I wouldn't be surprised to find some suburbs with some of the traits you mention, but it hasn't been my experience with them. I've lived in about 5 different suburbs in my life and a supermarket has never been more than 2 miles away - certainly not a 20 minute drive and it's even within biking distance. Parks are by schools and there's usually an elementary school fairly close if you're looking to do something with your kid. Depending upon the suburb you can also play in the street, which I regularly did growing up.

The traits you are talking about sounds more like a rural area than a suburban one.

I'd consider that far, far away.

My walk to the nearest train station is about one mile, takes about 15 minutes to get there on foot, and that's irritatingly far, too, considering the trip is two way and repeats every day. Something like a grocery shop should be accessible within decent walking distance, a five-minute walk or so.

A rule of thumb is that if something is far enough that I have to take the car in the first place I'll be incentivised to drive further away to a big supermarket/other big stores while I'm at it.

The grocery store that’s 2 miles away is a big supermarket. The US doesn’t really do small groceries in most places.

An interesting parallel is Japan; Japan doesn't require parking with its properties, and to buy a car in Japan you have to produce proof of a parking space that you have (probably by purchasing a spot either with a property or in a lot somewhere), and the market has mostly sorted itself in favor of extremely dense networks of small shops.

I live in one of America's few dense cities, and there are three stores I visit often, one Kroger chain with the selection you'd expect, one latin grocery, and one asian grocery where I can get all kinds of stuff that most people in the suburbs who shop at walmart and safeway have never heard of, all within a 10 minute walk.

I live in a city of about 100K people, and there are plenty. Or a few miles away is a city of ~70K people with others. As well as non-chain organic markets, whatever. The suburbs are adjacent; that's what suburbs are.

I am in the northeast, are you a Californian or Texan?

The Kroger chain you visit killed all of the above (except for the gas station convenience stores which are a smaller version of the above)

Check out this Canadian talking about his grocery trip in Amsterdam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYHTzqHIngk.

In much of the USA, your produce would freeze and thus become mush.

In much of the USA, temperatures well above 90 degrees would wilt your produce. Also, all your frozen food would be ruined.

If you're carrying frozen food, we have bags with insulation and reflective foil on the inside. Put your frozen food there and even in +40C weather it will take much more than 15 minutes to thaw. Besides, buses and obviously the metros are acclimatized to a temperature of more or less 25C.

It really is just a non-issue. I assure you your produce are left outside for more than 20 minutes. There is no impact at all on freshness, and walkable cities promote smaller grocery stores that tend to have fresher food.

Food grows outside, in direct sunlight, exposed to scorching heat or near-freezing temperatures. Most of the plant based food is still living in the shelf when you purchase it, and has imune systems to fight-off bacteria and the like that would otherwise colonize it. The only concern are products of animal origin in the heat, but even the most sensitive like refrigerated fresh fish, still needs at least a few hours in hot weather before they can become problematic.

When grocery shopping frequently, you're also going for five or ten minutes instead of two hours, and the grocery is probably on your way home.

This has never been a problem for me. Many fresh fruits and vegetables will easily last for a week in your refrigerator (some for longer), and fresh fish or meat can be frozen for later use. Fruits such as berries that degrade rapidly can be eaten first, and fruits that last longer, such as apples or oranges, can be eaten later. Fruits like peaches or avocados can also be bought in varying states of ripeness, which means that different ones could achieve ripeness over the course of a week.

Back when I lived across the street from a grocery store I'd sometimes go get food for dinner, talk a bit with guests for what we wanted for desert, then walk over and pick up whatever we'd decided on. When the grocery store is across the street it is basically an on-demand food pantry.

Living in a dense city like SF is great for somethings, but it sucks when you want to leave, and paying almost $400/month for parking isn't good either. Both lifestyles have their advantages and I think it really comes out to personal taste and choice.

Do you carry your groceries, or have like a cart? I always end up with several trips to my car worth of groceries to last a week.

Driving for the bulk, walking for the random stuff we needed.

No, I wouldn't feel "stacked on top of each other" if I were a multi-millionaire in Paris.

