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.