Comic Strips

Literally city people really just want to see some trees on the sidewalk, some flowerbeds, and have a few little parks here and there with only a couple big community parks to be able to have picnic or whatever.

Look up Verdun, Quebec(Montréal). There is absolutely massive park running along the Saint Laurence River for many kilometers and it’s fuckin’ awesome without getting in the way of the lovely, mid-density, walkable neighbourhood right beside it. It’s fuckin’ sick. That and Parc Angrignon, too!

Anyway the point is that you could not be more wrong.

Dedicated walkable greenspace is not impossible nor is it a sin to want. New York City, New York, Boston, Massachusetts and Savannah, Georgia (all USA) have plenty of parks and are walkable with public transportation fairly readily available, and those are just three examples.

I mean, when you're not being hyperbolic it's absolutely possible. You can easily have a walkable/transit oriented city with lots of green space

Edit: it also doesn't even need to be that dense. Like most of my city's downtown is a lot of old houses rather than endless big apartment towers. The difference between my neighbourhood and American style suburbs is that I have multiple nice high streets within a ten minute walk and can get by without a car, while still living in a three bedroom house

This looks more like suburbs to me than any city I've been to.

These aren't contradictory. If you build up instead of out, it's easier to save green spaces and make sure that they're accessible. If you keep cars off the road with good public transit, less green spaces need to get paved to make ugly ass parking lots, you get fewer shitty drive throughs, you get more walkable spaces and small businesses instead of big box marts, and everything is generally less polluted and shitty.

The problem comes when everyone wants their own little slice of private green space (that is, suburbia). You eventually end up in a single family home desert with a 5 sqft yard and some fucking dork with too much time on their hands coming along to measure your grass with a ruler and bitching at you about how your car doesn't look as nice as your neighbors', and how it's ruining the character of the neighborhood. Meanwhile you look over Steven's shoulder and it occurs to you again how every house looks exactly the same, everything is artificial and sanitized looking, like you live in a CGI scene from the late 90s. How long has it been since you've seen a bird? Kids playing outside? When was the last time you wanted to go outside? The last time your kids wanted to go out? You got them a bike, but they never bothered to learn to ride it, it's quietly rusting away in a corner of the garage. You tried taking it yourself one time and got yelled at by someone in the neighborhood after they almost ran you over while driving recklessly (and maybe drunk). Actually, isn't there some insect apocalypse happening right now? Come to think of it, when was the last time you saw a ladybug or a butterfly? This all feels wrong. You tried to find the little dipper to show it to your kids a few weeks ago, but you couldn't find it at all. You definitely remember seeing more stars as a kid. Maybe you should just refuse to cut the postage stamp lawn and let the tickets pile up, you'll go into the woods and live off mushrooms, become a witch, and come back and terrorize your neighbors and grow trees in their living rooms. Where did that come from? Haha. Anyway, you don't even know your other neighbors even though you've lived here for years. It'd be cool if there was some reason to run into them, like a shop or cafe down on the corner or something, but that doesn't exist and you don't want to bother anyone. You "oh, yeah, sorry" as Steven chides you to stop putting the garbage out the night before the garbage truck runs, and then bid him a nice day, even if you don't mean it. No, Steven, I can't go to your church this weekend. I'm, uh, busy.

Hey, German here. Turns out, you can have all of that. You just need good urban planning.

Ever heard of green space?

You do realize the pic is of the suburbs, right? An actually-dense urban area doesn't have tons of signs that are huge because they're designed to be read from inside of a moving car, you know.

I suddenly understand why suburbanites hate cities: they see the shitty, car-dependent sprawl around them and assume that an urban lifestyle must be like that, but "more," when in reality it's entirely different.

American cities suck because capitalism sucks up culture and spits out profitable memes.

Advertising, by itself, has probably spelled our god damn doom. Letting anything be sponsored by a corporation has made enjoying the simple pleasures of life damn near impossible.

Easy. Live near the edge of the city, walk ten minutes, be in the forests and open fields around.

And a city full of fun and public transport at your doorstep.