True, but his examples were not from the US, which is reasonable. The USA does cities very poorly. New York has been forced into some true urban functionality by being the biggest city in the US, but that doesn't mean it's a fine model.
You don’t have to be a regular at a restaurant to point out its flaws.
SF comes close.
After moving to SF from [small city/town] Europe a few years ago I spent a long time thinking about what it is that draws me to SF and why the only other city in USA that I'd even consider is NYC.
The answer I came up with was population density combined with population size. You want a big dense population. That creates the economies of scale that make a city feel like a city.
For example I've got 2 corner stores, 3 bars, and 2 restaurants on the same block as my apartment building. That just wouldn't make sense if there wasn't enough people around here to support those businesses.
If you look at US cities by population density on Wikipedia you'll notice the only places with more than 100,000 people and a density above 10,000 per square mile are San Francisco and New York with some surrounding cities in the greater megalopolis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
Next on the list is Boston. Then Chicago, Philadelphia, and Miami. But those have densities in the low 1X,000/mi^2 whereas SF is at 17,000/mi^2 and NYC a whopping 27,000/mi^2.
Without density a city feels like a sprawling suburb.
Not knocking on your opinion, just adding my 2 cents. Brooklyn is large, fun, exciting, etc, all the things I’d describe SF as, but I don’t know if I’d call it a metropolis on its own (at least not based on my personal opinion), whereas I would easily describe NYC as so (either defined in its entirety or just Manhattan, which would probably bug the natives).
But it’s the only upgrade on SF that I can think of in USA based on the cities I’ve visited.
It most certainly does not. SF is a simulacrum of a proper city, but it's sadly the "best" of what's available in the bay area.
We don't need your pity. There might be better examples of what an urban center could be, and some aspects of NYC are definitely a shitshow. But in my not-so-humble opinion -- nowhere else in the states comes close.