this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2023
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For anyone who lives in cities with half responsible urban planning, let me tell you: It's worse than you can imagine. It's genuinely unwalkable (I've tried, don't have a car) especially in the summer when you have zero protection from the sun. Also, this is technically the "downtown" with all the commercial/industrial areas. It's hard enough to walk through here, the distance between your 1M+ house deep in the suburbs to here is ten times greater, maybe it'll have sidewalks, or a bike path if you're really lucky.
Give me a godamn concrete jungle, we'll discuss aesthetics and blocking out light and the view out the window and all that later, at the very least you can physically access places you need to go.
There are a few gems. I've lived in Pittsburgh all my life. Our geography and age of the city forced our hand that most everywhere is still walkable, and not completdly car-centric. My partner walks about 3-5 miles a day, and can bus to just about anywhere. We only have a light rail that connects the suburbs, and the rest of the city to the east is cut off other than busses, but it works.
Downtown has some highways that intersect but they're a spaghetti mess and often involve needing to cut across 4 lanes on a bridge right after you exit a tunnel. Take a look at our map and you'll probably see what I mean. There's a few semblances of a grid in certain neighborhoods, but most of the streets are all over the place.
I love our house to death though. We're still in the city and have a hundred different things to do all the time, but it's tucked away on a dead end street in the woods with only one neighbor, who is about 100+ feet away. We can see the river from our front stoop and frequently see lots of wildlife, birds of prey like hawks and vultures, deer, turkeys, groundhogs, you name it. The house is built into the side of a mountain so the first floor, which is where our bedroom is, is naturally cool because there's over a story of retaining walls surrounding the house so it's basically underground. I haven't had air conditioning for over a decade.