Human scale cities are nice to visit, but if you think you are breathing cleaner air in Europe, with their focus on diesel cars for decades, you are mistaken. The air is much dirtier than in US cities. The Volkswagen scandal might change that around in a decade or two.

Diesel pollution is worse than petrol pollution, but the average European car is smaller, and there are fewer of them.

Many of the diesel vehicles are public buses, and these can be replaced pretty quickly with electric or natural gas (or hybrid) buses. Others are large delivery vehicles, and with some "encouragement" (restrictions) the owners either replace them, or rearrange their fleet to use their newest vehicles in cities.

For example, London has done both, and is already seeing improvements [1]. I noticed when I visited over New Year that the air seemed fresher, so I'm glad I've found some statistics to show that -- it wasn't just a one-off.

[1] https://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/ulez_six_month...

Have you been in a French city of late? I almost couldn't visit Tours-centre because of all the diesel smell a few years ago.

It has improved slightly in the last 2 years but it will take a full adoption of EVs (and increased public transit) to resolve. It's not like France is lacking for fuel taxes or road taxes and insurance costs. Demand is still too high.

When I visited Paris, around 7 years ago, it was by far 2-stroke exhaust that was the problem. My Parisian coworkers, who also rode motorbikes, explained it was because the licensing and vehicle taxes are tiered by displacement. So everyone gets a small displacement 2-stroke, since a 2-stroke makes power equal to a 4-stroke double the displacement.

I haven't checked to see if this has changed since then.

Do you have a source for this? Diesel pollution is and was never a clear known spike at least I have never heard from your statement.

I’ll take “air next to a tree” vs “air next to a car” any day, regardless of average ambient. And I like cars a lot.

Cynical me who moved to and from SF (lived there for a year) and walked Market street everyday worries about this as well. SF does not seem to have the political will to really deal with this issue. Measures such as increased street cleaning and feces remediation have done little to improve the experience of walking on certain parts of Market (at least in my time when I saw new efforts go into effect).

I think of it as resources rather than will.

At market rate, it costs a TON of money to place people in homes. They can’t be too nice or it will encourage people to be homeless. They can’t be too bad because then you end up with ghettos or with mobs of angry neighbors. It also costs a lot more money to provide services all spread out amongst the city.

European cities are denser, and they have services everywhere. They have housing. Their costs are lower. They don’t have to pay for healthcare a la carte.

You can throw people in jail, but that’s untenable to people with conscience, unless you convince people that every homeless person deserves their situation. Anyone struggling to make rent in a city can empathize with people who are homeless due to bad luck or not enough safety net.

The problem is there is no mechanism to split up the people who are going to be wards of society no matter what from those just passing through, because there’s nowhere to put them.

I think the solution is we go back to centralization. Build a large scale shelter. Also bring back psychiatric hospitals. If you can’t make it in the shelter, you belong either in the psychiatric hospital or jail.

I hear you, but a certain political will could make resources go further. For example, cheap affordable housing costs a ridiculous amount in California due to many government controllable mechanisms (zoning laws, certain overly onerous codes and regulations). There a numerous articles showing the absurd 6 figure per unit construction cost buildings that were meant to be affordable and ballooned to incredible amounts in CA.

A certain political will could fix this.

Reminder that the European downtowns you visit on a vacation are the nicest and most tourist friendly parts of that city, and often the entire country.

The places you probably don't go to are far grittier, dirtier and less welcoming.

Also you're on a vacation, and will enjoy most everything more than usual.

Nothing wrong with that, just keep this inevitable bias in mind.

Going and visiting train stations where people actually live is more revealing. Just as I understand the “tourist playground” areas in my city!

> But, if you’ve been to any city in Europe it’s SO clear how much nicer a city it feels to be in when infrastructure becomes focused on human scale. You breathe easier, you’re less stressed.

Clearly we didn't visit the same parts of Europe. My last visits had me choking on 2-stroke and diesel exhaust while dodging two-wheeled maniacs when crossing streets. Paris and Palermo were especially awful in this regard.