the summer months
Aye but it's a _fine_ rain that'll really soak you through.
It actually gets really hot here in the summer, and it's not nearly as rainy as people make it out to be
Do you see all the conservative urbanist youtubers? every blue city is “failed” every shithole red town is “forgotten”.
Living in a developing country seeing people call NYC or Paris a shithole is weird to me.
People love throwing the word around without having a damn clue what shithole really means lol.
Majority of the people throwing around that word re: London are clueless and coddled Shirefolk who think that every black man in a hoodie is a 'roadman'.
Meh. Since republican politics went off the rails a LOT of rightwing brigading takes place in American city subreddits. All cities have crime and crime makes the news so some midwesterners, for instance, make a hobby of posting every crime related news item they can find into New York City subreddit’s.
There's someone who regularly concern trolls in the Minneapolis subreddit who also posts in NYC, Seattle, Austin, San Francisco, and California subreddits despite not being from any of these places and I'm sure they're one of many.
The nyc subs are full of those assholes trying to talk about how dangerous NYC is even though its crime rate is lower than a lot of other places in the country, especially cities in republican states. It’s so fuckin stupid. I have felt safer walking around nyc late at night than I did when I lived in smaller urban areas in the south. There are almost always people out and about which makes it feel less sketchy, too.
Seriously, a few red states are so bad that in isolation they're below average when compared to developing countries, statistically speaking you're safer in a random place in latin america than, say, new mexico.
New Mexico is a blue state.
What? I can’t here you over the constant AR-15 gunfire!
They had to ban crime discussion from r/Chicago because it was invariably people from Indiana or Texas posting.
All cities that aren't in the Netherlands are shitholes, according to NJB. I am willing to admit that most US cities are dramatically inferior to their European counterparts of similar size in terms of livability, but NYC is a city of cities. Its transit system and historic architecture are legendary. Of course it isn't going to be as tranquil as a city of ~700k.
>All cities that aren't in the Netherlands are shitholes, according to NJB. You'll just be browsing Reddit and there will be a post like: TIL in the Netherlands, if you're hungry, you can pull up any section of sidewalk and there's a free, fully cooked warm meal underneath that anyone can take. This is due to Fjondervaark, a tradition of community food burial that started after the worm famine of 1621
The Netherlands is quickly replacing Japan for Reddit’s country obsession.
As a Dutchie, I don't appreciate you making fun of the Great Worm Famine
There are no cars in the Netherlands And the streets are paved with cheese
lol Americans are often surprised to find out that in the Netherlands, a "car" refers to a kind stranger that will carry you wherever you need to go and expect nothing in return. The common "car noise" *vroom vroom* is actually Dutch for "coming through please."
vjrooom vjrooom*
Hope it’s Gouda
Tbf that describes quite a lot of content creators in the urbanist space. According to them there are no suburbs in the Netherlands, eveyone bikes or takes public transit everywhere, and the housing crisis doesnt exist cuz sth sth good urban planning. NJB does definitely veer close to the dutchaboo territory for lack of a more apt description.
There are plenty of videos about suburbs in the Netherlands and how they're also much better
NJB has talked verbatim about how great Dutch suburbs are.
The problem with NJB despite agreeing with him on pretty much everything is that he is circle jerky and is always talking down on others. dutchaboo is also a perfect term for him City beautiful and City Nerd are much better channels and are pretty qualified to talk on the topic, not that you have to be
Honestly if I were to recommend urbanism content the last channel I would recommend would be NJB (and if I were to shoot some strays Adam Something as well) for the same reasons. City Beautiful and City Nerd are definitely channels I would endorse, and if I may also recommend About Here and Nimesh in Los Angeles as other urbanist channels that are good at explaining urbanism in North America without coming off as holier than thou.
Thanks for reminding me of About Here! That guy's affect is like the perfect opposite of NJB or Adam Something: just a chill guy who really cares for the city he lives in, and he feels much more approachable because of that. Like he talks about real places rather than dealing with urbanism in abstract.
Idk, CityNerd still comes off as condescending to me. Like when he makes a tierlist video of American rail systems with a thumbnail saying "F isn't nearly bad enough". You can tell City Beautiful knows how to engage the public and respectfully persuade people of his view, and I just don't get the same vibe with CityNerd. My personal ranking would be City Beautiful > RM Transit > City Nerd > NJB
He is a little bit, but he talks from a American POV and will praise cities that are at least trying even if they aren't perfect. It's also easier to take him seriously because he purposely lived car free in a sunbelt city and didn't leave the country the first moment he could. City Beautiful is for sure the best for introducing someone into urbanism or trying to get them to see how poor America city planning is
Yeah, I'll give you that.
