Why is American urbanism so gross compared to Asian urbanism?
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Anonymous
Huh I used to live in Tokyo and find it a lot like DC actually. There are lots of parts that are upscale and manicured and fancy/well-maintained, and parts that are older/dirty/with sizeable homeless populations. Have you ever walked through the shinjuku underpass near the bus station late at night? It’s about as much of a tent city as parts of DC. I like Tokyo better than DC (a lot) but I don’t think that’s an objective fact, just personal taste. The only thing Tokyo indisputably has going for it is the public transit system. And the lack of guns and violent crime. Interestingly, Shanghai is one of the few mainland Chinese cities I’ve had the opportunity to visit although only as a tourist. But even just wandering around the city poking my nose in tea shops and parks and alleyways make it clear that there’s a range of wealth and cleanliness in Shanghai as well. |
Anonymous
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My parents are Indian immigrants and they’re from Calcutta, which is not a modern, clean, urban city at all (not even select parts of it). It’s disgustingly dirty and disorderly. Tons of poor people, homeless people defecating on the street, panhandlers, etc.
I do think the amazing thing is that it’s remarkably low crime despite all that, though. I do not like Calcutta one bit but I’ve never felt unsafe there. For all the poverty that exists, I would think it’d be much higher. |
Anonymous
American cities are just incredibly violent, even removing all gun related crimes they’re still orders of magnitude more violent than any Asian city. Guns and “poverty” (which is NOTHING like the poverty in most other parts of the world) does not even come close to explaining our violent crime rates. |
Anonymous
| Older relatives say that U.S. cities were very pleasant places decades ago. My grandmother has photos of herself and her friends having fun on the sidewalks of Detroit in the 1930s and the place looked prosperous with lots of nicely dressed people (white and black) patronizing the businesses. I blame lack of strong police work and deinstitutionalizing of crazies. |
Anonymous
| Well, foreigners probably think U.S. cities are great. They walk around midtown Manhattan, South Beach, and Rodeo Drive. They’re not going into Detroit, west side of Baltimore or Compton. |
Anonymous
I blame urban US decline and crime on growing wealth differentials, lack of gun safety controls, and too many people being left behind .,, |
Anonymous
Yeah even pictures of breadlines during the Great Depression, people seemed put together more |
Anonymous
Yes, American cities used to have dignity because people invested in them and we had a tax structure far more similar to what Singapore and others have now. We had terrible monopolies, but we didn’t have people hiding vast fortunes abroad or using corporations to extract wealth from entire economies. One side of my grandparents mostly worked in factories and lived within walking or trolley distance. They could and did take a trolley downtown from a neighborhood that still had outhouses and could see affordable classical music performances, visit the main library, or go to live theater (fine arts theater, not vaudeville) on maid and factory worker wages. All of those things were underwritten by Rockefellers and Carnegies, and the trolleys and sidewalks paid for by taxes. Those relatives who were older during the Great Depression always said that they would have never been seen without tidy and clean clothes, even if they were shabby. But those same relatives also lamented how much worse clothing was after the 1950s and how low quality everything became. A coat could last 20 years and be cheaply relined and last another 20. Good luck buying a coat on factory or maid wages that lasts 20 years now, let alone finding someone to re-line it. Their lives lacked opportunity, they were in poor health, and they didn’t have material wealth, but they had a much better community and lifestyle than people of similar socioeconomic standing would have today. |
Anonymous
The parts of DC or NYC I frequent as commuter is nice and clean enough without punishment for small things. Totalitarian countries have you walk on egg shells your whole life, clean streets in exchange for artistic pursuits, personal empowerment and innovation, that’s why we have better design, better tech and better working conditions. |
Anonymous
Even the "good" parts of U.S. cities don't compare well to their Asian equivalents. All those places are car-centric which makes them loud, smelly and dangerous. These days they also have people just "hanging out" which gives menacing vibes, especially if you take public transit or travel by rail. Everything seems dirtier as well. We also have to pretend we don't see what we see. |
Anonymous
Creative innovation = better in the West Execution = better in the East is how I see it as an Asian. |
Anonymous
Never let the perfect be the enemy of the possible. In the USA, we eliminated mental hospitals almost entirely, when the better solution would have been to reform the existing system. In essence, we threw out the baby with the bath water. |
Anonymous
This used to be true. But, not any more. South Korea is leagues ahead of the US in terms of high tech gadgets. They were forced to be because of the lack of space. Those Asian countries that OP cited are much smaller and densely populated than American cities, so they've had to find creative ways to make living in tiny spaces easier. In South Korea, you are limited to a small bin for rubbish. I have a huge trash can for my rubbish. So, they've had to come up with more creative ways to live. |
Anonymous
Tiny ≠ better. |
Anonymous
Unfortunately I think our basic norms of civility and decency and rule-following have fallen to such poor levels that it might be good if we had more enforcement/punishment for small things. I live in NYC and am frequently in DC for work. I usually take the Amtrak to Union Station and then transfer to the metro. Every single time I'm at the Union Station metro entrance, like literally every single time, I see people jumping the fare gates. I understand the issues around uneven/inequitable enforcement, etc. and not wanting to ruin people's lives over a $3 metro fare, but these people are thieves stealing from the city and from taxpayers. And it shows rotten entitlement. It's statistically extremely unlikely that these people are ALL sympathetic, otherwise honest poor people who can't afford metro fare and need to get to work. And in NYC, I take the subway to work sometimes. I get off at the 57th Street station in Midtown. Instead of taking 3 extra seconds to go through the turnstile (in NYC, it's a flat fare so you don't have to tap/pay on the way out), there's a constant stream of people walking through the emergency fire door that is clearly labeled "Emergency Fire Door" to exit. It's gross behavior. I wish there were citations for this kind of thing. |