# What city would you rather live in?



## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

As this forum attracts both skyscraper-only and urban enthusiasts, I am curious to know:

-If you would rather live in a city with a vibrant dowtown, full of skyscrapers but with the rest of the city being mostly single family homes. The stereotypical north american city.

-Or the stereotypical European city, with zero skyscrapers and tall buildings, but with all the urban area being made of dense, four or five stories buildings.


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## earthJoker (Dec 15, 2004)

European style city.


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## Mr Bricks (May 6, 2005)

earthJoker said:


> European style city.


Ditto. By far.


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## FREKI (Sep 27, 2005)

With out a doubt the "stereotypical European city" style...

But if you ask me it's been perfected by the Japanese - now that's an awesome city style! :yes:


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

Seeing as how I have chosen to live in a North American city, I guess my answer is obvious. I feel sorry for people who have chosen to live somewhere, but pine for another city.


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## ZZ-II (May 10, 2006)

a european city with many skyscrapers.....Frankfurt/main  (only a few more skyscrapers )


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

I think the answer is there are good aspects to both styles of city, hence a lot of happy people living on either side of the pond. Some "Europeanisation" of North American cities has been good, and some "North Americanisation" of
European cities has been good (let's be honest, this is a skyscraper forum for admirers of tall buildings, and they are not part of the traditional "stereotypical" European city  )


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## PerthCity (Dec 15, 2005)

North American style. I like room to live, and not be cramped with so many other people.


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## Taylorhoge (Feb 5, 2006)

I wish a city in North America would combine both with a European city and a North Amerian city.


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## DiggerD21 (Apr 22, 2004)

I prefer the european style, but not too dense please. For example Barcelona is already too dense for my liking.


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## A.U.S. arch. Student (Oct 16, 2006)

Well for me I would live in Dubai because it has the best of everything from the skyscrapers to communities that are mid-rise and designed with european architecture in mind, not to mention all the man-made islands over there which is like the new venice but on a much grander scale; i live in the us and im kinda tired of it lol so Dubai it is for me


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## gonzo (Jul 30, 2006)

N.American CBD with European residences. :yes:


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## LLoydGeorge (Jan 14, 2006)

Other than NY (which is an atypical city in the US), European cities are better than US ones. The US is suburban -- not urban-- oriented. Therefore, cities like Vienna and Madrid are much better than their US counterparts such as Atlanta or Dallas.


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## ParisRocks (Jan 15, 2007)

European, but with good weather, (for example not london)


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## monkeyronin (May 18, 2006)

as a whole, European, just becuase on average they are more vibrant than NA cities (even downtown). however, when talking about the best of the best, I'd take North America.


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## Marco_ (Jan 15, 2006)

European
I think a skyscrapercity is nice... to go on holiday
But I'm sure im gettin depressed within 5 or 10 years living there


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## pottebaum (Sep 11, 2004)

I prefer the European setup--but then again there are a few American cities I'd likely choose over any European city.


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## MDguy (Dec 16, 2006)

LLoydGeorge said:


> Other than NY (which is an atypical city in the US), European cities are better than US ones. The US is suburban -- not urban-- oriented. Therefore, cities like Vienna and Madrid are much better than their US counterparts such as Atlanta or Dallas.


that's kind of mean. You can't just say it like a fact because it isn't. that's an opinion. anyway, I like room so N.A. city.Also, this isn't compareing the US to europe! This is NA to europe. I would take a NA city anyday over a european one anyway like atlanta or Dallas over say...Vienna or Madrid


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## krull (Oct 8, 2005)

Taylorhoge said:


> I wish a city in North America would combine both with a European city and a North Amerian city.


New York City.


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## eklips (Mar 29, 2005)

The problem with NYC, which is an awsome city by the way, is that only the center is "European". Such a huge part of the urban area's population lives in sprawly New Jersey or NY state


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## globill (Dec 4, 2005)

Most American cities are seeing dramatic increases in housing development within their "downtowns", so in a decade or so, there will be dozens of cities that will offer viable pedestrian-oriented living along European lines.


