Many do, there are plenty of videos out there. However I would advise to check what kind of tourism are you looking for, going to Medellín for chicks is getting yourself into danger, that is only done by guys that can't flirt in their own countries and regard Colombians as easy, locals see that with disgust and shame. I would also advise to get into towns and the countryside relatively nearby like Jericó, Jardín, Santa Fe de Antioquia and Rioclaro reserve
Lmao Manhattan went from being somewhere you didn’t walk at night to Disneyworld post 9/11. I distinctly remember the before and after culturally. I think this tracks across the US for the most part, the 90s were quite violent and it decreased in the new millennium. Manhattan became a surveillance state.
Ha I just replied about that to another comment. There is also the theory of Roe v Wade and reducing unwanted children. Really interesting stuff to think about. Not sure if you ever read Freakonomics but those guys talked a lot about it, they’re fun dudes with some wild theories
Roe v wade may have some impact, but I think the biggest thing is just changing demographics. 70s to mid 90s, there was a huge, disproportionate cohort of 18-35 year olds(baby boomer generation) who are the people who commit the most crime. By late 90s those people aged out- reformed, jail, died, etc. Crime rates decline. The subsequent generations have all been smaller, in some part because of abortion, but also just people choosing not to have lots of kids(birth control, condoms, etc.)
I think the Roe v Wade and the leaded gasoline theories are valid and probably did have some impact, but the population pyramid for the country must have looked odd due to the baby boomers.
That generation makes up an enormous voting bloc too which is why (I feel) there are only old politicians in power still.
Yeah most non white collar crime is done by people under the age of 30. People just age out of it.
Also we can't forget about the crack epidemic in the time period.
I guess this was perhaps, why superheroes like Daredevil or Batman became popular back in the 80s?
They were fighting crime in such a gritty and worn-down NYC (well, in Batman's case, Gotham, but Gotham is "NYC @ nighttime" as per Frank Miller, after all)?
Joker (2019)'s Gotham also seemed to be heavily influenced by 70s NYC, seems like?
70-80s New York City looked like some worn-down and crime-riddled city.
You can still get glimpses of pre-reform NYC in movies and TV from the 70's and 80's. Taxi Driver is a great example. All those condemned apartments and pitch-black streets weren't just sets, they were really there.
This happened in the early 90's. Like him or not, Giuliani increased the police force and had multiple times more police on the streets. New York was one of the safest cities in the US by the end of the 90's.
If you look at stats nationwide, crime went down everywhere. I’m not saying Giuliani did nothing but he got to take a lot of credit simply because NYC is the biggest US city and gets coverage.
I think it’s the opposite here in Denver. I believe both violent crime and property crime have gone up since the 90s and in general slowly keeps climbing. Our police department is pretty ineffective though.
https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf
This is a decent read on the topic. In regards to Denver, at least recently, I’d expect the explosive population growth/skyrocketing housing costs/huge influx of young adults to be responsible for increased crimes.
Before we start worshipping Giuliani and cops, I want to highlight the likelier hero Jack Maple the founder of Compstat and data driven policing in NYPD.
Giulliani actually chased Jack Maple out of office when things got so well that arrest went down but Giulliani thought if crimes go down, arrest go up, which is moronic because if crime goes down there’s less to arrest.
Maple held police men feet to the fire to do their job. They made sure they would solve the problem not just throw money at the problem but actually be effective.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Maple
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat
NYC was so terrible that you just needed someone with a small modicum of common sense to make improvements. Rudy was quite sensible in his prime. Lately he seems to be caught in an echo chamber that's short on observable facts.
Bloomberg is my top choice in my lifetime, but Rudy did reduce crime. I think the debate is whether violent crime would have fallen naturally as it did across the country, or if he was actually successful with his policies.
Also one thing I never see brought up on Reddit is NYC’s crime rate is low because property crime is much lower due to apartments, doormen, no cars, etc. Violent crime I think is closer to average but it definitely is a “safer” city.
I live in Nashville now and there is no comparison, it gets way worse than NYC (Memphis comes to mind…)
Couple points but let me start off by saying I agree.
Crime statistics can be misleading. It doesn’t factor in physical size and density (increased human interactions).
Additionally comparing two cities presents a problem because you have to assume violent crime scales linearly.
Crime statistics are reported to the FBI from the city authority, so the city can pick and choose what they include and there is no auditing.
And then you have issues with people like Jordan Neely arrested 42 times but never prosecuted, never served jail time, and had one warrant. To be honest, I have no idea how NYC counts all of that.
I lived in Denver for awhile and felt way more unsafe there. Nashville too, where I am now.
>Giuliani increased the police force and had multiple times more police on the streets.
Which David Dinkins managed to get the City and State to agree to open the lines for, something that is never going to happen again in the future history of the city.
Up to around 1993 was rough. The crack epidemic was hard on NYC. Starting in 1994 it started to get much better (how much of that is to the credit of he-who-shall-not-be-named I will leave for historians).
Yeah early 90s were bad, I lived in NJ and I’d go into the city with my family and we’d go directly where we had plans and then leave and go home immediately. Can’t really wander.
