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Comment by bshepard | Hacker News Reader

I also find New York City to be extremely depressing, and radically subpar urbanistically compared with Berlin, where I currently live. You can take an S-Bahn in 30 minutes or so to S-Bahn Schlachtensee and swim clean, chill and easily accessible lake - a journey to the water in New York will take much much longer, involve more walking, and involve dirtier water.

It is easy to find scapegoats for the poor urbanism of the United States, but very difficult to think of a solution without a radical change in the nature of governance.

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And in Berlin you can cycle! I'm not a regular cyclist, but on holiday I felt totally comfortable renting a bike and using the bike lanes to get around.

As a resident of Berlin (that likes living there) I feel it's important to also mention NYC has almost 2.5 times as many people and unlike Berlin is part of a large urban agglomeration (the northeast megalopolis - total population ~50m).

It's not quite a fair comparison.

Right, but the original comment was (condescendingly) comparing NYC to middle America, so differing densities and other demographics are precisely the point.

No, my point was about the car centric bend of a large portion of suburban / rural America. I wrote that message at like 1am, see my comment here for what I meant https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32355777

Compare Pittsburgh suburb (https://goo.gl/maps/bFBWcsJ6EeL1kgVe7) to the suburbs of the town that I was born in (https://goo.gl/maps/ktkWzAUa3tyz37hQ7).

This is an even better example: https://goo.gl/maps/cAECdLXaBVoErtsFA vs https://goo.gl/maps/oBmruFK2Sqaxg6TW7

EDIT: Same goes for the Bay Area, staying by YC offices for the interviews was depressing too. Look at this: https://goo.gl/maps/ERCkS7zrHw8tM2or9

NotJustBikes has some excellent videos on the differences between US and European cities, this one captures many of the issues - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oHlpmxLTxpw

> "And in Berlin you can cycle!"

You can certainly cycle in New York. Cycling has increased dramatically in New York City over the past decade or so with the installation of more cycle-friendly infrastructure, including over 100 miles of protected bike lanes, city bike sharing, e-bike rental apps, etc.

Cycling in nyc has changed drastically in the last decade. It's almost good now!

And for all of the cleanliness and convenience you also have to put up with 3/4 of the population blowing their cigarette smoke in your face. Especially indoors in bars, despite it being illegal.

This can't be quite true. In Berlin smoking is prohibited in public buildings, public transportation including nearly 100% of all train stations (the exception being designated smoker areas of ~20m² on open-air platforms), shops, bars and inside restaurants. Many places offer open-air seating (they call it Terrasse but it's the sidewalk); there, being outside smoking is not prohibited. There's an exception for small-ish bars which are clearly marked as being smokers' places and for adults only (>18yrs). So I'd say you've got a good chance of not getting smoke blown into your face.

Also, while you're right in that comparatively many people in Berlin are smokers (although that might be a commonality of cities as opposed to the countryside), they're still a minority of <30% [1], so more like 1/3 than 3/4 (it can feel like every second guy in the street though).

[1] https://www.abnr.de/tabakpraevention/daten-fuer-deutschland/...

Every large club in Berlin is full of people, staff included, smoking in violation of the law.

The rules are not enforced.

What? Smoking indoors is illegal in Germany, yet germans do it outright? This is a blow to the stereotype of the 100%-law-abiding-germans that I grew up with here in only-12%-law-abiding-south-america. I'm actually being serious. I never thought that germans would smoke indoors if it became illegal. I mean, here in Brazil it's illegal (I think it became illegal in the early 2000's) and nobody does it.

Berlin is a special, lawless place. It’s the capital of German halfassery. 50% of the packages I order from Amazon never arrive.

I’ve lived here since 2008 and it is unlike any other major world capital.

Note that if you're the sort of person to be bothered by smoke, one person lighting up in a room with 100 people will be noticed by the other 99 people. It only takes 1% non-law-abiders to make everyone think that Germans smoke in bars.

I'm from Germany and this is pretty unusual. There are very few pubs where smoking is kind-of tolerated and sometimes a drunk person will light a cigarette in a club, but it's really rare and absolutely a non-issue in my experience.

I live in Berlin and u must have not been out here coz many places, especially clubs, allow smoking indoors.

I didn't experience this in Berlin; to be fair, however, I didn't spend much time in Bars there.

In Berlin, the inside smoking laws are pretty much never enforced. Some bars have dedicated smoking rooms, but many don’t. As for clubs, you can mostly expect smoking indoors. A lot of people smoke, so you _will_ encounter smokey environments when out and about, especially during the winter

Hm, I'm suprised too, where I live it doesn't happen. Perhaps Berlin is different.

There are a lot of bars that don't allow smoking, but unfortunately almost all "good" (in my opinion) do.

There's some odd dynamic going on then. What happened here in Norway was that the indoors smoking ban was at first immensely unpopular (it didn't help that the health minister at the time, who pushed it, was a Christian Democrat who fit nicely into moral busybody stereotypes). But as soon as the ban was implemented, attitudes changed overnight. Even the smokers agreed that things were a lot more comfortable. And I've heard similar stories from other places with public smoking bans.

I bet that even if a place managed to hide it from the public health authorities (they DO regularly do unannounced inspections anywhere food is served or made, after all), it would just be a colossal competitive disadvantage in most places. How strange that Berlin is different!

>> a journey to the water in New York will take much much longer, involve more walking, and involve dirtier water

It's not hard, not far to reach.

People use new york because it's the best america has. When you have the whole world, there are better places.

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