But, in the real world, your talking about putting families into 600sqft (at very best) boxes, with audible neighbors on every side of the unit, and no way to go anywhere (no parking, no meaningful transport, because 'everything we'd let you have is a short walk away')

If you actually do what you've described, and give everyone their own townhouse, you've just reinvented the modern suburb. Because that's what modern suburbs look like, everyone in a townhouse, or a townhouse with some small strips of yard around it.

> but there are many different ways to live in a dense city

Sure, but only if you are fantastically wealthy.

I lived on a two lane street, and no one had air conditioners. You don't know how loud air conditioners and furnaces are until you live in a place without them.

I walked to work, and lived within 1/2 mile of 8 grocery stores. When I went to German class Downtown, I walked 15 minutes to a train. I could get to the airport in 25 minutes via one bus and one S-Bahn leg.

Here in the States, I also don't have a car, but I'm surrounded by highways separating me from a park, and my apartment is much much louder because Boise, the city, doesn't control the roads within it. The state does. Thoroughput is all that matters.

I still live 0.5 mile from multiple grocery stores, but I don't have transit here. Getting to the airport from Downtown is a 40 minute bus ride (with a 15-20 minute schedule variance) for 2.5 miles. The state won't allow the city local taxing power to improve transit, and so the city limps along, unable to expand transit that matches the limited space to expand lanes.

- Warsaw

- Glasgow

- Porto

- Lisbon

- Athens (Greece)

- Berlin

- Budapest

- Barcelona (OK, this one gets pricey but is superbly laid out)

Yes, small grocery stores are at every corner but for other things, like clothes or electronics you still have to go to a big shopping mall, at least 2-3 miles away. Oh, and did I mention all those are closed almost every Sunday?

As for apartment prices even for really well paid software developer the choice is basically between buying a small (500 sqft) flat close to work, or bigger (800-1000 sqft) far away from it, with the added inconvenience of jet planes waking you up in the middle of the night, because Warsaw is stupid enough to have big international airport located near the city center.

EDIT: Another thing: after more intensive rains some of the subway stations get flooded, so they are out of service for several hours. Not that there are many subway stations in Warsaw - just 34, forming one and half line

Budapest? Average apartment size in Hungary is 77 sq m. Average in Budapest is 57-65 m^2. You Forints go a long way: 2824 / sq m (~$10?!?). I'm in! (https://www.towerbudapest.com/en/property_management/news/an...)

If on the other hand, you have a corporate job at a branch of a western company it's extremely cheap. Software developers in Warsaw easily make 10-20K PLN per month thus having rent costs less than a quarter of their paycheck.

Numbeo cost of living index has it 153rd in the world including rent and it's well below places like Houston which is probably the cheapest large top tier city in the US.

and since we're doing lists, these are the most expensive cities i lived in (coincidentally some of them are the best cities in the world to live in, bar none):

- sydney

- tokyo

- singapore

- hong kong

- london

all top notch, all extremely expensive.

moral of the story is: you get what you pay for.

What do you mean by don't accept?

Porto and Lisbon are quite easy to get around as an English speaker, most young people are very decent at speaking English.

Also no one wants to walk through blighted or a high crime neighborhood. American cities have a lot more diversity than any of the cities you mention with income disparities separating various races and stocks of people. Homogeneity of the populaces involved is a factor often totally and wholly ignored in these comparisons of "walkable and affordable" cities.

Walking through even the ghetto-est part of Belfast may not be the same as walking through the same in Opa-locka, Miami-Dade County, Florida. There are no racial boundaries to overcome in Belfast or Budapest. Not even remotely close to the extent we encounter in America. Like I said this metric should be factored into these conversations.

I don’t know what Opa Locka is like but Belfast is not a good example to compare to.

I think you may have picked the worst possible example for articulating your point.

There are plenty of very diverse races living in Europe and nobody is scared of them.

Granted I'm not an American and I have no idea how hostile race relations run in that country but I know that in most of Western Europe and in Canada most people have no issues mingling with other races and all neighborhoods are getting increasingly diverse.

It's news to me that the Paris Bus, Tram, Metro, RER, SNCF, Velib, and the venerable scooter have all suddenly vanished.

But unless you somehow gift me one million dollars USD or more (and the same to every single person I know), none of us are going to be able to afford to live anywhere in Paris that actually has close access to all of those things you've described, with the living situation described above.