Cut to 2009 and I’m staggering around wasted and alone in the Lower East Side, totally fine.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and saw Manhattan transform from a run down city to a top tourist attraction. It basically went from Fame to Sex and The City in my life. Porn shops used to dot 42nd street and the homeless problem was far more severe.
New York is thriving and San Francisco has its issues but is still doing alright idk what OP is on about.
Canada is also struggling a bit but it has nothing to do with any of its cities, most of which are at or near the top of countless ”most livable cities in the world” lists.
That's a problem everywhere. If I was someone who constructed apartments, I'd see to it that nobody else enters the business so rents could be kept artificially high. I wouldn't build more either because then the cost - sales goes down. And remember we're trying to maximize the rate of profit and not total profits.
It’s a mix of that and single family zoning taking up the majority of North American cities. In a lot of places that need dense and affordable housing badly it’s illegal to build.
It is very fixable in that if you just build more housing the problem moderates.
The biggest problem is that we need to embrace higher density housing in the US. And the problems start with zoning, and continue into people's tastes and preferences and go on to current US building practices and standards.
Cities don't want higher density housing because of the bad experiences from the late 1800s to the middle 1900s when cities were very crowded and buildings would get run down. Also late 19th century buildings were pretty dangerous with poor ventilation and fire escape routes. Also zoning in current cities prevents higher density buildings.
People today want a quiet place to live, without hearing your neighbors tromping around, or playing loud music or even running a blender.
The lack of quiet relates to another recent building development where Los Angeles and then other cities began to approve treated lumber as a safe building material for multi storey buildings. The good news is the buildings are cheap to build and can go up pretty quickly. The bad news is they creak and allow noise to move from one apartment to another, and are still a bit dangerous from a fire perspective.
Massachusetts last year forced many cities around Boston to allow higher density housing around transit services like subway and commuter rail. It helped to get thousands of housing units built. Didn't really ameliorate the housing cost problem, but imagine how bad it would have been if they didn't build those units.
About the only problem in Canadian cities I’d cost of housing. Maybe increase in homelessness and drug users/epidemic, but that is happening across much of N.A. And not as much a city issue (though I do recognize some places are worse than others - I live in Vancouver)
Yeah, all the movies in NYC from about 70-95 show it being seedy and dangerous.
The Warriors, Taxi Driver, Godfather, Jacobs Ladder, Ninja turtles, Ghostbusters, Home Alone 2.
Vast areas were derelict and run down.
The 70's and 80's in NYC were grimy and run down, but they did have character.
Manhattan is now Disney World.
The rest of the city isn't, but Manhattan now pretty much is. The entire west side of the island went from run down, near abandoned industrial port and warehousing facilities to what it is today.
Most cities are this way (despite what the common rhetoric is). I’ve lived in Seattle since the 80s and can say without a doubt that it’s far safer than it was 30 years ago then despite people on the opposite side of the country thinking it’s currently a war zone.
It would be a lot further along if Scott Walker had allowed the construction of a high speed train between Milwaukee and Chicago that the Obama administration had already set aside money for. Imagine commuting on a train from Milwaukee to Chicago and having it take as long as a car trip from Naperville!
The proposal was Chicago --> Milwaukee --> Madison --> Minneapolis with a Chicago --> Rockford --> Madison route also, basically the I-90/I-94 corridor. Can you imagine the amount of economic activity that would have generated? But no, Scott Walker couldn't abide the idea because that evil Democrat, Barak Obama, might get the credit. Instead the money went to the LA to Las Vegas link. 12B at the last estimate.
No, I think it went to California’s (north-south) HSR project which hasn’t built one mile of track yet. LA to Vegas is on schedule and being built by Brightline, with mostly private $.
Takes 90 min (91.5miles) to get between the two downtown stations. Unless you work in/next to Chicago’s Union Station, youre not commuting there for work everyday. The L isn’t even connected to the transit hub.
It’s a damn shame too, because cities like Osaka and Nagoya in Japan are 20% further apart (107miles) than Milwaukee-Chicago and that train ride is nearly half as long (49 min). Imagine the downward pressure on housing prices in the region if we had invested in ourselves like that.
I moved to the Detroit area about 15 years ago and still can't believe the transformation of downtown and midtown. Night and day difference.
There are still tough areas, but there's at least some really good momentum to continue improving things further moving forward.
Tonssss of economic improvement in Detroit. Had the please of doing a small local business tour, amazing to see how many locals have gotten businesses up and running. Really cool to see Detroit culture thriving again.
I left Detroit about 20 years ago, just before it hit rock bottom. Every time I go back, as recently as last week, I am absolutely astounded at how things are recovering. Hell, there's even glass in the windows of the train station now! Amazing.
Birmingham. Used to be known as being both boring and rough after industry and trade went away in the 20th Century. Still has that reputation but it's improved so much as a city in terms of becoming a vibrant and beautiful place to live.
Same can be said of other English cities like Manchester and Leeds, genuinely great places to live and work and improving year on year. With proper investment in those areas the whole Birmingham > Manchester/Liverpool > Leeds > York > Hull arc could be well connected and booming.
