Current Events > I gotta say cities and towns in the US are complete garbage

(+) Yeah! (+)

I have been to Europe twice now and it is really striking how beautiful their cities are, perfectly maintained, and have tons of places for the people who live there to actually go out and interact with each other and buy local goods

In the US there are empty lots, sketchy weirdos, crumbling roads, and once a week they put up a crappy farmer's market on one of those crumbling roads. Everyone just lives separate lives, locking their doors and driving everywhere alone.
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America is owned by corporations
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nobody in europe locks their doors or drives
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It's a well known fact there's no crime or derelict in any part of Europe
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Asherlee10 posted...

Where have you been visiting TC?

I was passing through a lot of places, northern Scotland, Edinburgh, Austrian countryside, Chamonix, Interlaken, Bern, and a bunch of medium sized towns in northern Italy and all around Germany

I hear France may be kind of dirty though? The roads in Britain are ridiculously good
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AlephZero posted...

nobody in europe locks their doors or drives

VMT is much lower in Europe, yeah. They are much more urbanized than we are, largely because their biggest cities predate automobiles
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Asherlee10 posted...

Colorahdo posted...

Asherlee10 posted...

Where have you been visiting TC?

I was passing through a lot of places, northern Scotland, Edinburgh, Austrian countryside, Chamonix, Interlaken, Bern, and a bunch of medium sized towns in northern Italy and all around Germany

I hear France may be kind of dirty though? The roads in Britain are ridiculously good

No, in the U.S.

Oh everywhere in the west. Maybe Bend OR could come close to a European town? But like every single part of Denver is so, so crappy compared to any city I saw in Europe

(I still think America is better for many other reasons, though)
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places like london and paris or moscow
are more violent than many european cities.

but still less than places like chicago, baltimore, cleveland, st.loius in the US.


then you have homogenous cities in europe, which have like almost no violence.

in my country of origin, no terrorist , extremely low crime.

check out wikipedia, the Americas and Africa have homocide rates which are way higher than world average.
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America is fucking huge man. Denver rocks.

Oh wait this is a bait topic.

Amerifats BTFO.
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Having been to Europe, I can't really praise what I saw in comparison to the US because, excluding rural areas, much of it is fairly similar. Granted, I was mostly in the UK. Maybe all of the nicer areas are elsewhere.
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I've never been to Europe, but my guess would be taxes.

Taxes are supposed to cover public spaces like roads and sidewalks, and the US is all about cutting taxes, especially in the more rural parts of the US. In my own city, the citizens are making the town go bankrupt from tax cutting, to the point that we can't even afford our own police or firefighters, much less road maintenance and water lines. I'm honestly running for city council next spring just so I can knock some sense into our ridiculous system.

If people didn't fear taxes so much, more could get done for our public, shared spaces. People would much rather the public spaces die off and they just stay isolated in their own homes all the time.
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Zanzenburger posted...

Taxes are supposed to cover public spaces like roads and sidewalks, and the US is all about cutting taxes, especially in the more rural parts of the US. In my own city, the citizens are making the town go bankrupt from tax cutting, to the point that we can't even afford our own police or firefighters, much less road maintenance and water lines. I'm honestly running for city council next spring just so I can knock some sense into our ridiculous system.

That's a bogus assumption for the following reason: Connecticut, one of the richest states in the USA, has one of the highest gas taxes in the country and some of the highest car taxes in the country -- both of which are supposed to pay for roads -- but CT's roads and bridges are ranked among the worst in the country.
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yeah, the problem is not really taxes with respect to infrastructure

it is that the way we do infrastructure is unsustainable

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/23/taxes-or-tolls

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2014/7/24/some-perspective-on-the-gas-tax.html
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C_Pain posted...

America is fucking huge man. Denver rocks.

Oh wait this is a bait topic.

Amerifats BTFO.

I grew up in Denver. I walked around the bad part of Berlin where all the muslim immigrants live and thought "huh this kind of looks like Denver"

Literally the worst part of their city looks like our city
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