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A comment on The size of the moon, relative to the Australian mainland. Parent comment

Re:The size of the moon, relative to the Australian mainland by crispinb on Monday November 18, 2019 @05:41AM (#21563253)
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.

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Re:The size of the moon, relative to the Australian mainland by 9nGQluzmnq3M on Monday November 18, 2019 @08:22AM (#21564061)
Ok, now I'm genuinely curious: what large cities do you like?
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Re:The size of the moon, relative to the Australian mainland by crispinb on Monday November 18, 2019 @02:17PM (#21567240)
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?

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