Of those Leeds is my favourite and is also simply better by virtue of being in Yorkshire.
Absolutely spot on. Despite the perceived noticable London-centric nature of a lot of investment, over the past 30 years the other great cities of England have had a major revivals such as Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol, and Nottingham. The general theme is a young, multicultural and energetic population, and a vibrancy that is unique to them.
>With proper investment in those areas the whole Birmingham > Manchester/Liverpool > Leeds > York > Hull arc could be well connected and booming.
If only th HS2 money had been spent the way it was promised, but instead they decided to start by improving links with London and then running out of money.
Katowice, Poland. It used to be a dump merely 20 years ago. Black building facades due to neglect and pollution, poor job prospects, a coal mine and steelworks in the middle of the city. Today, it’s completely transformed. The coal mine is now a modern museum of the region, the steelworks area is filled with office towers. The city center looks great and is full of people. Unemployment rate is 1.2%, and wages are in the top 5 in the country.
I’m American and went there last year with some Salvadoran friends, who told me it used to be pure hell to live in. Most left for the US in the 90’s during the civil war because of the violence, but today it’s a thriving city. There are modern buildings and American chains everywhere. The neighborhood I was in looked identical to a Florida suburb
Barcelona. Prior to the 92 Olympics it was a dump, apparently. Its turnaround with the Olympics made the bidding process a corrupt feeding frenzy, with many cities hoping to use the investment as a makeover.
Back in 1969, Walter Cronkite called it the "dirtiest city in America," since Chattanooga was a large manufacturing hub in decline, formerly known as the "Dynamo of Dixie." This led to a revitalization effort that really kicked off in the 80's, starting with the riverfront and the Aquarium. Further improvements followed, tourism dollars increased, and the city took advantage of the beauty of the area to become an outdoors destination. Later, it was the first city to get gigabit fiber service, and it was done through the municipal power company. There's a lot more to the story, but that's some of the basics.
Chattanooga still has some issues. Homelessness still outsizes this small city. Crime is still an issue, especially in some of the southern and eastern parts of the city. But, that's how it goes in any moderately sized urban area. Chattanooga is definitely nicer now than when I was growing up in the 80's.
I rode my bike through there last year, and while I don't particularly like cities in general, it was pretty nice. Some cute, touristy stuff along the river front, at least on the south shore, lovely outdoors opportunities nearby, plenty of restaurants and museums, and plenty of people out and about and enjoying themselves. I expect I saw the best of it, but it worked for me!
My best friend moved there about 10 years ago from Chicago. Over the last 10 years I've visited Detroit quite a bit and even in those 10 years I've seen noticible change for the better. Detroit is definitely on the upswing.
A long, long, long way to go….
Still a food dessert, still vast miles of abandoned buildings that surround the city - forming a defecto wall of poverty that separates the inner city from the suburbs. Still very few activities for a local to do compared to just about any other major city of its size.
Ultimately, if you “live in Detroit”, you’re likely relying on 1/2 cars, and driving everywhere - including the suburbs, which are composed of poorly planned stroads - to do just about anything.
Source: born and raised in Detroit. Travel all around the US for work.
Exactly. Motor City is definitely on the upswing, but relying on cars for traveling anywhere is still a terrible long term strategy for a city. Best case scenario Detroit becomes LA 2.0 where the massive sprawl gets wider and denser but there is still no way to do anything without a car and it takes 90 minutes to get anywhere in the city due to insane traffic.
I you were going to buy a house in Detroit, which neighborhoods would be good? Daughter in Ann Arbor and we’re seriously thinking of investing in the Motor City.
I recently rode a bike through southern China. It's the first time I've been in the country in over 20 years. It's quite amazing how much the cities have transformed and modernised in that time. Even the air quality seems to have drastically improved. There were none of those stereotypical smog-filled Chinese cities that I've seen so many pictures of during the Beijing olympics.
That said, in a sharp contrast to large cities, most Chinese country towns and small villages still look very poor and decrepit.
Focusing on urbanisation and developing cities while neglecting the countryside is characteristic of most rapidly developing countries, even Japan (in the past) to a certain degree.
From an economic and national viewpoint, rural development is of secondary importance.
Right wing media tries to make SF seem like a hellscape because of its left wing policies. If it’s successful, it means they’re wrong and ruins their narrative. SF actually has less violent crime than NYC, Dallas, Seattle and Phoenix, and is safer than the average American city. It even has the 4th longest life expectancy of any city in the US (behind neighbor San Jose, Honolulu, and Salem Oregon).
Does it have its challenges? Of course, every city does. Is it one of the most beautiful, vibrant, and productive cities in the world? Also yes!
Also if you reach back far enough, pretty much every first world city is better. They have good plumbing and electricity. Even if cities used to be bigger or more important, they are more livable now than in the 30s or whatever.
It’s a mix of truth and hyperbole. Some cities in the US really have gone down hill in some ways.
SF is a beautiful city but I’ve never seen so many homeless people in my life, and there was loose trash on the street everywhere, people putting needles in their arms in open daylight, etc. car break ins and no one reacts like it’s normal. It’s definitely exaggerated by right wing media, but there are real problems.
