As an Australian, I must say our nation does horrible cities. Sydney has a spectacular natural setting. Brisbane has nice parks. Melbourne's the best at night. But they're all splattered with hideous corporate-starchitect towers, and everything in them is built around car parks. It's virtually illegal not to breathe petrol fumes with an outdoor coffee. The Aussie approach is to carefully survey two centuries of European & N. American urban design, and studiously ignore every lesson learned. Both the major parties are co-owned by real estate & fossil fuel companies, so no great surprise I guess.

If you haven't been to Australia, come to see our magnificent bush & coastline. Forget the cities (and wear blinkers if forced to traverse the 'burbs).

Oh, come on, there are a lot of cities that look worse than this: https://i.stack.imgur.com/Eg1OZ.jpg (and this doesn't even show the Opera House!)

I do agree that tearing down many of the old buildings in the CBD was criminal, but there are plenty (OK, some) of neighborhoods that have more or less managed to maintain that ye olde Sydney feel (the Rocks, Glebe, Darlo, etc), and many of the newer developments in Barangaroo and Darling Harbour are positively nice.

Sydney is also (IMHO) more pedestrian-friendly than any city in the US except maybe New York, and it will get even better once the light rail from Circular Quay down a pedestrianized George St is up and running in a few months.

FFS a tourist picture of a pretty (if anodyne) area for the super-rich does not a broadly humane environment make. Sydney is a horror show of inhuman scale corporate concrete erections, car parks, and murderous texting drivers who all hate each other. It's a host for cars and suits, not bipedal mammals. The natural harbour is one of the most spectacular world city settings, with a few pleasant human-made ornaments (Opera House etc), but overall Sydney is an atrocious piece of urban design for people to actually live in.

There's a whole bunch of reasons why Australia's cities are so bad (general cultural skittishness & lack of ambition, deep infestation & corruption of the political class by the real estate industry, etc), but the consequence is a few poor-quality over-large cities and sorry lack of emphasis on (not to mention investment in) human-scale regional towns.

Ok, now I'm genuinely curious: what large cities do you like?

It's a fair question & I don't have a good answer. The city I enjoyed visiting the most was probably New York, but I'd hate to live there. All the large cities I've lived in (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, London, Glasgow) have been piss poor. Essentially I think truly 'large' cities (over a million or so) are inconducive to human flourishing.

But Australia (1) crushes its small population into a few huge cities (almost uniquely so I think for a non-city state?), and (2) is horrible at all urban scales. Is there anything as ugly as (say) Coffs Harbour (essentially a strip mall with cardboard suburbs) outside of the US?

It was almost certainly sarcasm. I have family over there and have rarely gotten similar questions from people here in the States.

Although, it doesn't surprise me as much as it probably should. I live in New Mexico and have had people in the past ask if it's difficult traveling to the US, or what it's like living in another country...

My mum, who is Australian, once received a compliment from someone at a local store whereupon learning of her origins said she "spoke beautiful English." Without batting an eye, she replied "Thanks, I usually speak Australian."

So, the structure of the OP's comment adding in the additional exasperation of "there are other cities?!" definitely strikes me as sarcasm.

I'm British born and can count on two hands how many times I've been how long ago I moved here (Australia) from Germany.

GERMANY!

It was not sarcasm! When were you last in Canberra? Apparently it's changed a lot in the last 5 years.

I'm also British originally – arrived here '03 – so I never saw it back in the day, but almost everyone I know went on a school trip as a kid and says it was terrible. And in the 90s/00s it probably was terrible. Since then it's become a really cool little city. Emphasis on little – it's tiny. But Braddon is a lovely place to be during the week, and the national galleries and what have you are a wonderful place to be on the weekend.

Give it another chance. I really love it there. (I'm FIFO'ing weekly at the moment.)

Been here 11 years, I was last in Canberra 2 years ago.

My problem is, all the attractions you've mentioned are indeed wonderful. And the War Museum is a national tressure. But I could knock them all over in a long weekend (I did!).

Which was the reason I decided not to apply for a job in Canberra and stay in Brisbane. :P

Can confirm "isn't that the capital?" was sarcasm. The fact people didn't realise shows how believable (and common?) that belief is!