One fairly substantial difference between Europe and America that I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that, when it comes to things like sidewalks (pavements) and store aisles, they tend to be a lot narrower. Even compared with historically dense and crowded cities like SF or NY, I think you’d notice the difference immediately.
Except when you’re talking about cities with no sidewalks or with crumbling sidewalks where any exist, such as Miami or Houston. I took pictures of Miami’s sidewalks and lack thereof because I knew nobody back home would believe me otherwise.
This seems counter-intuitive, but cold-weather places often seem to have better infrastructure than warm-weather places. I think it’s because cold-weather places actually budget for weather-inflicted damage to roads. Here in Michigan, they joke a lot that there are two seasons, winter and road construction, and it’s true. The roads are often a mess in the summer as construction crews rebuilding roads require traffic reroutes.
On the other hand, my hometown in California has TERRIBLE roads. I am always shocked when I go to visit how bad they are. I just think people forget that just because it doesn’t snow and you don’t get salt and snowplow damage every year doesn’t mean that you never have to budget in road repair.
It’s bizarre.
Yeah, it’s like this conversation I had a couple of times:
- Why aren’t there sewers on the streets?
- Well, when it stops raining it dries up real fast.
- But that is when it stops raining, it’s been raining 16h/day for the last two months.
- Yeah, but when it stops raining it will dry up real fast.
- Riiiiiiiite…
In Europe there are enormous differences depending on when the area was built; most “old towns” had streets which were barely wide enough for a car, so when they were paved with asphalt and got sidewalks, the sidewalks were absurdly narrow. A lot of those areas are now becoming pedestrian walks: either no more sidewalks or the whole street is one, your choice.
The other-hand extremes are boulevards designed for people to go for walks/shopping, such as Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona.
I always forget how bad Houston is until I go back there and try to get around without a car. I always end up borrowing a relatives, or waiting for friends to pick me up. The busses have gotten a lot better, but to get to them I usually have to walk a mile in the street…
Sewers on the streets? Do you mean gutters?
In Florida I once I ended up walking in the drainage ditch with the alligators because there were no pavements and we’d just got off the bus. I’d prefer narrow pavements any day.
For Christ’s sake I’m talking about the width of the sidewalk, nothing more. Do you have to do this?
The worst sidewalk problem I’ve seen in L.A. is when there’s a large tree nearby whose roots lift up a couple of concrete slabs, although admittedly the City does tend to pay less attention to the outlying areas of the San Fernando Valley and it’s probably worse there.
Having asked the question, and spent plenty of time walking in the streets here in the US, I think it is interesting and applicable to the OP- what’s the problem?
Presumably it’s only okay when Spectre of Pithecanthropus says less than glowing things about the US.
P.S. I’m sure you’ll be surprised to hear that I have seen some really really REALLY shitty roads in Europe. Yay America.
Just unnecessary roughness, I thought. I bring up an aspect of width, which is largely the result of geography, and it was taken as another occasion to point up our lackadaisical commitment to infrastructure which is the result of our low-tax, low-service social organization.
I’m only speaking as a member here, BTW, so don’t anybody take my previous post as anything more than that.
Well, so would I.
I think I need to clarify the intention behind my post; I only meant to point out the difference in sidewalk width as a neutral fact of geography, not to assert that ours are *ipso facto *better. It’s not as if, when in Europe, I constantly thought, “OMG, these narrow sidewalks, how do these people stand it?”
Thanks for the clarification- I didn’t see an issue, but I am inviting criticism, so I may be blind to any edge on comments…
Given that the thread is about ‘what ways is Europe better,’ it did kinda look like you were saying that US sidewalks are better because they’re wider. I happen to agree, and I don’t see anyone else disagreeing. Europe is, OTOH, better in another respect for sidewalks, because there aren’t many roads without sidewalks at all.
It wasn’t ‘taken as another occasion to point up our lackadaisical commitment to infrastructure which is the result of our low-tax, low-service social organization.’
I do see your point, and I had misremembered the thread as being just about differences, rather than one or the other being better. So for that I apologize.
OTOH this makes it, then, just another venue for bashing us, and I can’t really object too much because, as I’ve complained myself, it’s mostly correct in my opinion. We do have a lot of this on the boards lately, no doubt an inevitable result of our current social, economic, and political malaise. But it does get tiresome.
It’s in response to a different thread about how the US is superior. Anyway, there’s been no US-bashing in this thread; there has been some really strong criticism of Europe, as well as one obvious troll saying that European women are ugly. Although I can understand why, I think you’re seeing attacks where there are none.
Except for the southern countries - Italy, Spain, Greece - we hardly need AC. Why install AC for less than three months? Instead, we have a law in Germany that all residental houses (sadly, office houses continue to guzzle energy) have to meet the 3 liter standard. A well insulated house needs less energy to cool if the summer is hot, so people make do with a portable ventilator.
The upper- and middle class cars allow AC as option and more and more automatically include. Maybe because ADAC studies have shown that lower temps in summer help the drivers concentration and thus increase safety.
As for bathing facilities, I’m at a loss at what you miss. Do you mean bathrooms in the houses? Pretty much all flats have inbuilt bathrooms today, the times of bathrooms in the communal floor stopped being common in the 70s. In the 90s, showers in the public swimming pools were no longer worthwhile because everybody had a shower at home.
Or do you mean public swimming pools? Because it seems to me that we have more in Western Europe than in the US, as part of the communal infrastructure (although they are often hit first when the community starts going broke, as they are expensive to run).