Trying to move to escape America’s car-centric hell. The Netherlands is pretty high on the list but I wanted to explore other options. How do the following countries and their cities fair in terms of urbanism:
-Ireland
-Spain
-Belgium
-France
-Denmark
-Portugal
-Sweden
I could list more but I’ll be here all night.
Yeah, I agree with the description of Sweden here. There are some really nicely designed, walkable blocks, but there are also seas of big box stores. The big city downtowns are nice, but even the good suburbs are often not very coherent. A new neighborhood will be built with high rises and a nice design, but there are no stores, and the supermarket is 10 minutes away on foot across busy roads.
There is definitely a lot of value in the “innerstans” and transit-oriented “centrums”, though.
Im not sure if density is the issue in Stockholm, or if all the suburbs just suck. (insert Paris comparison here) Stockholm’s transit system is still very radial and all the suburbs are super car dependent. There are no urban neighborhoods outside of innerstan, Hammarby, and Sundbyberg. Some new towers along the new subway stations would make a lot of sense, but you’d get an even bigger impact by having more infill development around the single family homes and “towers in the park” miljonprogram.