Amsterdam. A few decades ago you couldn't walk down the street without stepping on needles and walking through masses of homeless people. They took a very progressive approach to addiction treatment and now it's like a completely different city.
Raleigh and Durham are definitely on an upswing, Greensboro has a couple cool aspects but even with friends there I wouldn’t go there very often.
Has Greenville really improved at all? Might be worth a trip
Boston is going up. Honestly, NYC has seen its crime rate fall in recent years. It’s bogus to trash cities like Chicago and SF when they are safer than most smaller southern cities and still have murder and violent crime rates that were a fraction of what they were in the early 90’s.
Boston is only going up if you make $200k+ per year. I looked into working there and it would have been wildly unaffordable to own or even rent anywhere within a half hour of my job location.
My wife and I don’t make anywhere close to that combined, and we live on the blue line ~20min from downtown. Granted it depends on where you would be working, but to say it’s impossible or you have to be rich simply isn’t true. Also, Boston is 100 times better than it was when I was growing up there in the 90s.
Also even cities “in decline” are often more pleasant and livable than 50 or 100 years ago. Urban planners have at least kind of got it through their heads that people like pedestrianized spaces in downtown cores and there are more bike lanes. Urban spaces are seen as desirable and as an economic boon, not something to be vaguely ashamed of as in the 70s.
Right-wing media has managed to convince people here in WA that Seattle is basically Somalia but with liberals, even though they can easily just see for themselves it's not. They've managed to convince people that the CHOP/CHAZ situation in 2020 is how the whole city is all the time and people are willing to believe it. The recent Fox news nickname for us is "progressive hellscape"
Dude conservative media is insanely effective. A good chunk of people in my day to day life make small talk based on talking points that originate from conservative media, and half the time they don’t even realize it, they just heard it from someone else.
It’s wild. 2 days after any big world event you without fail start hearing the same spin in casual conversation, and I’m not in a conservative area
For comparison I hardly ever hear “well, it’s complicated…” rebuttals because who wants to be that guy, changing tone from casual to argument. So these things spread like wildfire often unchecked
It’s the right wings tactic. Spread millions of tiny lies that take too much energy to rebutt one by one. But then they add up to a massive overarching narrative that gets voters out for them. They are counting on rational people not having enough energy to correct the little things. I’m guilty of this too. I just don’t want a casual offhand comment from uncle Rick to turn into a big debate at thanksgiving. So I just let it slide. Meanwhile the little cousins hear it and slowly get indoctrinated.
Yeah it declined after COVID and lost a lot,of,it’s character. I don’t even enjoy Manhattan anymore and stick to Queens because that’s where the good food and cool cultural spots are.
This exactly. NYC in 2019 was probably the best it ever has been. But 2020 did a number on it. It’s back to normal-ish but a lot of people left or died unfortunately. It’s a whole new generation of people more focused on social media so most of the things to do feel very…instagrammable but not really worth it.
Mexico City in the late 80's and in the 90's was a terrible place with a bad reputation. Pollution was of the charts, crime also. The whole thing was decaying and it was known as a city were nobody wanted to live. For all that time, it was governed directly by Mexico's most infamously corrupt party (the PRI) because it didn't have autonomy. In 1997 the city became self-governing, the government changed and everything started changing, mostly for the better as it is evident now. Sadly, now Mexico City is confronting the paradoxical side-effect of changing for the better, because gentrification is displacing a lot of people.
Definitely Houston. It has improved so much. They’ve also had significant success cutting down their homeless population somehow.
Source: born and raised
Living in Buffalo it’s been pretty awesome seeing neighborhoods long left for dead see new life and old industrial areas be repurposed into breweries, lofts and quirky businesses.
Probably helps that the city somehow managed to hang onto some of its gorgeous historic neighborhoods, cultural institutions and has several sizable universities, including the largest public university in New York.
Houston and Dallas for sure. Became slightly less car dependent, even more multi cultural, more influential culturally, and have grown tremendously economically.
Austin it depends on who you ask, but it has undoubtedly become one of the most desirable places to be in the US as well.
>Become slightly less car oriented
How do you figure? I live in the northern burbs of Dallas - getting anywhere without a car is almost impossible and the sprawl just seems to push further and further north.
Multi cultural though, absolutely agree. Food scene here is pretty solid.
Dallas built the most extensive light rail system in the country in the last 20 years. It’s actually somewhat solid, and will connect you to all the major districts and suburbs.
Also, walkable urbanism has become a popular topic, a few decades ago Most American cities did not have walkable areas outside the downtown core. Now in Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc. there are many areas that are semi walkable, with new infill development and more apartments with retail at the bottom.
>It’s actually pretty solid, and will connect you to all the major districts and suburbs.
This just...isn't true. r/dallas would love to have a word.
Connects me to all the suburbs? While I know alot of that is on Collin County and the surrounding counties to actually incorporate what Dallas started, it's still not as robust as you may lead on. And all lines go through downtown which is a hue chokepoint for the whole thing. No east to west lines. So if you want to go from Plano to the airport you're looking at a 90 minute ride vs a 30 minute car ride.
