Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan02
New york, Shanghai, Singapore, Toyko, Seoul, Dubai, Chicago, all disagree with you.
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I can't speak for your Asian city examples, but I used to live in NY and the places where people wanted to live/eat/shop in (Village, Soho, East Village/Alphabet, Williamsburg, Union Square etc) were all the relatively low/mid rise neighborhoods. The Financial District and Midtown has all the famous towers...but they weren't the desirable neighborhoods for citizens....most of those areas are relatively dead outside of work and have cheaper rent. It's true of other American cities too...the action may still be inner-city, but typically not where the skyscrapers are.
You go to London, or Paris, or Frankfurt, or whatever city in Europe, and just look at the districts where the skyscrapers are. Nice architecture and fine places to work, but few actually want to live and hang out in those areas outside of office hours. People don't go to Paris to hang out in La Defense. Many European cities also have blocks and blocks of tall residential towers, but most of them feel just as cold as any cookie-cutter suburb. The beauty and life is always in the older/smaller character neighborhoods.
Skyscrapers/condo towers have their place...but you couldn't pay me enough to live in a place like Mississauga. Low/Midrise density is where it's at!