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## Taller Better (Aug 27, 2005)

redbaron_012 said:


> Not sure where this European / American type city comes from??? here in Melbourne Australia, we have a nice combination of assets most would desire....Old enough to have Cathedrals and Public Buildings built from Gold Rush riches. Modern skyscrapers....including the current Worlds Tallest Residential Building. Many other innercity high rise apartments. Denser innercity terrace housing....spreading to suburbs of homes of all sizes and styles. great Sporting facilities...the Australian Open Tennis Tournament is on as I type this. Climate...well its a bit hot today..near 40 deg. celcius....Great restaurants...well just about everything......I love it ! PS lived in Sydney for a while..its OK too....and have spent extended periods of time in SanFrancisco, Chicago, New York, London, Rome, Amsterdam and Berlin.....In family homes not hotels...hey they are all fantastic places with too many assets to list here....for me....Melbourne's just..... so nice to live in !



The same is true for quite a few cities in North American, but for all intents and purposes Australian cities fall into the "American" (ie New World) category. There is no confusing, say, Melbourne and Rome.


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## Minato ku (Aug 9, 2005)

monkeyronin said:


> Except that Paris has a slightly larger population in a slightly larger area than Manhattan, with the same density. If were to include, say, 500-800 sqkm around Paris, I doubt it'd be terribly higher than New York.



In fact with 700 km2 Paris has 8000 inh/sqKm (a little less than NY)


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## RC14 (Dec 22, 2006)

Kuesel said:


> Just look at LA - it's probably the most overblown village in the world.


 I like LA, I think in the case of LA the NA style is more apropreate. 
I think that american citys should have more skyscrapers and more lively downtowns, I would definently reather live in a suburban home then an apartment building, but yet I can see how suburban sprawl dose not look as apealing without some kind of downtown. Provo, Ut for example, i think it has a nice setting but it dose not realy have much of a down town, and I don't find that appealing. LA however, I think has a good mix.


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

minato ku:  This is the best Paris map I ever saw! Are there other satellite pics with municipality borders online?


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## MasonicStage™ (Dec 30, 2006)

My choice is European city, but as we can see, European cities are becoming higher and higher(I mean on skyscraper boom). In my opinion, the perfect european city is Madrid. Its a city with a center built in Bourbonic and Viennaise architecture style with no highrises, but it also has a defined part in which highrises are allowed (especially now The 4 towers ). Its a perfect mixture of old and new.


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## the spliff fairy (Oct 21, 2002)

ok Im not talking Paris CSA compared with the NYC 5 boroughs here ya know.

the density of the actual built up areas.

*cite de Paris density: 24,672 per sq. km
NYC 5 boroughs density: 10,292 per sq. km

the densest areas in those are:

11th arrondisement: 40,672 per sq. km
Manhattan: 25,849 per sq. km*

For city proper Paris is denser than NYC.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_selected_cities_by_population_density


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## Saigoneseguy (Mar 6, 2005)

Japanese style with Hong Kong downtown and Sagon's avenues.


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## monkeyronin (May 18, 2006)

the spliff fairy said:


> ok Im not talking Paris CSA compared with the NYC 5 boroughs here ya know.


I'm not talking about metro either. But look at it this way: Paris proper has about 18% of the metro, while NY proper has around 44%. Let's just say we were to take maybe 30% of Paris's metro and make that the new city proper.. what I'm saying is it likely would have a comparable density to New York.



> *cite de Paris density: 24,672 per sq. km
> NYC 5 boroughs density: 10,292 per sq. km
> 
> the densest areas in those are:
> ...


But like I said earlier, Cite de Paris is more comparable to Manhattan, which also has a comparable density. As for densest areas, you can't compare the 11th Arrondisment with Manhattan.. it would be more in line with the Upper East Side. I have no idea what the density is, but I'm pretty sure it is around or above 40,000.