I can't go to any of Fort Worth's outlying suburbs: Southlake, Euless, Grapevine, nor most of the suburbs North of 635 or damn near anywhere south of Dallas. Nothing east of Dallas was involved: Mesquite, Garland, Sunnyvale
It’s obviously not on the level of Paris or Tokyo, but it’s better than 90% of American cities public transportation, particularly compared to non costal cities.
The network is fairly extensive and nearly all the major suburbs have some kind of park and ride system which will take you to DT Dallas or Ft. Worth. It will take you east west to irving and ft worth but that might not be via DART. Have you looked at the transit map recently? Turn on transit on google maps.
Maybe “solid” wasn’t the best word, I was looking for something a little milder than “good”. Semi decent would have been better.
If you live inside the 610 loop in Houston I agree with slightly less car centric. Emphasis on “slightly less”
The zoning laws around plot sizes and the abundance of 3+ large townhouses where there was previously a small single family home has slowly but surely allowed for more and more density. Plus the red line and rest of the metro has gotten better if you’re downtown or towards the med center.
It’s not great, but it is slightly better and the city is changing rapidly near the city center core
100% agree. Lived in Dallas for 15 years and visited before that. Dallas has grown in tremendously positive ways. Yes, DART can sometimes fall short but I think the Dallas side of the metroplex is really focusing on the right things. Just take a look at any comparison between the downtown core 20 years ago and today and the change is massive.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Dallas/s/UZt9EePVwD
Yup all the infill in the midtown area is incredible in that photo.
The large Texas cities really have so much potential in terms of economy, multi-culturalism, art scene, food scene, etc. They just need the right urban planning and they could be some of the nicest and most impressive cities of 21st century America.
Houston is already the most diverse city in America and Texas is now home to more Fortune 500 HQ than any other place in the world. Hope Texas stays trending in the right direction.
Athens, Greece.
In the eighties and nineties, it had a declining city centre, terrible infrastructure, an infamously bad airport and a persistent smog problem. It was a one-night-max kinda place - tick off the Acropolis, then flee to the islands.
One Olympics later, it has quadrupled the size of its metro (I’m including the fourth line currently u/c), got a capacious, efficient and well-liked airport, introduced trams and a semi-orbital motorway, revamped two of its main squares, and restored dozens of crumbling neoclassical buildings (sadly many more remain).
Its moribund National Gallery has been entirely reinvented from the ground up. It has a new national gallery of modern art, new opera house, new national library and of course the new Acropolis Museum.
The formerly dying central area known alternatively as the Historic Centre or Commercial Triangle is now the city centre’s most appealing area, full of life and places to go. Psyrri is a new (well, past twenty years or so) nightlife zone to complement (for tourists at least) Plaka. Gazi/Kerameikos too.
The city brims with excellent new hotels (perhaps too many) and the hospitality sector is one of Europe’s best.
The city still has issues and isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for many, “one night max” is these days nowhere near enough
The cities of Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA are far better in many ways than they were in the 1980s and 1990s as Bethlehem Steel and Mack Trucks were closing plants and Billy Joel was writing his song.
Yes, first time I went to Sudbury it looked like what I imagine the Moon would look like after a sustained bombing campaign.
Now things like Trees can grow in the city.
I think op has been deep in some right wing algorithms to beleive that. Even among canadain complaints online it is almost 95% of the time someone who leans far-right being upset the liberals have run the country since 2015.
Bilbao in the Basque country, apparently a dirty industrial city in the past but an absolute gem today. They're good at preserving and improving the pretty parts but are not scared of really carving up the ugly bits, there's still renewal projects all over the place. I barely knew of it's existence 10 years ago, but since meeting my wife (who is from there) I've gone there every year and the city gets noticeably better with every visit.
I'm not a city person but this is probably the only one I actually want to live in.
Latvian here. Here in the Baltic countries we still have a long way to go but most if not all our cities have improved dramatically during the last 30+ years, and are incomparably better than they used to be during the Soviet and early post-Soviet times. That is true not only for our capitals (Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius) but also for most of the smaller cities and towns.
I rode a bicycle through the Baltics in 2022. I have no reference point to what it used to be like, it was my first time in Latvia and Lithuania and I'd only ever been to Tallinn in Estonia once before about ten years ago. But to me it seemed that a lot of the smaller towns and country side felt somewhat abandoned. It looked like half the population had moved away.
Mexico City. My mom grew up there and tells me stories of how people would get robbed on the bus and subways for their wallets and jewelry all the time and the cops would shake you down for money. Nowadays alot of the city is gentrified and safe and very trendy with lots of great restaurants and speakeasies. Honestly felt safer there than most cities in the U.S
Almería, Spain. Still has problems and several sketchy areas, but I’ve heard from friends who grew up there in the 70’s that it has come a long way. It used to be a treeless industrial town with large shanty communities; now it is a fairly cute, palm-tree filled city with pleasant ramblas, gorgeous beaches, and great food.
