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Just curious on your opinion on places that are major, world cities that feel more, not necessarily small, but feel more quaint, compact, walkable at street level, where you feel almost more like you aren't in a big city.
I'd say Amsterdam is certainly a contender for this on a world scale. While it obviously is a big bustling center of commerce, it doesn't seem like there are many highrise areas, and the canals and such keep everything rather compact.
I would say DC is another contender in this area, with not a ton of highrises, and while it has dense neighborhoods, a number seem to be compact, low rise, leafy (Georgetown, Alexandria, etc.).
In the Far East, perhaps Xian, a city of 8 Million+ I believe I am sure has it's fair share of high rise areas now, but with the city wall and history, I would venture it too has a fair number of leafy, low rise, quaint areas. What other places can you think of that fit this billing?
Just curious on your opinion on places that are major, world cities that feel more, not necessarily small, but feel more quaint, compact, walkable at street level, where you feel almost more like you aren't in a big city.
I'd say Amsterdam is certainly a contender for this on a world scale. While it obviously is a big bustling center of commerce, it doesn't seem like there are many highrise areas, and the canals and such keep everything rather compact.
I would say DC is another contender in this area, with not a ton of highrises, and while it has dense neighborhoods, a number seem to be compact, low rise, leafy (Georgetown, Alexandria, etc.).
In the Far East, perhaps Xian, a city of 8 Million+ I believe I am sure has it's fair share of high rise areas now, but with the city wall and history, I would venture it too has a fair number of leafy, low rise, quaint areas. What other places can you think of that fit this billing?
With 1 million inhabitants including suburbs, Amsterdam is quite small... Not only feel small
Medellin. You don't really feel the size of the city until you get up in the air. It conserves a small town feel where people still smile as they pass you by and say good morning, good afternoon, etc. Also it's a city full of nature.
And, Amsterdam is small population wise but seems to hold far more clout to size ratio than any city I know of in the world. Part of it is that it has the Greater Randstad (just now becoming familiar with that term) Metro Area behind it, which does fit within confines of a standard Metro size wise and I believe does have about 8M. Still though, as you mention, Amsterdam is not that big, yet, it makes the Top 25 list of many major global city ranking publications. Good to hear about Medellin also!!
By global standards yes. It's all relative. Amsterdam's population would rank well in a number of places, but for example, in China I'm not sure it would crack the Top 50.
By global standards yes. It's all relative. Amsterdam's population would rank well in a number of places, but for example, in China I'm not sure it would crack the Top 50.
It's probably because I come from a city of under 800,000 people, but I wouldn't consider any city with 1 million people small. That's fairly sizeable imo.
Good pick on Bern, I would agree with your sentiment. Now that I'm thinking about it there are a few others (Geneva, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Vienna, Brussels), that to some degree qualify.
As for that, that is fair enough. It's hard to compare at the US level because Tampa Bay at the MSA is around 3M and when expanded out to the CSA level it's 4+ million (in fact, Central Florida as a whole is 8+ Million at this point, but over a large space). That being said, nowhere in Florida, and quite few places in the US have a true 800,000 city in a confined space (Jacksonville has 800K but there's a decent sized asterisk around that). So, European cities are hard to translate on size because they certainly aren't apples to apples.
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