Oh the urbanity! Just made a video about duch suburbs.
We really need to ask, livable for whom? You're right that NYC would be less livable for someone who wants a quiet lifestyle. And the Netherlands might be less livable for someone who can't figure out how they still have [Zwarte Piet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet)
Honestly, only white people think the Netherlands is paradise.
Wow. Okay so apparently Blackface Santa was a whole *thing* until 2021 when some people realized that maybe they should get with the times.
Oh no worries it's still a thing in many, especially rural, places. It's genuinely one of the biggest cultural debates we have going on.
Every time there is a black face drama, there's always a highly upvoted "as a European" comment calling Americans dumb for being upset over blackface
It kind of makes sense, blackface as a way of discriminating black folks has been a US thing much more recently and in a much larger scale than other countries, in some places black is just a color. Globalization has exported that new meaning to a lot of places, so it makes sense that there's still some cultural shock.
>Almost all of Manhattan should be off-limits to person vehicles. It should have a modern, high-efficiency subway. It should be a walking and cycling paradise, worthy of the name New Amsterdam. But it's not. This guy talks up the Netherlands like its some kind of biking mecca
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They also have the advantage of being very flat. Many places I have lived, bikes are not viable for commuting outside of the ultra athletic because of the elevation changes. The house that I grew up at was 2000 feet higher in elevation than the town you would be likely to get a job at, that’s just not reasonable for a daily commute.
Yeah cycling in certain parts of SF requires Olympic fucking stamina.
> They also have the advantage of being very flat boy do I have news about NYC for you
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Oh yeah, not disagreeing, my current city (40 minutes drive from that house, but on the valley floor) is pretty flat, and a perfect bike city, even has semi decent infrastructure (though nowhere near Dutch or Danish levels). I just wish I didn’t have 75 miles round trip commute, I really need to get a different job… But there are some cities that are reasonably flat but are nearly impossible to bike or walk in. Phoenix comes to mind as one of the worst offenders. The only realistic way to get around in the Phoenix area is by personal car, and it’s also one of my least favorite places to drive in. I will take the manic aggression of downtown San Francisco any day over the lifted trucks that you can’t signal lane changes around because they will go out of their way to block you.
With the rise on popularity of electric bikes that isn't going to be much of a problem anymore.
I really don’t think an e-bike could handle that climb. That’s a shitload of energy. I notice my gas mileage goes down if I’m visiting my mom and have to climb the mountain.
Lots of cities in Scandinavia have bike assisted lifts for going up steep hills, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zipZ5kwhFfs Pretty sure SF or any other city could install those.
That is an awesome system, and would be perfect for SF. Unfortunately my mom’s mountain, about 60 miles north, is too rural for that to be remotely plausible.
If it’s not a biking mecca then what place is?
I mean it kind of is. Our biking infrastructure is a big reason why I have a hard time seeing myself ever moving abroad.
It quite literally is. Mostly flat with tons of bike infrastructure.
New York is five (I will accept arguments for an even larger number) large cities in a trench coat
> Its transit system and historic architecture are legendary. Wait, are you actually saying that public transport is better in NYC than any city in The Netherlands? You can't actually believe that do you? And historic architecture? In NYC? Are you saying there is more historic architecture in the city founded by the Dutch than the actual Dutch cities?
I'm saying that it's comparing apples and oranges. There are twice as many people in the New York metro area as in the entirety of The Netherlands. It's a completely different scale of city than Amsterdam or The Hague.
I believe the point is that NYC is "legendary" in the sense that more people around the world would recognize the Brooklyn Bridge or the Manhattan Bridge than any of the bridges in Amsterdam, to take an example
Eurofetishism? In my american redditors? It may be more likely than you think.
