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I was writing about the Netherlands, second dense train network after Japan.
Even in I there are busses i presume?
NL is in the top 30 most densely populated countries with an excellent transit network reaching every city and most towns with more than 10K residents. Bicycles or mopeds can fill in lots of mobility needs too, especially with the flat terrain there. It is tough living in a town with under 10K residents and no access to a car, because public transit, shopping and service options are much more limited - I am speaking of Holland, Germany, France and most other countries in Europe.
In Germany or NL, I prefer small or medium sized cities of 50K to 250K residents that are well situated on main train networks. I get by fine here without a car. On May 1, the nationwide Deutschlandticket begins, which will allow use of any regional or local train, or any city transit system (anywhere in Germany) for just 49 Euro per month. This is a screaming bargain for what it opens up to people who know how to use the train and transit networks.
Naturally, those kind of 'bargain' tickets are heavily subsidized by overburdened taxpayers as transit basically never pays for itself - especially not with bargain dumpster prices like that which only exist because of political imperatives. In my opinion, a foreigner who isn't paying local income taxes is basically acting like a parasite when taking advantage of public services 'on the cheap'.
The thing with transit in Europe is that a ton of people use it not because they want to but because they have to. Car ownership is much much more expensive than in the U.S. both in terms of purchase price for a vehicle and recurring cost for gas, insurance etc. and of course this is getting only worse (by design). So for people struggling to make ends meet owning a car can be a tricky proposition.
So the same government that fleeces car owners and makes their lives harder on purpose is lavishly funding mass transit in order to make it a simple necessary question of economics for regular people to use it. And then it portrays its action as 'generosity'.
It's the same with 'density'. People live in small apartments in tower blocks because the economy of housing is designed on purpose in such a way as to make home ownership a thing for the well-to-do elite only. Of course people make it work, because humans are adaptable creatures overall, but that doesn't mean it's what people actually desire. Home ownership is an aspirational dream for many - to the point that German actually has a term just for that aspiration in particular - but it's basically associated with career advancement and success reserved for those that make it to higher level position.
If that sounds like something that's starting to become a reality in certain metro areas in this country then that's no coincidence - the people running those are subscribing to the same philosophies and ideologies as the people running countries like Germany or the Netherlands.
What killed US cities was the shipping jobs overseas. If the factory jobs remained in the rust belt, those cities would remained viable. Instead, US jobs were shipped to China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc dooming the cities. Not any different from today, people moved to where the jobs are. If you can't make a living in a city, you leave.
Secondly, what city planners tend to forget is the 1950's Baby Boom. You should watch "It Happened on Fifth Avenue". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039502/. It's about the housing shortage after WWII. Cities simply couldn't keep pace with increase in housing needs. The GI's returned from war, married quickly and needed room for growing children. Most people want a little backyard for a garden and a play space. The suburbs fitted the need. The houses were large to fit a growing family. The houses were quickly built with little backyards and play spaces. I really don't see the handwringing.
All this talk about cars and highways is camouflages the real issues of loss of a small city's economy, jobs, manufacturing base, etc. Bring back jobs and people will follow.
In towns across Italy, people need automobiles. There is train travel, but it doesn't stop at every town. Sure a trains goes down to Potenza or Bari, but you still need change trains or change to buses along the route. A car would be more direct and faster. Anyway, you'll still need a way to travel between train station and the surrounding towns.
It's the equivalent living on the NE Amtrak corridor. I have no need to drive to NYC/Boston/DC/Virginia Beach. I can easily jump on a train. NYC and the surrounding suburbs have mass transit as good as the EU's.
Sure train travel works in clusters, but not across any entire country.
Lots of towns in Italy do not require a massive drop in quality of life without an automobile. Pretty much all the major cities of Italy except on the islands (of course) are essentially on the NE Amtrak corridor but with more frequent runs, more branches, and much cheaper tickets. They're also pretty fast to really fast. There's also usually regional rail or buses to towns that are not served by the main Italian railways. Finally, the towns are often quite walkable and mopeds and to a lesser degree bicycles, though that changes from region to region, are also quite common.
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Originally Posted by YorktownGal
Buses are slow, indirect and frequently late. Standing outside in hot weather for a late bus is less than ideal.
What killed US cities was the shipping jobs overseas. If the factory jobs remained in the rust belt, those cities would remained viable. Instead, US jobs were shipped to China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc dooming the cities. Not any different from today, people moved to where the jobs are. If you can't make a living in a city, you leave.
Secondly, what city planners tend to forget is the 1950's Baby Boom. You should watch "It Happened on Fifth Avenue". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039502/. It's about the housing shortage after WWII. Cities simply couldn't keep pace with increase in housing needs. The GI's returned from war, married quickly and needed room for growing children. Most people want a little backyard for a garden and a play space. The suburbs fitted the need. The houses were large to fit a growing family. The houses were quickly built with little backyards and play spaces. I really don't see the handwringing.
All this talk about cars and highways is camouflages the real issues of loss of a small city's economy, jobs, manufacturing base, etc. Bring back jobs and people will follow.
