The point is that there are good reasons why most Americans with the ability to do so choose to live in areas low enough in density that cars work better than public transportation and that America cannot simply copy Europe's urban planning without also copying some of Europe's laws and attitudes regarding individual liberty. (And laws and attitudes are hard to change.)

You're not completely incorrect, insofar as European cities (and any worthwhile city) are forced to infringe to some extent on fundamentalist interpretations of property rights for urban planning. But you might as well throw up your arms and complain about building codes and zoning restrictions anywhere else if such things are such "onerous restrictions on individual liberty."

The reason why so many Americans have settled in exurban developments is because we've artificially subsidized those lifestyle with federally-funded freeways, artificially cheap gasoline, and destructive corporate attacks on public transportation systems (especially in the 1950s, check out the GM attack in Los Angeles as an example). Exurbs didn't develop organically, nor are they in any way models of efficiency, cost, or sustainability.

When I used to live in the Mission District of San Francisco, sometimes "poor, urban" type people would stand around on the sidewalk and street in front of my window and yell at each other for hours in the early in the morning. (My guess is it had something to do with pimping and prostitution.) If I lived in an outer suburb of San Francisco (Walnut Creek miles from a BART station for example), people like that would have a hard time getting to my street, because most of them do not have cars; and since there would be nothing near my home besides other homes, it would be a boring environment for them unless perhaps they are into jogging or walking their dog or something like that. Ditto the people who used to park across the street and play their car stereo really loud. And the guy with the pick-up truck who was helping his friend move and left his car alarm on the most sensitive setting, so that it would go off every time a car passed by it. The French and other nations on the continent of Europe are much more accepting than Americans of the use various policing, administrative and legal procedures to encourage the aforementioned individuals to stop the aforementioned behaviors and conform to a quieter or more conventional patterns of behavior. This is an example of what I meant when I said that Europeans tolerate more onerous restrictions on individual liberty than Americans do, and this is a significant part of why IMO wealthy people in France mostly consider the core of Paris a nice place to live whereas wealthy people in the U.S. mostly do not want to live in American inner cities -- at least they do not want to after they turn 30 or so.

You'd just like to pay extra to be so far away from everyone that you won't see homeless people. Besides the obvious suggestion of directing the money taxpayers are forced to spend on exurban roads, water pipes, etc. towards asylums, rehab clinics, and shelters... you realize that gentrification means you can have your cake and eat it too, right? Especially in NYC, while there are still tons of bums and Jersey douchebags, the gangster element has all but died off. (Though you still have stupid assholes in the Bronx and Bed-Stuy, gangs aren't the problem you see everywhere else.) Having mixed-income, dense neighborhoods makes policing WAY easier and makes NYC the safest American city.

Replace cars with, for example, private refrigerators and public transport with communal refrigerators and think it through.

Any time that you smoosh people together and force or nudge them into using shared or communal facilities rather than their own, personal freedom of action is being curtailed.

We can argue that whatever we're getting in return is worthwhile but we can't pretend that we're not giving anything up.

If you're so certain that public transportation means giving something up, what is it that you're losing?

If every car trip really did mean sitting in a traffic for an hour, then I would love public transport more. Thankfully, that's not the case.

My wife and I take taxis a lot and, even in uber-dense HK, we rarely get stuck in traffic. When we do, it's usually just at a handful of choke points, like entrances to cross-harbor tunnels, and the traffic gets moving again once one is in the tunnel.

As to what one gives up by not owning a car, living in densely populated areas, and using public transport, I would refer you to an earlier reply: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3974910

Basically, living close together and without a car means that the pain-in-the-neck factor of practically everything is increased. Everything becomes at best just a teensy bit more of a hassle and needs to be scheduled more carefully. Convenience and the ability to be spontaneous become more of a luxury.

Are you ready to go grocery shopping pretty much every single day or every other day? Or can you manage to be at home during a 6-hour window for the grocery delivery if you want to shop once a week for that stuff?

Would you get stressed waiting, at least twice a day (leaving from your floor and returning from the lobby), for elevators in a 30-story building? Remember that people in wheelchairs, kids taking their bikes downstairs to ride, workmen w/materials/tools, people moving house, etc. are all going to be using the elevators.

If you're out somewhere and buy anything (in my case, yesterday, it was a new electric toothbrush) that's not groceries or something large, like an air conditioner, you're going to have to lug it around with you until you go home, even if you have several other stops to make or errands to do. There's no such thing as going to your car and putting something in the trunk until later.

Are you ready for even short trips to take much longer? You'll need to get out of your highrise, walk for some time until you get to the public transport pick-up point (bus stop, train platform, etc.), wait a while, ride the public transport (which usually moves slower than a car even if it weren't making a bunch of other stops between your home and ultimate destination's drop-off point), and then, finally, you'll have to walk some more to reach wherever it was that you wanted to go.

If you already live in a highrise, use public transportation exclusively, and don't own a car, then I'm glad that the experience hasn't soured you on high-density living and public transportation.

