BROADCASTS.com

b'

Quixote\\xa0writes:

It\\u2019s odd to me how bad San Francisco is, when other large cities like New York or Paris are basically utopias.

But just a few comments down,\\xa0Lasagna\\xa0says:

I despise (I\\u2019m choosing that word carefully) [New York City]. I still commute there every day, and I can\\u2019t stand it \\u2013 the broken infrastructure, the horrible smells, the $14 for a yogurt and coffee in the morning, the massive crowds of unpleasant people (how could we NOT be? We\\u2019re walking through an open sewer). There\\u2019s a litany of other things that keep me permanently angry and depressed (just the thought of how much earlier I would have started a family if I didn\\u2019t live there\\u2026.) I find it decadent, selfish, shallow \\u2013 pick your bad adjective. I\\u2019ll stop now.

Where I live now is nice. We have a town we can walk to, a lawn for the kids to play on and me to mow, we cook at home, we have enough room for our family to live and the kids to get exercise, even indoors. There\\u2019s no WAY I\\u2019m giving that up so I can live in an apartment again, all so NYC can squeeze MORE people into its area.

If I had my way, we\\u2019d be much further away from the metro area than we are now, in a bigger, cheaper home with more land. But that isn\\u2019t possible; NYC is where my job is, and that\\u2019s that. Fine. But let\\u2019s not make things worse, and make NYC (and San Francisco, and DC, and Boston) even MORE indispensable generators of jobs. And please don\\u2019t think for a second that there aren\\u2019t sizable numbers of people like me, and like you, who do not want these things for our families [\\u2026] Thanks for letting me rant. You should have seen the first draft of this thing. Twice as long, Scott. A litany of woes and anger.

This would be fascinating if it weren\\u2019t so predictable. One person describes NYC as \\u201cbasically utopia\\u201d, and another person can\\u2019t stop ranting about how much he hates it and is glad to have escaped it.

In the same vein, from\\xa0Cerastes:

\\u201cI think neurotypical people usually underestimate how bad cities are for people with noise sensitivities, anxiety, purity intuitions, or just\\xa0a need for nature and green things in their environment, \\u2026\\u201d

THIS!!! A MILLION TIMES THIS!!

The concept of living somewhere that isn\\u2019t green is literally nauseating to me, and the idea of a place that isn\\u2019t teeming with wild animals feels like suffocating. My house is in as wild a place as possible given my commute, budget, and region, and almost every room has a fully planted vivarium with an animal (as well as my office).

The amount of urbanist triumphalist crap drives me up the wall, as if these people cannot see why someone would not want to live in conditions far inferior to even low-quality zoos, or why someone might need to balance a job in a city with such desires.

Being 100% honest, I actually feel like there\\u2019s something genuinely wrong with people who don\\u2019t feel the need to spend time in nature, especially if they also lack pets. They\\u2019re like sterile androids in some sort of weird dystopia, utterly cut off from life.