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[Pnx]

Me, I, uhh, 'cook' meats. I.e. put some cheese on it occassionally. I did make a steak, bacon and cheese baguette the other day and that was damn nice but even my hungover stomach was almost like COULD NOT HANDLE.

Man, as a child I might've liked that sort of thing, minus the steak, but anything that gets past a certain level of greasiness really starts to make me nauseated these days. I'm not sure how any of you guys manage to eat this sort of stuff.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Meh, it all just about evens off with petrol prices/taxation.

Yeah, but America has massive urban sprawl, coupled with a near-complete lack of public transport in most places.  Even with lower prices, many of us spend 10-20% of our income on fuel just commuting to work and running basic errands.

I hate to break this to you SalmonGod, but Europe invented urban sprawl. American cities are far more planned.

[MonkeyHead]

Meh, it all just about evens off with petrol prices/taxation.

Yeah, but America has massive urban sprawl, coupled with a near-complete lack of public transport in most places.  Even with lower prices, many of us spend 10-20% of our income on fuel just commuting to work and running basic errands.

I hate to break this to you SalmonGod, but Europe invented urban sprawl. American cities are far more planned.

Is the lack of public transport over there a function of the distate for socialist ideas?

[Pnx]

Meh, it all just about evens off with petrol prices/taxation.

Yeah, but America has massive urban sprawl, coupled with a near-complete lack of public transport in most places.  Even with lower prices, many of us spend 10-20% of our income on fuel just commuting to work and running basic errands.

I hate to break this to you SalmonGod, but Europe invented urban sprawl. American cities are far more planned.

Typically still pretty badly planned though. The grid system is much neater than the European "build roads anywhere that works" system, but it's not very good for heavy traffic. Most major American cities also still have the really brilliant mixed storm drain/sewer system issues which lead to floods of shit being poured straight into the rivers whenever there's heavy rain (it also sometimes backs up onto the street).

Also I suspect by "urban sprawl" he meant sub-urban sprawl, everything tends to be very spread out around here, which makes public transport in a lot of places rather difficult. My nearest bus stop is several miles away.

[Dutchling]

Also I suspect by "urban sprawl" he meant sub-urban sprawl, everything tends to be very spread out around here, which makes public transport in a lot of places rather difficult. My nearest bus stop is several miles away.

I live 700m from my uni. One bus stop in front of the complex, one in front of the uni

[RedKing]

No, it's because no one wants to live "in" the city. Too crowded and expensive. So they move a little bit outside the city and commute. But then they want their stores and restaurants closer to them, so stuff springs up around the suburb. Then that gets to be too crowded, so they move a bit further out of the suburbs, ad nauseum.

It's why Wake County, NC has a population of over 1 million without having a residential building more than 14 stories tall (and very few of over 4-5 stories).

Only in a few places like New York or Chicago do you find cities that build up rather than out. When new cities were being settled, land was cheap and plentiful, so cities grew out rather than up. In Europe, most major cities have been inhabited for 1000+ years, and their footprint was often constrained by things like old city walls and fortifications. Sure, there's additional sprawl beyond them now, but you don't see suburbs dotting the countryside in many parts of Europe.

Compact city footprint = better viability of mass transit. Consider this:

Raleigh, NC -- population 416,468. City area is 370 km². It's about 20 miles across from east to west.
Population-wise, it's about the same size as Bristol and Brno, but about 50% larger in area than Brno, and over three times the size of Bristol.
In terms of area, it's on par with Leeds/Bradford, Glasgow and Dublin, but with less than 1/3 of the population of Leeds or Glasgow and about 40% of the population of Dublin.


Raleigh's a pretty average American city in terms of its "sprawliness". I live near the edge of the city and work just a couple of miles from downtown. My morning commute is 10 miles. Hell, my second girlfriend works in Raleigh and lives in another county. Her commute is 35 miles each way. My first girlfriend is considering taking a new job that would pay significantly more but mean an hour commute of about 44 miles, if traffic isn't bad. That's nearly 90 miles a day just getting to work. That's a little extreme, but you see what I'm saying. We drive a hell of a lot in the US because we kinda have to.

