Re:American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage
by alain_gilbert on Saturday July 14, 2018 @04:48PM
(#17532292)
This is what I saw when I randomly dropped the yellow man into the middle of Boulder :P
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@40.0181872,-105.2785854,2a,75...
Re:American Cities Are Drowning in Car Storage
by ghaff on Saturday July 14, 2018 @04:45PM
(#17532279)
Pearl Street is the main drag. It's essentially a college town although a fair bit of tech has moved in. It's actually pretty walkable but Boulder is very protective of open spaces and conservative about growth generally so you're not going to see anything like a dense urban core. Somewhere like Ithaca NY isn't that different.
Of course, you wouldn't want to live in Boulder without a car. Pretty much the whole point of being there is to get into the mountains.
Boulder has a city population of about 100,000 and a metro region population of about 300,000. Here are some random Street View locations from European towns and cities of a roughly similar size.
Reading, England: https://goo.gl/maps/yQaTTaWQJav
Bonn, Germany: https://goo.gl/maps/Pu9Ro28F4UH2
Caen, France: https://goo.gl/maps/ppgL2J8nsAJ2
Vicenza, Italy: https://goo.gl/maps/rMtCBEqC7vr
Click around a bit, explore the neighbourhood, get a sense for the place. Get the picture?
American urban development happens on a scale that is simply incomprehensible to most Europeans. I spent a good ten minutes clicking around Boulder, looking for the city centre; it took me that long to realise that there wasn't one, at least not in the sense that I understand.