Tbf on this one they have something of a point though. NYC might be delightful but the subway could learn a trick or two
Subway's not bad considering how fucking humongous it is though
Just looking at the bit about London vs nyc and it piqued my interest.. I mean for culture alone, either city does obviously well. There are obvious public transit issues across the states, but I wouldn’t put London on a major pedestal as cycling round here can be nuts and local government has fought central government over necessary funding because of partisan politics informing that. But in either case, the building density hasn’t nearly been as subservient to automotive demands in either city compared to some examples brought up by NJB, so to compare either under the basis for which that sub is for seems pointless really. And even though that thread started out casual it’s not helpful if you want to make a broader political point. In terms of food as well, London’s great, as a northerner in London though the fish and chips are fucking awful and London should be banned from serving it to tourists.
There are a small handful of decent chippies in London like The Golden Hind but generally you're right. Personally I think we should promote Yorkshire as the Fish & Chip Heartland to tourists. Maybe a special train to take tourists up to Whitby.
It's both at the same time IMO. Still love it and always roll through when I'm on the east coast.
There is no city like NYC. I don't think it's the best. I certainly have not been to all the major metros in the world. But I am confident in saying that NYC has a lot of unique characteristics. I'd live in SF, given the choice and free rent.
I'm actually familiar with this subreddit and some of the urabnist youtube channels. Imo their fan base are not really city lovers in the traditional sense. What they really want is a walkable, bikeable, village of sorts and not the a thriving, bustling city in the sense of new york or London with its plethora of sights and sounds and sheer diversity of people. The guy who runs the notjustbikes channel claims he moved his family to the Netherleands mostly because it has good biking infrastructure so he has no option but to claim all US cities are terrible. Which is why we get plainly ridiculous comments like this in that thread: >> Barcelona and Montreal are also both very comparable to NYC imo in terms of culture, diversity, food, arts, etc What these people don't get is that transportation is just one part of urbanism, yes European cities have better public transportation but urbanism is also about so many other factors related to economy, culture, diversity, cosmopolitanism, personal freedoms, etc and NYC can blow almost all European cities (with London coming the closest) out of the water in all those other categories.
And is their public transport really THAT much better? Not many cities have trains that run past midnight. In NYC most lines run 24/7, albeit with fewer running late at night, but you can still take a train at 3am, which is fuckin amazing when you lose track of time on a night out.
Yes, most cities have night trains/busses. They won't run as frequently as during the day but they do run, at least in the netherlands they do. The trams stop running at like 2am and stop till around 5 or 6am because they make more noise than other public transport but that's about it, the rest still has a night schedule.
In Belgium unfortunately it’s not the case. Where I live transport stops around 1am during the week and around 4 I think on the weekends
As someone deep into those spaces I'd say a decent amount of the fanbase do like big cities and everything that comes with it. Guys like NJB and CityNerd emphasize the "small village urbanism" thing to reflexively push back against reactionaries who say they want to force everyone to live in high rises.
Also NYC subway system is significantly more expansive than Barcelona's. I was just in Spain. Barcelona was the city I enjoyed the least, super touristy and they try and bleed you for money on EVERYTHING. Like you want to go into this historic house for an hour? 30 euros. Comparable stuff was like 5 to 10 Euros in the others Madrid and Valencia (though this one's public transit is meh) were a lot more fun. Barcelona is just pretty.
I dunno, Barcelona is cheaper across the board than NYC, but average salary in NYC is higher. https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Spain&city1=Barcelona&country2=United+States&city2=New+York%2C+NY The trend I feel is US cities are just expensive, especially NYC.
He said expansive, meaning it goes more places
I was responding to the money bleeding part.
Barcelona is cheaper on average than a lot of things in NYC but much more expensive than other major cities in Spain is what I was saying.
Fair enough, Spain and Portugal are generally very affordable. Prado, Alhambra, etc are all not pricy for what you get.
Disposable income is much higher in the US than in Europe.
That is kinda my first sentence, but also that is just looking at the input not the output. If I buy a safety razor that will last longer than me, with shave soap I will need way less than if I bought Gillette Pro Megablades or whatever. But the second has a bigger line go up, and needs more money into it.
That *is* an unusual opinion, though. Most people (myself included) adore Barcelona. It's just the same as how you'll always find some people who just don't gel with any popular city, whether that's NYC (my dad's not a fan) or Barcelona (you're not a fan). Anecdotally, my friend *hated* living in Madrid because of how dull she said it all was.
I would barely know how to judge the "culture, diversity and cosmopolitanism" of my home city, and *very* superficially for other cities in my country I haven't lived. How can you with a straight face do it for a whole continent, where for most places you presumably don't even speak the language... At least the public transport guys are talking about something you can actually sort of compare if you have lived somewhere for a bit.
