That is 80m2. I grew up in a 75m2 apartment (810sf) with my parents and two brothers.

I guess that "cramped" is a matter of perspective. :)

> Not sure about other large cities, but mine (Portland, OR) has a pretty big homeless and crime issues as of lately.

It makes me sad to hear about that. We are in the XXI century and we have good ways of helping homeless people and reduce crime. I understand that you leave to a better place, but that does not solve the problem.

> confronted in our driveway by a homeless individual, who said that he was considering suicide.

I hope that you have find a good place for you and your family but do not forget the people that you left behind. Their lives are a tragedy that can be averted.

Also a matter of layout. The expected amenities in US apartments live little room for living space, particularly pantries and walk-in closets, and large appliances. Large bathrooms are also common. Having just moved to Europe, I am acutely aware of the trade offs; we have a lot of living space, but we also have had to buy wardrobes, get used to a much smaller bathroom, and generally adapt to different expectations.

A walk in robe on the other hand typically wastes space since it (in effect) introduces a new hallway into your house, since that is effectively what the wakling area in your walk-in robe is.

I agree partly.

In most European cities there is a lot of planning and regulations to follow. Barcelona Example (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eixample) is an example of 19th-century planning.

In most Europe, you can't build a tall building in a rural town, a skyscraper without the proper open space around it or a factory in a residential neighbourhood. But, those rules have been more sensible to the city needs and have had less pressure from car makers. Old towns are usually compact and easy to walk because they predate cars. Cities have very good public transportation systems as cars were too expensive for most of the population. Living in the city centre has been seen as a luxury. At least for me, "suburvio" (a suburb in Spanish) has always had a negative connotation. Nobody wanted to live in the outskirts of a city.

So, I agree that American cities are, in general, poorly designed. And public transportation is almost nonexistent. The problem is not urban planning but that the cities are designed for cars, not for humans. Carmakers had too much power for too long. Urban planning worked really well to achieve its goal: to sell more cars.

That is part of urban planning here. Public transit simply can't be both good and cheap at these densities, which were mandated explicitly by urban planners. You complain about height limits, but there are many places which you can't (or recently couldn't have) house more than one family in a certain amount of space by law.

There are lots of post-car places where you can get around great on foot, it's just that a lot of the post-car places in the U.S. and Canada have many layers of planning and regulation which make you dependent on a car.

As someone who has never been to the city - not 20, 10, or 0 years ago - how should I go about verifying which one is "more true"?

My density today is more than average.

Canada does not have such an interest deduction and has roughly the same home ownership rate as the US.

(What Canada does have is no capital gains tax on one's primary residence, so any profits when selling are tax free.)

Most people probably buy the maximum they can "afford" (are approved for).

Usually. I live in a semi-rural town (Katoomba) in Australia, about 100km from the biggest city, and we have a lot of homeless people from rural towns, people who have lived their lives in the country. Turns out my town is as close to Sydney as they're comfortable being, there's good services for them with a big hospital, accommodation, a train line etc.

Exactly. In the USA, the downtown area of cities might have a van driving around with meals to distribute to homeless people on the sidewalks. The homeless don't even have to walk to a soup kitchen; the vans bring the food to them. Some downtowns also open a shelter of "last resort" when the winter temperatures drop to inhuman freezing conditions. In downtown Vancouver during a record-breaking winter, I saw a city van driving around asking the homeless if they needed a warm place to sleep for the night.

In contrast, the suburbs will not deliver meals nor will suburban residents open their homes to random homeless vagrants. The town councils of suburbs also don't usually vote to spend tax dollars and open up a soup kitchen and shelter in their neighborhood. They don't want their neighborhoods to be attractive to the homeless.

Being homeless is already a hard life but it would be an even harder existence in the suburbs.

Ironically, if you can afford it, cities are better than suburbs for schools etc. You can have two layers of people in exactly the same place and never have them interact. The richest and poorest schools are just blocks apart.

We can't, that's why we're moving. It's not to get away from "elements", like prior generations. It's simply too expensive to raise a family in the city. Not to mention, if you moved into the city, your family support structure is likely to be back home.

My impression is that the size of suburban districts varies greatly by state. Of those I am acquainted with, in Colorado, Maryland, and Virginia every county or county-equivalent city has one school district. In Pennsylvania there can be several school districts in a county, some small enough to have one high school. I think that New Jersey is very fragmented also.

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

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

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