> The US in general is very densely built up

Sprawl might be the word you are looking for. US is only #186 in population density by country. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_depend...

Comparing the US to countries is very misleading, because there are huge areas with no people which should be ignored. The density of Wyoming pulls down California, and California itself is so large that the central section pulls down the coasts.

For example, density of Southern California is 420.39/sq mi, but the density of the LA Metro area is 541.1/sq mi. Density of California is 253.52/sq mi, and the USA is 87/sq mi.

Southern California is roughly the size of Greece, with a population double of it.

When comparing the USA to Europe, it's better to compare states. The US is less dense, but you can ignore huge swaths of "flyover country".

Haven’t spent a lot of time on the US east coast but on the US west coast we have low density sprawl with also not that many parks.

Western US generally has a huge edge on the east in terms of parkland. Both in terms of urban parks that can be quite substantial in size and amenities offered (e.g. golden gate park in SF or griffith park in LA, about 2x and 5x larger than central park in nyc, respectively), but also the vast amount of acreage that is either nature preserves or publicly owned state or federal land. 80% of nevada is federal land. In Las Vegas, you can go from gambling at caesars palace to hiking in red rock canyon in about a half hour maybe even less. Also in California at least, the coast is public land, you can sunbath on the sand in front of multimilliondollar malibu estates just fine. In the east many beaches are actually private property, and depending on the state this could even be most of them.

What you want are local parks you can walk to, so you can go out for a walk in the park. I don't see much of that in San Francisco, there are some parks but they haven't put local parks in every neighborhood as you would need.

The cities I am used to have parks at most 100 meters away from any home and a pretty large park 200 meters away, then anyone can go out and enjoy the park. San Francisco on the other hand seems to require driving to the park, but there isn't enough parking for everyone to enjoy the park anyway so most people don't have reasonable access, not comparable at all, the parks are giant though but they don't do anything for local neighborhoods. New York is kinda bad at local parks as well, but much better than San Francisco.

SF is one of the best ones in fact. In SF in particular, every resident lives a 10 minute walk to a park. They have 220 of them.

I was thinking more about how it's not very easy to walk to many parks. Most of the park area I'm aware of is more of a "you have to drive X miles" instead of being able to walk by or through a park on my way somewhere.

> The distinct lack of green space in US cities is very noticeable to the non-US observer.

Huh? I felt the exact opposite in France. Many French cities have a bunch of nice parks, but everything else is wall-to-wall pavement. I always felt the common refrain about there being dog shit all over Paris is because on many streets there is barely a patch of grass for a dog to even go, so if you have a rude person that doesn't clean up, the shit is going to be where you're much more likely to step on it.

I think it's less about the inner cities and more about the suburbs. In the US there are certainly lots of little bits of curb with plants on, but little in the way of large useful green space.

Comparing the LA metro area to almost any European city, it's stark how much more unused or usable green space there is in Europe. The US seems much more binary – you're either in a city, or you're outside one, it's not like the US is lacking green space at a national level!

Yeah but compare the San Diego metro area just a little south and it’s overwhelmingly full of green space. I live in SD proper and there’s several open space parks within walking distance that are measured in the square miles with tens of miles of trails each, not to mention the recreational parks in every neighborhood and kids parks that are every few blocks. The suburb cities in the county have even more open space and the center of the city has a large central park as its primary feature.

YMMV significantly depending on the specific metro area. The suburbs of Seattle like Bellevue and Richmond were like that too - full of large parks and natural reserves everywhere.

Part of it is people not recognizing "San Diego greenspace" because it's mostly brownspace. San Diego is built on a huge sprawling system of canyons, many of which are parks and have trails, but they're brown and ignored.

https://www.alltrails.com/lists/san-diego-canyons

If San Diego was as wet as some European cities, those would all be amazingly green.

I think people’s perception is colored by coming out of the decades long drought in the California megacycle. We’re back into the wet part of the cycle and everything is vibrant green now!

Well, vibrant and green for another 2 months maybe.

> suburbs of Seattle like Bellevue and Richmond

Redmond?

European cities are nicer about having a manicured park but not an actually useful park beyond sitting with a book or a smoke perhaps. LA metro area (and a lot of american style in general) parks are chock full of amenities europeans would be lucky to have. For example look at Pan Pacific Park. Three baseball fields. A soccer field. A rec center. Playgrounds. A couple tennis courts. A public pool. A library branch. A post office. A holocaust museum. Bathrooms. Exercise equipment. Picnic tables and grills. And yes, plenty of grass for sitting with a book or a smoke too.

Then there are also much bigger parks with some hiking trails through more natural/unmanaged areas like griffith park or the sepulveda dam area or the hansen dam area, that also have all of these amenities (save for the holocaust museum) and even more. Sepulveda dam has archery, a rocket launch pad, and a model aircraft field. Hansen dam also has the archery but also a lot of equestrian activity and people keep horses in the area.

To act like the greenspace is not available or unusuable doesn't speak to what is actually there for use today.

Overall, agreed. Some nuance:

> […] but not an actually useful park beyond sitting with a book or a smoke perhaps

Yes, and grass to play improvised football or things like it.

> chock full of amenities europeans would be lucky to have

Not really, because European social life is not organized-activity-oriented. At least nowhere near my perception of American life (8y in CA).

In Europe, you meet first (let’s hang out, meet at a cafe, in the park) and then roam around and maybe do something spontaneous. In many cases, this involves mixed ages (kids playing, grandparents etc).

> Bathrooms

Yes. To be fair, I think it depends on how urban it is. In bigger parks like Golden Gate Park SF, the homeless don’t bother to go that far. If you have bathrooms near urban centers they tend to get misused and scare away regular folks anyways.

> To act like the greenspace is not available or unusuable doesn't speak to what is actually there for use today.

The green space in the US wins overall (again based on mostly CA), if you commit to the car ride to get there. In fact, if you count the national/state parks it might be best in the world.

In terms of green space integrated into urban life, I would say Europe is way better. In the US you can’t easily “integrate” green space that way into car-centric urban sprawl, because everything is already compartmentalized and divided and driving distance afar from other parts.

Cities in the USA do not have many things like big parks (Central Park in NY, Balboa Park in SD) but what they do have is a lot more grass next to the sidewalk type of greenery, except areas that are dense enough that they've all died (like LA near the airport).

I live in Paris and was recently in the US, and I strongly disagree - US cities have much less greenery, be it trees on the streets, mini parks or big parks. Most French cities have parks all over the place, and in general lots of squares with trees, random trees on the streets, etc.

I live in the US and was recently and Paris and I strongly much more disagree. Paris was claustrophobic it was such an urban hellscape. There's a reason Haussmann wanted to raze it to the ground.

He did raze much of it to the ground, and created a number of parks and two forests in the process, as well as trees on pretty much any new street. Even the very old (medieval) parts like the Latin Quarter and Marais have mini parks all around.

> The US in general is very densely built up.

This is the opposite of reality. The US is sprawly and low density.

Of course, that's exactly the problem: sprawling over more space means that it's harder to get to open space for an airport.