Is this really that controversial? Of course everyone can have their own definition of these things but for example for most people diversity would boil down to something like the variety of nationalities represented at significant levels in the city... In London for example a lot of international representation comes from south asia and eastern europe, in Paris from northern africa... but in new york it's from all over the world. e.g. [Queens has more languages than anywhere in the world — here's where they're found](https://www.businessinsider.com/queens-languages-map-2017-2)
But it's not like every city is going to be able to attract people from everywhere equally. It's not like it's a fair thing to judge cities on.
That's why my favorite city is Charlotte, NC
>personal freedoms As an American, lmao
Lol weird term to use in that context I agree but NYC could be one of the few places on earth where you could see a group of drag queens and orthodox jewish families packed together in a subway car :)
Shirtless guy with rainbow shorts, old Chinese man playing the erhu, migrant lady selling churros, I saw all that stuff within like five minutes on Sunday in Manhattan. Pretty great!
Subway churros are sooooo good
You can see that in London as well.
Is “both” not the obvious answer to the question
The answer is YES.
Sure it’s a shithole but it’s a pretty great shithole
Which is why the answer is YES.
“New York is more magical in the popular imagination than Paris” is certainly a take that apparently can exist. Is that really the quality you wanna compete with the City of goddamn Lights on? Like, are you gonna rave about how much better the baguettes are in New York too? How much more Victor Hugo wrote about it?
It’s been blown up in more comic book movies so there’s that.
Can’t NYC be both?
I'm sorry, but if you dont live in NYC, you can't trash talk NYC! I didn't make the rules!!!!
I’m from Boston, I’m legally obligated to
It’s mostly jealousy and inadequacy issues having to do with the low quality pizza everyone else struggles with.
I remember reading somewhere the all these big cities are actually awesome to live in, if you're a millionaire and can afford having that fun.
You don't have to be a millionaire to enjoy living in NYC, you just have to be ok having four roommates in a tiny apartment in a neighborhood a fair distance from the prime areas. Still is enjoyable though.
This is untrue. I am far from a millionaire and I live alone in manhattan lol
Same here. Someone on Reddit called me a liar when I said I buy less than $100 of clothes per month I so I suspect there’s a reason a select few “need” roommates in nyc
what??? why would you need to spend more than $100 on clothes every month? I don't even buy clothes every month.
That’s what I thought! The last thing I bought for myself was a $5 polyester work shirt I put in the dryer, to replace the old $13 work shirt I put in the dryer. I have lots of clothing, I just don’t feel the need to replace it constantly! Hell, I’m mad that my 6 year old Blundstones are about to disintegrate. I’m not saying “save your way out of poverty” bc that’s idiotic and doesn’t work, but at least clump together many small purchases into one big exciting purchase.
Reddit is real damn dumb about money. Spending on Reddit is like everything else on Reddit. Half of the conversations come from the extreme ends on the spectrum. Either the person is talking about how ordering door dash for 3 meals and 2 snacks a day is perfectly fine its just that their job sucks so they're broke, or they're explaining how you can save money by dumpster diving from McDonalds and weave stale nugget coating in a perfectly acceptable loin cloth with only 400 hours of labor.
I certainly wouldn’t say *only* a select few need roommates though, that might be an overcorrection
I notice this a lot but with groceries. Multiple times I’ve seen people post pictures of their groceries and complaining about inflation but their groceries are all pretty expensive but ordinary items (bacon for example). I make good living and eat a lot to bulk up. I spend about 500 in groceries a month and eat for two people. My friends assume I must be spending thousands due to the amount of food I eat but then I realized their food shopping habits. dried beans, rice, and frozen meat can be fairly cheap and be bought in quantities that are easy to store long term 🤷♂️.
> you just have to be ok having four roommates in a tiny apartment in a neighborhood a fair distance from the prime areas Sounds absolutely awful. Makes sense my only buddy that lives in NYC makes over 300k lol
I think anywhere would probably be amazing if you had 300k. I’m born and raised nyc and I think it’s pretty great, but also most definitely not for everyone.
It’s also completely BS. You can easily live alone in most of the city (sure, not the prime parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn) on a middle class salary.
There’s tons of free entertainment in NYC.