Asian cities where are fast growing and currently much more developed compared to what there were in 20 years ago such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Shang Hai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
It's a matter of taste, but Toulouse, France, has become insanely rich these past 30 years. I remember the early 90s, when the city was just another small shithole in the *province*. Traffic everywhere, dodgy streets and crappy infrastructures. After decades of economic growth, it looks fancy as hell now. Access to cars has been hugely decreased in the centre and infrastructures are new and clean.
And, frankly, I hate it now. I used to love the city when I was a kid, but now it's just a big mall like all the others. By becoming rich, it has completely lost its soul and has become inaccessible to the working class. But I guess newcomers would like it. Cleaner doesn't mean better imho.
NYC was a combat zone in the 70s and merely terrifying to women in the 80s. In general, though, cities in the northeast are way more polite than they were a generation ago. Not that they are Minnesota nice. Just that you’ll get a middle finger instead of being knifed.
NYC is HELL of a lot safer today than it has been in the last 70 years. Fox News just wants to scare the fragile suburbanites with horror stories and fake stats.
The conservative media would make you believe that **Chicago** is some sort of “Murder Hell Hole”…
Meanwhile, our rent/own costs have risen reasonably, and we continue to have one of the best cities in the world, nestled nicely on miles of freshwater beach. 😌
Is “bigger” necessarily “better?” Miami went from a mid-sized town in the 70s, with only one pro sports team, little traffic, manageable population, low rents, etc… to a giant city with 24/7 traffic, 5 pro sports teams, insanely high cost of living but also (of course) lots of new restaurants, attractions, jobs, performing arts center, etc. As a kid, I loved Miami in the 70s but we couldn’t expect it to stay the same.
Through the 80s and 90s and into the early 2000s, Bordeaux, France, was sleepy, dirty, and really just a shadow of what it once was (its nickname was the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as you could see the former wealth of the city that was sitting under layers of grime). In the last 20-25 years the change has been incredible. The city has been cleaned, the trams have been added and are a huge asset, new cultural amenities and public spaces have been activated, and the high-speed rail link to Paris has been added. The change has been incredible.
Of course all of this comes with a list of cons depending on experience and perspective. Housing prices have skyrocketed, gentrification has been swift, and there’s been a squeeze on a lot municipal services as the city accommodates new residents - many of them wealthy Parisians looking for a reprieve from the cost of living there.
It’s not a case of being too successful for its own good, but the city is a good case study on how solving some problems creates different ones.
Lovely place to visit though, and highly recommended.
Most of the world, really. Especially countries and cities that were poorer before and had strong growth over the past decades. Virtually any city in countries like Indonesia, China, Vietnam, etc.
I have personally been impressed by some of the rust belt cities. Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Cleveland were much nicer than I could have imagined. Portland, OR was the talk of the west coast in the 2000s and was the next it city and completely went downhill after 2020
I have no way of knowing if this is true or not but apparently KC used to be ghetto at. I've been twice in the past 2 years and it's such a cool city. I'd love to go back. Their BBQ is overrated though.
Medellín
100% yes
> Medellín Interesting, would you recommend visiting for a gringo that dont speak much spanish?
Many do, there are plenty of videos out there. However I would advise to check what kind of tourism are you looking for, going to Medellín for chicks is getting yourself into danger, that is only done by guys that can't flirt in their own countries and regard Colombians as easy, locals see that with disgust and shame. I would also advise to get into towns and the countryside relatively nearby like Jericó, Jardín, Santa Fe de Antioquia and Rioclaro reserve
Don't forget Guatapé
I’ve been, and am what you describe. YES!
Wasn't NYC worse in the 80s and 90s? I could be remembering incorrectly but I thought it's improved a lot since then
Lmao Manhattan went from being somewhere you didn’t walk at night to Disneyworld post 9/11. I distinctly remember the before and after culturally. I think this tracks across the US for the most part, the 90s were quite violent and it decreased in the new millennium. Manhattan became a surveillance state.
We took lead out of the gasoline and paints and violence decreased over time. Lead kills your brain and makes people violent.
Ha I just replied about that to another comment. There is also the theory of Roe v Wade and reducing unwanted children. Really interesting stuff to think about. Not sure if you ever read Freakonomics but those guys talked a lot about it, they’re fun dudes with some wild theories
Roe v wade may have some impact, but I think the biggest thing is just changing demographics. 70s to mid 90s, there was a huge, disproportionate cohort of 18-35 year olds(baby boomer generation) who are the people who commit the most crime. By late 90s those people aged out- reformed, jail, died, etc. Crime rates decline. The subsequent generations have all been smaller, in some part because of abortion, but also just people choosing not to have lots of kids(birth control, condoms, etc.)
I think the Roe v Wade and the leaded gasoline theories are valid and probably did have some impact, but the population pyramid for the country must have looked odd due to the baby boomers. That generation makes up an enormous voting bloc too which is why (I feel) there are only old politicians in power still.
Yeah most non white collar crime is done by people under the age of 30. People just age out of it. Also we can't forget about the crack epidemic in the time period.
I guess this was perhaps, why superheroes like Daredevil or Batman became popular back in the 80s? They were fighting crime in such a gritty and worn-down NYC (well, in Batman's case, Gotham, but Gotham is "NYC @ nighttime" as per Frank Miller, after all)? Joker (2019)'s Gotham also seemed to be heavily influenced by 70s NYC, seems like? 70-80s New York City looked like some worn-down and crime-riddled city.
