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Or that their cities can't really cope with the amount of people they currently have.

• iwwr 11y ago
  Or that cities need to get more dense and friendlier toward pedestrians and bikes.
  • jusben1369 11y ago
    It's simply a personal preference for dense cities vs being an absolute truth.
    • mikeash 11y ago
      Denser cities are demonstrably better off and more efficient.
      • dragonwriter 11y ago
        > Denser cities are demonstrably better off and more efficient. "Better off" is a matter of subjective value, and the fact that lots of people prefer not to live in denser cities demonstrates that the measures by which denser cities are "better off" do not represent universally-shared values.
        • mikeash 11y ago
          There's a lot of subjectivity, but it can be measured in an approximate but decent manner by using money. People in denser cities have more money on average. Property values in denser cities are much higher, which indicates that people prefer to live there than elsewhere, on average.
          • dragonwriter 11y ago
            > Property values in denser cities are much higher, which indicates that people prefer to live there than elsewhere No, it doesn't, because: (1) property is not used exclusively for living space, and (2) even leaving aside #1, you'd expect higher residential property values in one kind of area than another if the supply of residential space in the first kind of area was lower compared to the number of people that prefer that space, no matter what the overall aggregate of preferences was between the two kinds of space, so "there is less space in dense cities compared to the number of people who prefer them than there is outside of dense cities compared to people who prefer living there" would be a better conclusion from that premise than "people generally prefer to live in dense cities", even before considering (3) you ignore the fact that dense cities tend to occur in places that are desirable for reasons that exist prior to the density, and that density is an effect, not the cause of the desirability.
            • mikeash 11y ago
              In dense cities, a lot of property is used for living space (that's what makes them dense) and supply is high (likewise, that's what makes them dense). As for cause and effect, I'm not ignoring anything. Cause and effect simply doesn't matter here. Are cities dense because they're where people want to live, or do people want to live there because they're dense? It doesn't matter; in the end, people prefer to live there. If people want to live there because it's dense, then it's obvious that people like density. If it's dense because people want to live there, then that means more people get to live in a desirable place, and the fact that people try to go there means that it's worth the extra cost. Either way: density is better.
              • dragonwriter 11y ago
                > Cause and effect simply doesn't matter here. Are cities dense because they're where people want to live, or do people want to live there because they're dense? It doesn't matter; in the end, people prefer to live there. It matters quite a bit when the issue of desirability of dense cities was raised as support for the claim uphtread that "cities need to get more dense"; if desirability is a cause of density rather than its effect, the desirability of existing dense cities does not support the claim that not-currently-dense cities need to get more dense.
  • SEJeff 11y ago
    Having lived in Los Angeles for 6 years and now having moved to Chicago, I think you totally nailed it. Being so huge and distributed, Los Angeles is pretty much impossible to bike, where as Chicago not only tries to be bike friendly, but actively encourages it. A perfect example would be our Mayor's Divvy bike renting program where you can get a bicycle for $7 per day and drop it off and any of the other hundreds of divvy stations all over the city.