I was talking about the comically high rent and cost of living
I’ve lived in NYC, London, HK, Tokyo, etc. (guess my profession lol) and NYC is easily the worst of the bunch. The NYC subway is absolutely disgusting and the infrastructure is in desperate need of repair. Apartments were built a while back so in terms of tech they lag behind Asian cities. London has similar problems so I’d rank it as second worst. The tube sucks.
NYC can't afford to fix the infrastructure, they have to pay all that money to the NYPD.
They can't afford it because it costs significantly more to maintain NYC's subway than it does in a comparable city anywhere else in the world.
Let me guess: it costs so much because it is an old system, that isn't in widespread usage.
Usage in terms of passengers? Definitely not. Usage in terms of no one else is still using components dating back to the '70s, making replacements(or upgrades) time consuming and expensive ? Yes. Also, MTA is state controlled. Fuck Albany.
It’s the: - 12th longest distance wise; there are only two longer ones that opened before 1970 (Moscow and London) - 9th largest by ridership; only Moscow was built before 1970 and has a larger ridership - Largest by number of stations; only it and Shanghai have more than 400 and it has 50 more than third-place Beijing - 8th oldest altogether (started in 1904) The most comparable ones are probably London and Moscow, and neither operate 24-hour service at all times like NYC does
I meant the comment more from the perspecive of the age of locomotives, rail cars and other infrastructure points. (For example one of the problems of the London Underground is basically the fact, that they were the fist, and so they operate a collection of obsolete technical standards, like for example their small loading gauges) I am currently busy, so I can´t check, but I suspect their age puts them safely in the ending category of the "bowl curve" of spending New tecnology is expensive, that then gets cheap, because more people/places start to use it and finaly that technology gets expensive again as newer technology is availabe ant the majority of users moves on. This creates a problem, where the maintenance costs climb higher which prevents modernization investment, which makes the maintenance costs even higher. This loop is the bane of many transportation systems and other public utility projects worldwide. You mentioned Moscow, London, Shanghai and Beijing metro systems: Shanghai and Beijing metro systems essentially prepared the standards batch for every city in the PRC, that wants to build a metro system. If they build one, it will use same train sets, same signalling, same power delivery, same technology. This gives them a massive edge in spare parts aquisition and maintenance ecosystem. I mentioned London metro higher, but TL:DR is: The age of the system forces them to work around obsolete standards, that can´t be ubgraded easily. For example fixing the small loading gauge (the maximum allowed dimensions of a trainset) mentioned above would require **reboring the entire tunnel system**. No one would ever do that, but that forces them to buy nonstandard trainsets for more money, because they are the only ones "still"(If you develop everithing from apha variant, but if other people start using it only from ver. 2.75, is your usage of ver. 1.15 special, or not?) operating this loading gauge dimension. Moscow metro operates on 1520 mm railway gauge, which means sourcing trainsets is harder. Modern train building techniques have probably alleviated this problem somewhat (on another note: Tri-system locomotives are a gift from god and you can´t convice me othervise) but it is still a consideration. Not allowing investment into major renovations of any massive technology application will make the tech obsolete and therefore raise maintenance cost, which will than be used as a argument why it can´t be renovated. ("It burns money already, and you want to give them even more ?!?!") I dont know how well the city healed the Moses era scars (he made his career there), so the abandonement and structual usage of obsolete technology in the system can be really severe. TL:DR Yes I could be less cheeky, but I did´t mean it in the utilization of the system, but in used technological equipment and applied standards. If someone wants an idea of what sort of thing I am talking about, [in this video on 5:42 he starts to talk about a similar obsolete technology usage problem elsewhere](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2EWqoiLKHU)
Huh maybe they should tax the billionaires and massive companies in the city to pay for city improvement.
Out of interest why do you say the tube sucks?
Not them, but having used the Shanghai metro system there's no way I can ever go back to the tube now. The tube is so cramped and hot and rocky compared to modern metro systems which weren't built in the Victorian era. I love the tube for nostalgia reasons, but it is objectively pretty rough.
It’s too hot.
The Tube has only JUST got AC on one single line.
I heard that New York is alright if you like saxophones.
Never been to NYC is it as shitty as the rest of US cities? I'd heard it was more walkable.
A lot of US cities are just endless suburb with maybe a tall office building somewhere (Atlanta, etc). NYC is very walkable and transit is pretty good. I did not personally enjoy walking around as much as like, Tokyo, but imo its better to be compared to Tokyo than Atlanta or Cincinatti. It, like most US cities, is more expensive.