If we're magically exceptionally lucky, at best we might get like one or two.

Have you ever set foot in a European city ? I currently live in Paris. Bus, metro and Vélib' are three minutes away and I am not a millionaire. It all costs me 38 euros a month for unlimited journeys.

I could afford to start a family here. Two affluent people can rent 750 square feet in Paris. I could even probably buy if I accepted to be in debt for thirty years.

I think this is the exact tradeoff that is being discussed. Some people are OK with the 750 square ft flat. Others want a 3,000 sqft home on a quarter acre with room to park a boat or RV.

You can get this within a 15 minute Drive of downtown Houston for $300k, but you wont be walking to the local grocery or civic building.

As far as I can tell, 300k will buy you a 250 sqft apartment in Paris, but you will have access to walkable civic amenities.

Ouch. My VBB-Umweltkarte for similar costs 63 EUR a month.

People who wish to live in neighborhoods with low crime often NIMBY off any attempts to add public transit options specifically to keep out the riffraff.

  Marin County is home to over 252,000 residents, yet it is without a BART station. If you search
  web content to find out why that is the case, you will not find a lot. There is minimal information 
  explaining why the BART doesn't connect from Marin to San Francisco and even less explaining why it 
  doesn't connect from the East Bay to Marin.

  Marin funded a large portion of the project when BART was being planned in the 1950s. But "concerns"
  over whether or not the Golden Gate Bridge could support BART suddenly arose. After San Mateo pulled
  out of the plan, Marin's participation fell through as well.

  It is not unfair to speculate that socio-economic discrepancies might have something to do with this 
  lack of transit connection. After all, Marin is the county where wealthy residents stopped George Lucas 
  from building affordable housing on his land. The median household income there is almost $84,000, more 
  than $15,000 more than San Francisco and more than twice as much as Oakland.

  A similar situation in Dayton, Ohio arose where wealthy suburbanites tried to stop the local transit 
  authority from building three new bus stops near major employment centers.[1]

Surely you think, summer isn't that long, just tough it out a few months. Well I regularly run the A/C in the "winter months". Several years ago during the week of chistmas, I went to a late night movie, as I was walking back to my car to go home I noticed the following: at 11:30pm it was 80F (26C), the humidity was around 80-90%, and I was wearing shorts.

Having occupied a 120 square foot chambre de bonne, I agree with your sentiment but I'd say it depends on a few qualifications. Like for instance not having basically plumbed closets as a large percentage of available living spaces. Building height restrictions in the city lead to a large number of tiny (aforementioned) inaccessible (few and tiny elevators) apartments.

Are you satisfied with a few arbitrary restaurants within walking distance? or, car enabled, would you rather go 30 miles for that REALLY good place that would never be so close in a compact city?

Kids need to bring stuff. That could be hockey equipment, a drum set, or a clean playpen.

Kids wander off if not contained. A kid may get off a subway at the wrong stop, lost in the crowd, along as the rest of the family continues on down the line. A kid may fall onto the tracks.

Kids should be kept from licking public spaces. Kids should be kept from eating food found on the ground. Kids should not be able to play with hypodermic needles.

I neither want nor need to be a taxi driver for my kids. From the age of seven they have been perfectly capable of getting to school, orchestra practice and sports by themselves using the subway, local trains and buses. The drum kits and equipment can be stored on location, and whatever they need to carry (the cello is heavy) builds strength or can be wheeled.

At their age, back in the day of no smartphones, if I got lost in the city I could ask any adult for help, and they would be delighted to help me.

At one time, mine were these ages: 8, 6, 4, 2, 2, 0

Doing that on the subway would be nuts.

I actually know somebody who, as a kid, got off the subway at the wrong stop. That really happens. The crowd seems to be leaving, the kid goes, and before the parents can react the subway is moving again.

Activities need not revolve around consumerism. Find a less-densely populated area, and there will be wild space like forests and streams. Backyards can be pretty big too. Consumerism is more of a city thing, since there is no backyard and no forest.

Is there more demand for high density urban housing that cities are not meeting? If so, why?

Is there a demand for more access from suburban commuters? If so, why isn't the access available?

Are these solutions mutually exclusive?