Can you provide an example city built in this style somewhere in the US, to help me evaluate its success?

Most thriving American cities at the turn of the 20th century were built very much in this style. Many of those buildings were demolished to make way for parking lots, expressways, or higher density development in the later decades.

This street in Chicago (http://www.iroquoistheater.com/pics/madison-street-chicago-i...) is typical of most cities of that time, be it Cleveland, Cincinnati, Buffalo, or New York City. The effects of the automobile were only just starting to be felt.

Cities had to be walkable because apart from trolleys or horse-drawn carriages there wasn't much else in the way of options. Cycling was an option for the brave as I can only imagine how much horse crap there was in the streets back then.

Chicago has a variety of housing that is relatively affordable. From the US cities I have lived in (LA, SF, grew up in suburbs of Houston, spent ~2 months in Queens and a little time working in Manhattan), I found Chicago to be the most reasonable to live an affordable urban lifestyle in.

Chicago has the advantage of plenty of land as opposed to New York or SF.

There are massive sprawling suburbs, but I get the impression people move there when they have kids mostly due to better schools, not being priced out or leaving for safety.

Of course, Chicago has the most murders in the US (but still about half the murder rate per capita of New Orleans or Detroit), bitterly cold winters, and far from any mountains, but nowhere is perfect (where being affordable is part of being perfect).

Greater Boston has wide swathes of triple deckers, which are a 3-4 story (depending on basement status) compromise between the detached house and the 5-story apartment block. They were illegal to build for a period of ~90 years though, allegedly due to concerns over fire. It's curious they never consider the obvious solution to that (building out of masonry instead of timber) though.

Washington DC has a strict height limit so even the tallest buildings don't really go beyond 12 floors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_W....

Washington, DC. It has one of the most dense downtowns in the U.S. and has no towers or skyscrapers (outside of NW though is relatively empty, and the massive commuter population makes the overall numbers smaller).

> outside of NW though is relatively empty

NW is the largest quadrant, but I'd hardly call the other quadrants "relatively empty." There are active neighborhoods and lots of development all across the city.

You're right, but they're nowhere near as dense. We're talking single family, row homes and garden-style apartments.

San Francisco is a medium density city, though by North American standards some may consider it high density.

A lot of people would like to live in cities like SF but it's been illegal to build them since the early post war era, so there's a big supply and demand imbalance.

This is difficult to do, since many policies that affect cities are still decided at the national level. It's only recently become fully kosher to have physically protected bike lanes, for example.

Brooklyn.

Could Brooklyn exist in unchanged form without the other boroughs of the same city and the urban area it anchors?

As in, despite Brooklyn's relatively functional nature, its density gains are counterbalanced by the suburbs of NYC on the east, north, and west.

The grandparent post implied that it's possible to have an environment that doesn't include high-rises and excessive sprawl, and I believe Brooklyn's heavy integration in the NYC metropolitan area makes it so that it doesn't satisfy this constraint -- it just moves the 'problem parts' immediately outside of its borough limits, which is kind-of how we ended up with suburban sprawl in the first place.

Madison, Wi?

Philadelphia. Madison.

HTH.

The areas of Philadelphia that are built in this style can hardly be called a 'safe environment', unfortunately [1].

Madison, however, on first blush seems like an excellent example, in that it's a large (~250k) city ranked highly on most metrics, and has a mid-rise downtown. But a look at a satellite image reveals that the city limits of Madison contain large areas of single-family detached houses, and mid- and high-rises are restricted to the Isthmus and areas immediately surrounding the University [2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia#Crime

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Madison,+WI/@43.0850975,-8...

"The areas of Philadelphia that are built in this style can hardly be called a 'safe environment', unfortunately"

Center city is pretty safe. So is South Street. Old City. Plenty of other neighborhoods too numerous to mention with this style of buildings. Yes, crime is relatively high in the city, but it's concentrated in certain areas (see: http://www.trulia.com/real_estate/Philadelphia-Pennsylvania/...). There's a reason the Badlands is called the Badlands and Center City isn't. Judging the whole city to be unsafe by its overall crime stats is ridiculous, unfair, and misleading.

Madison is interesting because it limits height to no higher than the Capitol dome, which isn't particularly high, but also allows a pretty high density by right in most neighborhoods. You could buy a property in Madison and put a three-flat dwelling on it with minimal red tape. If you tried that in SF you'd be dead before all the permitting went through.

A city limited to buildings 5-7 stories tall can get moderately bigger than a city with buildings 1-2 stories tall, but the model will fall down if it becomes too popular.

Ultimately, NIMBYism and these sorts of height restrictions are a result of the city deciding that it doesn't want new people moving in past a certain point. I won't moralize that choice, but it is certainly different than the set of choices that led to a city like New York becoming so special.

Most of NYC is 5-7 stories tall. There are pockets of residences taller than that, but large swaths of Manhattan are about that height. Brooklyn & Queens are almost entirely that height.

Paris is also moderate density across the entire city, but there's also very little wasted space in comparison to most American suburbs.

One of the biggest differences in these types of cities is parking is very limited or located underground, the buildings push very close to the streets, there's no excess road or empty front yards, and the buildings are mixed retail/residential.

Those things make for consistently more livable environments. There's no long trek across an empty parking lot and a big lawn just to get from point A to point B.

Paris is moderate density? It's denser than London or New York. Similarly dense to Hong Kong. Twice as dense as Tokyo or Mexico City or Seoul. And four times as dense as the city and county San Francisco, not including surrounding sprawl.

What I mean is the buildings themselves achieve higher density not through height but through aggressively crowding mid-rise buildings together. It also has a fairly uniform density compared to New York where you have skyscrapers in some parts and detached family homes in others. Staten Island pulls down the density average in a huge way.

The result is it doesn't feel nearly as dense as it actually is.

This is in contrast to Hong Kong, São Paulo, and other cities that achieve density through high-rise buildings. You're intimately aware you're in a big city when you're in the built-up cores of these.

Yes and it's essentially impossible ($$$) to live with a short commute to where you work, even with one of the better transport systems.

Also, I think it's very unlikely that NYC would be where it is had they restricted buildings to 5-7 stories. As it is they don't have enough density.

If the 5-7 model fell down inevitably, then Berlin and almost all german cities would be post-apocalyptic wastelands by now.

I'm comfortable with that choice, as long as the NIMBYism is applied to business investment and money as well as people so that people don't have to move in to take jobs. If you don't want me, then you shouldn't get my money.