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Comment by delackner | Hacker News Reader

In general yes, but as a someone who that fits that story arc, I find the dichotomy of insanely overpriced tiny city vs desolate parking lot, well, lousy. I love the idea of what apple is building but there is still no walkable / bicycle friendly place to live in the bay area. In central Tokyo i can cycle to work in less than 15 minutes or walk in 40. Or take one of the many many buses or trains departing every 2-4 minutes. Does that quality of city planning exist anywhere in the US? I have not seen it.

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I found Cupertino to be pretty bike friendly when I lived there many years ago, and I'm not even the typical demographic for bike commuting--I was the kind of person for whom you see and exclaim "what the fuck is that guy doing on a bike!?" Fat, and needed to have a custom rear wheel made with 48 spokes because ordinary wheels could not take my weight.

I went long stretches where I only used my car when I wanted to go to a different city or wanted to carry more cargo than would fit in my panniers.

Unless things have changed a lot (it has been quite a while) I'd expect Cupertino to be fine for the kind of people who are actually in shape for biking.

Down here in one of the Southern California suburbs, I can do the same 15 min bike or 40 minute walk to my office. Our school districts are excellent as well. There's no bus or train, but the parking is reasonably ample and free. (It's a 6 minute drive.)

For that, though, we lack virtually any sort of night life, and have very few non-chain restaurants/stores/etc. It's a great place to raise a family, but horrible to attract the "20-something Ruby Rockstar" developer, despite the 4-year university down the road.

there is still no walkable / bicycle friendly place to live in the bay area

This is just false; San Francisco is plenty walkable and public transit generally works quite well, despite the grousing you may hear from the people whom it has spoiled.

Berkeley and Palo Alto are both exceedingly walkable/bikeable as well (though taking public transit from Palo Alto to anywhere else can be a bit painful). This shouldn’t be surprising at all, since both have huge populations of people who generally don’t drive (students).

Fair enough, but when i lived there, every single person i knew had a car and real estate in SF is so astronomically expensive that none of my friends, all of them highly paid, live IN the city. So living in SF but never getting in a car doesnt seem realistic unless you dont mind never visiting your friends. I suppose that makes SF liveable without a car

Just out of curiosity, when did you live there?

I live in SF without a car and I'd be hard pressed to name three friends who do have a car.

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