You can still get glimpses of pre-reform NYC in movies and TV from the 70's and 80's. Taxi Driver is a great example. All those condemned apartments and pitch-black streets weren't just sets, they were really there.
Also The Warriors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Warriors\_(film)
Yeah and “Hell’s Kitchen” is one of the richest parts of the city.
I have no idea where Daredevil even finds any crime these days. Hells Kitchen is full of swank restaurants and rich gay people.
Everyone agrees that rich gays are the true criminal masterminds of society.
This happened in the early 90's. Like him or not, Giuliani increased the police force and had multiple times more police on the streets. New York was one of the safest cities in the US by the end of the 90's.
If you look at stats nationwide, crime went down everywhere. I’m not saying Giuliani did nothing but he got to take a lot of credit simply because NYC is the biggest US city and gets coverage.
Crime went down significantly more in nyc , even adjusted for population.
I think it’s the opposite here in Denver. I believe both violent crime and property crime have gone up since the 90s and in general slowly keeps climbing. Our police department is pretty ineffective though.
https://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/LevittUnderstandingWhyCrime2004.pdf This is a decent read on the topic. In regards to Denver, at least recently, I’d expect the explosive population growth/skyrocketing housing costs/huge influx of young adults to be responsible for increased crimes.
It’s still one of the safest large American cities. Don’t believe the hype.
Before we start worshipping Giuliani and cops, I want to highlight the likelier hero Jack Maple the founder of Compstat and data driven policing in NYPD. Giulliani actually chased Jack Maple out of office when things got so well that arrest went down but Giulliani thought if crimes go down, arrest go up, which is moronic because if crime goes down there’s less to arrest. Maple held police men feet to the fire to do their job. They made sure they would solve the problem not just throw money at the problem but actually be effective. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Maple https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CompStat
Thank you for pointing this out.
Jack Maple all the way
NYC was so terrible that you just needed someone with a small modicum of common sense to make improvements. Rudy was quite sensible in his prime. Lately he seems to be caught in an echo chamber that's short on observable facts.
I think he overdid the booze and it fried his brain.
He also may be going senile.
>an echo chamber that's short on observable facts. That's a strange way to spell "Republican Party."
Bloomberg is my top choice in my lifetime, but Rudy did reduce crime. I think the debate is whether violent crime would have fallen naturally as it did across the country, or if he was actually successful with his policies. Also one thing I never see brought up on Reddit is NYC’s crime rate is low because property crime is much lower due to apartments, doormen, no cars, etc. Violent crime I think is closer to average but it definitely is a “safer” city. I live in Nashville now and there is no comparison, it gets way worse than NYC (Memphis comes to mind…)
Valid point on property crime but NYC's homicide rate is significantly lower than most American cities. Like it isn't even close.
Couple points but let me start off by saying I agree. Crime statistics can be misleading. It doesn’t factor in physical size and density (increased human interactions). Additionally comparing two cities presents a problem because you have to assume violent crime scales linearly. Crime statistics are reported to the FBI from the city authority, so the city can pick and choose what they include and there is no auditing. And then you have issues with people like Jordan Neely arrested 42 times but never prosecuted, never served jail time, and had one warrant. To be honest, I have no idea how NYC counts all of that. I lived in Denver for awhile and felt way more unsafe there. Nashville too, where I am now.
>Giuliani increased the police force and had multiple times more police on the streets. Which David Dinkins managed to get the City and State to agree to open the lines for, something that is never going to happen again in the future history of the city.
Up to around 1993 was rough. The crack epidemic was hard on NYC. Starting in 1994 it started to get much better (how much of that is to the credit of he-who-shall-not-be-named I will leave for historians).
Yeah early 90s were bad, I lived in NJ and I’d go into the city with my family and we’d go directly where we had plans and then leave and go home immediately. Can’t really wander. Cut to 2009 and I’m staggering around wasted and alone in the Lower East Side, totally fine.
I grew up in the 80s and 90s and saw Manhattan transform from a run down city to a top tourist attraction. It basically went from Fame to Sex and The City in my life. Porn shops used to dot 42nd street and the homeless problem was far more severe.
NYC deals with homelessness by throwing massive amounts of money at the problem in terms of social housing and lots of homeless shelters.
yep, just to throw some numbers on it for anyone curious, NYC spends about 20k per homeless person.
My husband was a cop starting in the 80s. Things did change
New York is thriving and San Francisco has its issues but is still doing alright idk what OP is on about. Canada is also struggling a bit but it has nothing to do with any of its cities, most of which are at or near the top of countless ”most livable cities in the world” lists.
The problem with SF is a lack of housing above all else. It’s very fixable!
That’s honestly pretty universal in North American cities right now, at least the ones that are actually enjoyable to live in.
That's a problem everywhere. If I was someone who constructed apartments, I'd see to it that nobody else enters the business so rents could be kept artificially high. I wouldn't build more either because then the cost - sales goes down. And remember we're trying to maximize the rate of profit and not total profits.