Shipping jobs oversees becomes much more attractive when the basic cost of inputs as well as opportunity costs for the US in terms of energy, physical space, and transportation become extremely high and that's likely a lot of what makes the US less competitive. Most of the time when you see heavy industrialization in other countries, it comes with heavy urbanization. These factories set up in other countries are generally *not* with cul-de-sacs that are strictly separated from jobs and spanning out dozens to hundreds of miles away from the cities. That seems to basically dismiss basic energy principles and the fundamentals of physics. Germany and Japan, both highly industrialized economies that have strong trade pressures placed on them, generally have retained much of their industrial base despite there being very low cost alternatives. If you look at their company towns for their factories, you'll see that most of them are arranged for fairly easy access via other modes than strictly private automotive use and the amazing amount of energy and resources needed to make that work. The most productive automotive plant by far in the US is the Fremont plant in the Bay Area which is situated in one of the densest urban areas of the US and it has direct freight and passenger rail access (with shuttles from the passenger rail stations to the factory doorsteps as well as myriad bus services and a pretty hefty amount of people who bike there sometimes in conjunction with mass transit). This is true in several *developed* countries that have a higher percentage of their GDP output from manufacturing than the US does, so there is something to be considered here about whether or not the way we've arranged our cities and way of life is actually conducive to having a competitive manufacturing industry. There are very real physical realities surrounding space usage, resource allocation, and energy efficiency per output levels.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 03-22-2023 at 01:21 PM..
There has been a recent uptick in Americans moving to Portugal but a lot of them leave after a few years. I suspect is that that most underestimate how inconvenient it is to live in Portugal without knowing the Portuguese language, also Portugal has no concept of the customer is always right. They also underestimate how much adapting they will have to do going from an individualistic transactional culture to a collectivistic culture that is heavily family focused.
Buses are slow, indirect and frequently late. Standing outside in hot weather for a late bus is less than ideal.
What killed US cities was the shipping jobs overseas. If the factory jobs remained in the rust belt, those cities would remained viable. Instead, US jobs were shipped to China, Vietnam, Mexico, etc dooming the cities. Not any different from today, people moved to where the jobs are. If you can't make a living in a city, you leave.
Secondly, what city planners tend to forget is the 1950's Baby Boom. You should watch "It Happened on Fifth Avenue". https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0039502/. It's about the housing shortage after WWII. Cities simply couldn't keep pace with increase in housing needs. The GI's returned from war, married quickly and needed room for growing children. Most people want a little backyard for a garden and a play space. The suburbs fitted the need. The houses were large to fit a growing family. The houses were quickly built with little backyards and play spaces. I really don't see the handwringing.
All this talk about cars and highways is camouflages the real issues of loss of a small city's economy, jobs, manufacturing base, etc. Bring back jobs and people will follow.
Our manufacturing jobs have gone overseas too. But our inner cities are thriving, almost completely gentrified. The poorest parts of our cities are on the outskirts, but quite a few of those areas are improving too. Migrants arrive, prosper and choose to stay nearby.
But the need of a car is strongly related to stage of life. Our daughters lived in London without cars. But back in Sydney, with two kids to be taken to swimming lessons, soccer practice and matches etc etc, it is difficult without a car even with good public transport. One daughter lives in a very public transport friendly area close to the city and have just decided they need a second car.
I choose to use public transport as I much prefer to sit in a comfortable, air conditioned train and spend the time reading rather than drive. We have two cars and mine will be left at the station today. It will cost me $2.50 for the fare.
If you look at their company towns for their factories, you'll see that most of them are arranged for fairly easy access via other modes than strictly private automotive use and the amazing amount of energy and resources needed to make that work.
This is true in several *developed* countries that have a higher percentage of their GDP output from manufacturing than the US does, so there is something to be considered here about whether or not the way we've arranged our cities and way of life is actually conducive to having a competitive manufacturing industry. There are very real physical realities surrounding space usage, resource allocation, and energy efficiency per output levels.
In the US, we had company towns where the factory was near housing/stores.
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Paterson, New Jersey, holds a unique place in history. It was here, in America's first planned industrial city, that the Industrial Revolution got a foothold in the New World. Centered around the Great Falls of the Passaic River, Paterson pioneered methods for harnessing water power for industrial use.
After the Revolutionary War ended, Alexander Hamilton began promoting his views on the economic needs of the new nation. He was concerned over the lack of industry in the United States; during colonial times, it was prohibited by English law. Hamilton believed that a strong industrial system was the best way to help the United States gain financial independence and become a world presence.
After Hamilton was appointed the United States' first Secretary of the Treasury, he continued to advocate for the establishment of industry in America. Toward that end he co-founded the "Society for Establishing Usefull Manufactures" (S.U.M.), a manufacturing society that would be operated by private interests, but would have the support of government. The charter for S.U.M. called for the society to both manufacture goods and trade in them as well. This was the entity that, in 1792, purchased 700 acres of land above and below the Great Falls and established the city of Paterson, named for New Jersey Governor William Paterson; Paterson was an ardent supporter of Hamilton's plans and he signed S.U.M.'s charter in November of 1791.
Patterson didn't fall on hard times until the 1960's.
There was many mills in New Hampshire, like The Monadnock Mills in Claremont, New Hampshire. Whole towns with public transportation were built for the mills. Our textile industrial was shipped overseas in the 1970.
The Meriden Britannia Company and International Silver Companies in Meriden, CT. Meriden had an excellent public transportation which went away with the jobs. Meriden hit hard times after the silver trade was shipped overseas in the 1970's.
There hundreds of examples of towns with good public transportation that went downhill after industry left.
If we continued to support industries/factories in the US instead of Nixon & Henry Kissinger "brilliant" idea to open trade with China - exporting our industry and giving breaks to international companies - we would be in a much better place. Solid jobs for the rust belt & better planned towns/cities.
I can see the attraction of Europe, less crime better mass transit, better food, lower cost of living and prettier. Th pay scale in the USA is much better and I think people are generally friendlier and more upbeat. If not for family and visa restrictions, I would strongly consider living in Europe.
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