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## tocoto (Jan 18, 2003)

the spliff fairy said:


> er, have you ever been to London or Paris?
> 
> Trust me on this, skyscrapers alone do not an urban city make. Paris for one is one of the densest cities in the world (denser than NYC too) despite its relative lack of skyscrapers


I've been to London but only for a few days so I am not an expert. It is clearly extensive, dense, has impressive architecture, lots of people, and plenty of street-life. However, IMO it is not awe inspiring the way NYC is. While NYC has many high rises, it has more pre-WWII midrises and they are a big part of the sense of place. Many avenues have canyons of opulent apartments and other buildings 20 stories high that line both sides for miles. Streets no one would consider important (23rd st for example) have immense early 1900's hotels or other buildings.

The numbers being thrown around here suggest the cities have a lot in common apart from the obvious difference in highrises.


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## FREKI (Sep 27, 2005)

NYC is no doubt impressive - but it's no more the standard "American city" than Frankfurt is the standard European city...


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

monkeyronin said:


> Except that Paris has a slightly larger population in a slightly larger area than Manhattan, with the same density. If were to include, say, 500-800 sqkm around Paris, I doubt it'd be terribly higher than New York.


A few months ago I made that calculation you're wondering about as I wanted to compare Paris and New York. Here are the results. If you take NYC minus Staten Island that's 634.13 km² of land with 7,564,550 inhabitants at the 2000 US census. Now if you take the City of Paris + the 103 densest and contiguous communes (municipalities) around it, that's 634.93 km² with 6,155,979 inhabitants at the 1999 French census.

Incidently, I also made the same calculations for Tokyo and London. If you take the 23 ku (wards) of Tokyo + the densest suburban municipalities beyond, that's 635.85 km² with 8,822,119 inhabitants as of 2000 estimates. If you take the densest boroughs at the center of Greater London you get 634.32 km² of land with 4,553,700 inhabitants in it as of mid-2000 estimates.

In other words, for the same area of approx. 634-635 km² we get the following populations:
- Tokyo: 8,822,119
- New York: 7,564,550
- Paris: 6,155,979
- London: 4,553,700

and the following densities:
- Tokyo: 13,875/km²
- New York: 11,929/km²
- Paris: 9,696/km²
- London: 7,179/km²


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## monkeyronin (May 18, 2006)

Very interesting, thanks.


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## LLoydGeorge (Jan 14, 2006)

brisavoine said:


> A few months ago I made that calculation you're wondering about as I wanted to compare Paris and New York. Here are the results. If you take NYC minus Staten Island that's 634.13 km² of land with 7,564,550 inhabitants at the 2000 US census. Now if you take the City of Paris + the 103 densest and contiguous communes (municipalities) around it, that's 634.93 km² with 6,155,979 inhabitants at the 1999 French census.
> 
> Incidently, I also made the same calculations for Tokyo and London. If you take the 23 ku (wards) of Tokyo + the densest suburban municipalities beyond, that's 635.85 km² with 8,822,119 inhabitants as of 2000 estimates. If you take the densest boroughs at the center of Greater London you get 634.32 km² of land with 4,553,700 inhabitants in it as of mid-2000 estimates.
> 
> ...



Hudson and Union Counties in NJ -- just on the other side of the Hudson -- are incredibly dense and have millions of people in a tiny area. They add enormously to NYC's density. Also, they're every bit as much a part of NYC as Brooklyn, the Bronx or Queens are. They're just across the Hudson as opposed to the East River. Not including those areas of NJ is like not including the South Bank of London.


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## brisavoine (Mar 19, 2006)

LLoydGeorge said:


> Hudson and Union Counties in NJ -- just on the other side of the Hudson -- are incredibly dense and have millions of people in a tiny area. They add enormously to NYC's density. Also, they're every bit as much a part of NYC as Brooklyn, the Bronx or Queens are. They're just across the Hudson as opposed to the East River. Not including those areas of NJ is like not including the South Bank of London.


