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It's less of an East vs. West thing as much as it is the age of the city and the time period in which development took place. Pretty much every city or town in the US has some kind of a walkable downtown--even if just one street--but the portions of a city (or rather, the city's metropolitan area) that developed during the era of suburban sprawl (after 1950s) are generally not walkable. What makes sprawl not walkable isn't just about distance (although that's certainly a factor) but also that roads are massive and highly-trafficked, sidewalks often are non-existent, and drivers are often not used to pedestrians so using a crosswalk or even just walking along a street with many turn-ins can be quite dangerous. Also, many suburbs don't have residential streets on a grid, but rather windy roads with cul-de-sacs and dead ends. So even if the grocery store is only half a mile (1 km) away as the crow flies, you might have to walk a couple miles around the neighborhood just to get there. Also, driving in a suburb isn't inconvenient like it is in older cities. Even relatively dense suburbs have ample free or cheap parking lots and/or street parking, while older cities usually have a chronic shortage and high price. Biking should be some kind of happy middle-ground, but driving is so pervasive that most metros haven't developed extensive cycling infrastructure, so cyclists are expected to "share the road" with motor vehicles which usually leads to resentment if not mortal danger for the cyclist. Public transportation is a separate, but somewhat related issue. The short version is that Americans are generally not-very-willing to support public transportation where driving and car ownership is common and it's viewed as unnecessary and wasteful of resources. There's also the racist and classist view that extending public transportation into suburbs will bring in "undesirable persons" and, ultimately, contribute to a loss of safety and property value. Support for public transportation goes up in parts of the country where driving is difficult due to traffic congestion, costs, etc. Jamwad is right that some East Coast cities are "better connected" (which is to say they have decent rail and bus transit options between each other) than the rest of the country due to their relative proximity. Washington to New York is the best, but also an outlier example, because of the denseness of the corridor which also includes Baltimore and Philadelphia. Otherwise the continental US has a extensive network of freeways and highways (the Interstate and National Highway Systems) that makes all the major metros easier and faster to access by personal vehicle than, say, passenger rail. High speed rail could change that, but that competes with air travel and inertia.
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Feb 17, 2017 19:27
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System Metternich posted:Thought of another question: I hardly ever see Americans discussing “villages“, it's always “towns“ or “cities“, and the perception of size seems different as well - I've seen towns with like 40,000 people still being described as “small“. What would you say makes a village and separates small from mid-sized and big towns? It's also possible to have a suburb of a large city be primarily a residential bedroom community for the commercial industry that exists in the larger city. Such suburbs may also cater to this image by having "village" in its name even if it's legally a city and has a population of 20,000-40,000.
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Feb 18, 2017 18:49
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