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.