Well, I also made another calculation including those counties in New Jersey. What I did is I took Greater London, whose land area is 1,579 km² and whose population is 7.5 million people. Then I took the four NYC boroughs already mentioned + these densest counties in NJ till I reach 1,579 km². I don't have the exact figure with me here, but from memory I found something like 10.1 million people. Then I did the same for Paris, taking 1,579 km², and again from memory I found something like 8.5 million people. I didn't do the calculation for Tokyo.

So for the same 1,579 km² we get:
- New York: 10.1 million
- Paris: 8.5 million
- London: 7.5 million


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## tablemtn (May 2, 2006)

> The suburbs of NY are nothing like suburbs of other cities in the US. There is far less sprawl in NY


Actually, the NYC metro area does have a lot of sprawl - drive on the Long Island Expressway until the metro area ends around Brookhaven, and you'll see what I mean. Or go north from NYC up to the Croton Reservoir. There is a lot of sprawl involved.

As for me, I'd only live in a city where I myself had a private house and some land surrounding it... I'd like up to 5 hectares, but you can imagine how expensive that is in a place like Madrid. So, for my tastes, it makes more sense to live somewhere with more affordable land. I enjoy European cities quite a lot, but I couldn't stand living in a small apartment. I need room to work on various projects, do some gardening, etc. Right now, I am able to do that outside of Portland, Oregon. 

So basically, I'd like to live like an old-style manor lord - with my own private estate, while others make up a dense city nearby!

I think that is the ideal. Maybe I'd even maintain a small place in the city itself in case I need to sleep somewhere before going back to my estate.


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

I think a lot of people think of NYC only as Manhattan. But other borrows as Brooklyn or Queens are bigger and have especially a bigger population. The whole Jersey side and the northern suburbs are an extreme sprawl of small houses.

It's the same with Sao Paulo: everyone posts the sea of highrises - but that's only going for the center between Tiete and Pinheiros and even there you have lots of single houses. The biggest part of Sampa are 2-floored attached houses similar in function (not in style) to London housing.


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## tablemtn (May 2, 2006)

Right. The entire NYC metro area, sprawl and all, which extends from central New Jersey to southwest Connecticut, has nearly 22 million people - 21.9, according to the latest census estimates. 

Only 1.6 million of those people live on Manhattan island. Another several million live in dense areas around Manhattan. The rest typically live in "sprawl." Because that's what they prefer. People like owning land and private residences. I agree that sprawl is not very charming, but sprawl is what happens when individual housing preferences are expressed in the US.

In fact, there are currently about 700,000 British citizens living in the US - I know several. When I ask them why they left the UK for the US (or in some cases Canada or Australia), a very common reply is that the UK has a very "high housing costs." They expatriate and buy land for themselves that would be impossible to afford near a major city in the UK, particularly London.

I'm not making a value judgment about which system is "better" - I'm just pointing out how sprawl is often the natural result of people's preferences.


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## oliver999 (Aug 4, 2006)

chengdu city.


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## Küsel (Sep 16, 2004)

tablemtn said:


> I'm not making a value judgment about which system is "better" - I'm just pointing out how sprawl is often the natural result of people's preferences.


Not only... my country is for example extremly densly populated "thanks" to 60% of it are high mountains, lakes, or forests which are protected since the 19th century. So 7.5mio people have to fit in TOGETHER with the whole agriculture on some 15'000km2 which makes the Swiss midlands to one of the densest areas in Europe (it was already concepted as one big urban area of a network of cities after the Randstad model in the 1940s). That made urban sprawl possible until the 1980s (between 1950 and 1980 the overbuild area DOUBLED!) when people and politicians realized... oops, we don't have space anymore!!! 

Clear that also here people want to live in houses in the suburbs ("in the green" as it is called here), but land prices exploded


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