Just extrapolating from these examples, cities in the UK are basically three times denser than American cities (obviously, not taking into account outliers like London and Smithwyck-on-Farthing-Tweed, or New York City and Lizard Lick...yes, that is a real place.)

[Scelly9]

Heh. My dad does a 180 mile commute every single day.

[Korbac]

Me, I, uhh, 'cook' meats. I.e. put some cheese on it occassionally. I did make a steak, bacon and cheese baguette the other day and that was damn nice but even my hungover stomach was almost like COULD NOT HANDLE.

Man, as a child I might've liked that sort of thing, minus the steak, but anything that gets past a certain level of greasiness really starts to make me nauseated these days. I'm not sure how any of you guys manage to eat this sort of stuff.

I agree with you, actually. That was a one - off and even then it wasn't that 'greasy' (lean bacon, steak had almost no fat, mature cheese.) It was just so filling.

[Owlga]

When your kid comes up and asks in no unquestioning terms what the fuck is this while holding up a bag of chips. Don't eat it. For the love of god. Don't eat it.

Chicken and waffles chips. Who's fucking idea was this shit aauugauguag. Why did I do that.

I've lost control of my life.

The worst part is Janet thinks they're okay.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Sounds normal enough to me.

[Pnx]

<snip>

This, so much this. The only I thing I have to add is that there's also the urban decay factor at work. Since suburbanization meant that most people that had the money to do it were moving to the outskirts of the city, this left most of the central cities much poorer, which lead to drops in the values of businesses and incomes, which lead to increased crime rates and drops in property values, which lead to more crime and more drops in income... you seeing how this sort of thing works?

This is not to say that European cities don't experience urban decay issues. London from what I understand has experienced a similar syndrome in some areas, but American inner cities do tend to be a bit more like cesspits than European ones.

[Urist Imiknorris]

When your kid comes up and asks in no unquestioning terms what the fuck is this while holding up a bag of chips. Don't eat it. For the love of god. Don't eat it.

Chicken and waffles chips. Who's fucking idea was this shit aauugauguag. Why did I do that.

I've lost control of my life.

The worst part is Janet thinks they're okay.

Welcome to the twilight zone.

[Owlga]

Sounds normal enough to me.

They taste. Like crusty syrup. And the tears of an orphan. Oh my god why.

[RedKing]

When your kid comes up and asks in no unquestioning terms what the fuck is this while holding up a bag of chips. Don't eat it. For the love of god. Don't eat it.

Chicken and waffles chips. Who's fucking idea was this shit aauugauguag. Why did I do that.

I've lost control of my life.

The worst part is Janet thinks they're okay.

Seems legit. Chicken and waffles is a thing. A tasty thing. Not so sure about in chip form, though.

[MonkeyHead]

<snip>

This, so much this. The only I thing I have to add is that there's also the urban decay factor at work. Since suburbanization meant that most people that had the money to do it were moving to the outskirts of the city, this left most of the central cities much poorer, which lead to drops in the values of businesses and incomes, which lead to increased crime rates and drops in property values, which lead to more crime and more drops in income... you seeing how this sort of thing works?

This is not to say that European cities don't experience urban decay issues. London from what I understand has experienced a similar syndrome in some areas, but American inner cities do tend to be a bit more like cesspits than European ones.

Ah, the old "Hole in the Donut" effect. Many cities here in the UK have had some form of "Urban Renewal", where either private companies or Governemnt bodies (local or national) have hit on the idea that prime real estate in the city centre can be obtained for less than you might expect if it is in a shocking state. Old industrial sectors (often old heavy plants or docklands) are levelled and reborn as executive apartments, sports arenas, conference centres and cultural districts. Noteable examples include Cardiff Bay, large areas of London, and the waterfront in Liverpool. Inner city Manchester is a lot nicer than it used to be (as long as you dont go north of the canal into Salford), but thats more as a result of an IRA bomb enforcing a rebuild than anything else. The tower blocks come down, the welathy move back in, and the less well off move out to suburbia, which then ends up less attractive and the cycle repeats.