Some people do opt for the arrangement you've just described, living in e.g. the "Lake Silver" high rises way out at the very end of the Ma On Shan metro line. Most of them don't seem to mind it, even though it means long rides on the bus or MTR to go anywhere.

But it's just as easy to live a few stops from work, in an older neighbourhood like Sa Ying Poon or Prince Edward with smaller buildings, where you have three different supermarkets within a five-minute walk and are surrounded by shops selling everythinng imaginable.

I mean, how many cities have two overlapping and completely independent public transport networks? HK has the "official" bus and metro system, but the red minibuses are essentially a rogue invisible-hand-of-the-market creation that just sprung up organically. And unlike most American cities, where the public transport struggles to even survive, both of these HK networks are thriving...

So, while you're correct in saying that highrise living is not the only choice, it is the reality that most people here are living in highrises and that the small percentage of people living in smaller buildings will continue to dwindle over time.

Regarding older, low-rise, buildings, those low-rise residential buildings that do exist and which aren't out in the boonies are being gradually "redeveloped", as you may already know. The government or a developer buys a certain percentage of the flats and compels the holdouts to sell, usually at a price that won't permit the residents to buy a newer flat in the same neighborhood, demolishes the building(s), and erects a huge tower block.

Regarding the minibuses, a car or taxi is still faster than taking a minibus for the same reasons that a car or taxi are faster than the MTR: no walking/waiting/walking and you're going to your destination directly rather than following a route and making lots of stops at places that you don't want to go and then.

This is a separate issue, but haven't you noticed that most of the drivers are visibly impoverished (raggy-looking clothing, many missing/black teeth, etc.) and many are senior citizens? The minibuses, especially the red ones, also tend to speed and get into lots of accidents. Rarely does more than a day or two pass without a report of a minibus ramming into something and most of the passengers being injured, or two minibuses t-boning each other and two minibus-fulls of passengers being injured, etc.

Also, you do know that most of the red minibuses are under triad control, that the drivers have to pay a huge lump sum when they start driving and then "parking fees" every month thereafter?

If you absolutely need a car for big purchases, Zipcar and its competitors are easily accessible. If you're older, you have BETTER options here in the form of delivery services than you'd have in a rural setting. If you'd like to get a little further away from the city in a nice, quiet Queens neighborhood, you can hope on the express train and read a book while you're zipped to your destination.

Hong Kong is a different animal just because it's, well, Hong Kong. But nothing in the world quite compares to that, and you really shouldn't associate New York or Paris with that crazy city.

I think that you're living in Brooklyn and enjoying it, which is great, and idealizing it without thinking about how Brooklyn is actually changing right around you.

[The Brooklyner is a 51-story skyscraper recently built in Brooklyn: the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooklyner ]

Having left London, I really do miss Ocado. Unlike the silly timing restrictions you suggest, they delivered at any hour between about 0700 and 2300 with one hour windows.

> ...ride the public transport (which usually moves slower than a car even if it weren't making a bunch of other stops between your home and ultimate destination's drop-off point)

This is just the tragedy of the commons at work. Outside of the City there are bus lanes (shared with cabs). It isn't the job of society to subsidize drivers in congested areas. There's simply no political will to squeeze private autos.

> If you already live in a highrise

You're tilting at a straw man. Single family houses and high rises aren't the only options. Greater London, for example, is full of four story row houses.

We really do deal with six-hour windows here (and the delivery people tend to miss even those and come late). One-hour windows sound great, especially if they never missed them. You're still stuck waiting around for a delivery person, though, even if it is just for an hour once a week.

> This is just the tragedy of the commons at work. Outside > of the City there are bus lanes (shared with cabs). It > isn't the job of society to subsidize drivers in > congested areas. There's simply no political will to > squeeze private autos.

Sorry, I should have been more clear. I wasn't saying that driving was faster than taking a bus in my city, though it is. I was actually thinking of the local rail system, the MTR. Taking a taxi anywhere or driving yourself is almost always faster than taking the MTR.

By it's very nature, public transport, which has to run on a schedule and leave gaps between runs to allow passengers to accumulate and then make multiple stops is, is often going to be slower than an individual getting into a personal vehicle and driving themselves to their destination.

> You're tilting at a straw man. Single family houses and > high rises aren't the only options. Greater London, for > example, is full of four story row houses.

I'm not British and haven't been to London (I just live in a former British colony whose development was planned by British civil servants), but the reference to Greater London seems to refer to London plus its suburbs.

Hong Kong has a lot of three-story "village houses" in what passes for rural areas here but which in reality are more like suburbs or outer boroughs.

HK village houses don't have elevators. Do the four-story row houses in Greater London have them? If so, then great. If not, then I would imagine it must be quite unpleasant for the people on the higher floors to carry their groceries (or anything else) up to their flats.

Population of Europe: 738,199,000 Population of US: 311,591,917

If the US were double density, it would have more walkable, urban areas, etc.

We're trapped by a car-centric lifestyle, and it's absolutely poisonous.