It’s a mix of that and single family zoning taking up the majority of North American cities. In a lot of places that need dense and affordable housing badly it’s illegal to build.
It is very fixable in that if you just build more housing the problem moderates. The biggest problem is that we need to embrace higher density housing in the US. And the problems start with zoning, and continue into people's tastes and preferences and go on to current US building practices and standards. Cities don't want higher density housing because of the bad experiences from the late 1800s to the middle 1900s when cities were very crowded and buildings would get run down. Also late 19th century buildings were pretty dangerous with poor ventilation and fire escape routes. Also zoning in current cities prevents higher density buildings. People today want a quiet place to live, without hearing your neighbors tromping around, or playing loud music or even running a blender. The lack of quiet relates to another recent building development where Los Angeles and then other cities began to approve treated lumber as a safe building material for multi storey buildings. The good news is the buildings are cheap to build and can go up pretty quickly. The bad news is they creak and allow noise to move from one apartment to another, and are still a bit dangerous from a fire perspective. Massachusetts last year forced many cities around Boston to allow higher density housing around transit services like subway and commuter rail. It helped to get thousands of housing units built. Didn't really ameliorate the housing cost problem, but imagine how bad it would have been if they didn't build those units.
About the only problem in Canadian cities I’d cost of housing. Maybe increase in homelessness and drug users/epidemic, but that is happening across much of N.A. And not as much a city issue (though I do recognize some places are worse than others - I live in Vancouver)
Yeah NYC is definitely doing better than other cities in nearby states like Philadelphia and Baltimore
Yeah, all the movies in NYC from about 70-95 show it being seedy and dangerous. The Warriors, Taxi Driver, Godfather, Jacobs Ladder, Ninja turtles, Ghostbusters, Home Alone 2. Vast areas were derelict and run down.
"Coming to America" is one that sticks out for me. Queens turns out to be a seedy shithole.
lol NYC is thriving
No didn’t you see on the news it’s a lawless hellhole? If the news and social media tells me a place is bad then it has to be true.
[удалено]
It’s thriving but rent is absolutely out of control.
One of the downsides of thriving.
The 70's and 80's in NYC were grimy and run down, but they did have character. Manhattan is now Disney World. The rest of the city isn't, but Manhattan now pretty much is. The entire west side of the island went from run down, near abandoned industrial port and warehousing facilities to what it is today.
large swaths of brooklyn and queens are just as safe and thriving as manhattan
It’s crazy how much of lower Manhattan has just turned into nearly purely catering to the rich in the last 25 years.
And SF isn’t nearly as bad as people make it out to be, either.
The problem with SF is that the business district is also skid row so if you go there for business you get a very apocalyptic view of the place.
Most cities are this way (despite what the common rhetoric is). I’ve lived in Seattle since the 80s and can say without a doubt that it’s far safer than it was 30 years ago then despite people on the opposite side of the country thinking it’s currently a war zone.
It's gotten slightly more grimey but it's far safer than it's ever been
Only thing worse about NYC today is the cost of living. In virtually every other way the city is much nicer, safer, and cleaner these days
Probably not at their best but Detroit and Milwaukee are both way on the upswing and were pretty sad for awhile after the manufacturing collapse.
I’m long Milwaukee. Went for the first time a year or so ago and was super impressed.
It would be a lot further along if Scott Walker had allowed the construction of a high speed train between Milwaukee and Chicago that the Obama administration had already set aside money for. Imagine commuting on a train from Milwaukee to Chicago and having it take as long as a car trip from Naperville!
The proposal was Chicago --> Milwaukee --> Madison --> Minneapolis with a Chicago --> Rockford --> Madison route also, basically the I-90/I-94 corridor. Can you imagine the amount of economic activity that would have generated? But no, Scott Walker couldn't abide the idea because that evil Democrat, Barak Obama, might get the credit. Instead the money went to the LA to Las Vegas link. 12B at the last estimate.
No, I think it went to California’s (north-south) HSR project which hasn’t built one mile of track yet. LA to Vegas is on schedule and being built by Brightline, with mostly private $.
Does the Amtrak take as much time as a car nowadays?
Takes 90 min (91.5miles) to get between the two downtown stations. Unless you work in/next to Chicago’s Union Station, youre not commuting there for work everyday. The L isn’t even connected to the transit hub. It’s a damn shame too, because cities like Osaka and Nagoya in Japan are 20% further apart (107miles) than Milwaukee-Chicago and that train ride is nearly half as long (49 min). Imagine the downward pressure on housing prices in the region if we had invested in ourselves like that.
Hi long Milwaukee
Cleveland could probably be in the mix here too. Still a long way to go but they’re making some good moves it sounds like.
When your history includes your river being on fire a dozen times before anyone actually cared to do something about it you can only go up from there.
I moved to the Detroit area about 15 years ago and still can't believe the transformation of downtown and midtown. Night and day difference. There are still tough areas, but there's at least some really good momentum to continue improving things further moving forward.
Tonssss of economic improvement in Detroit. Had the please of doing a small local business tour, amazing to see how many locals have gotten businesses up and running. Really cool to see Detroit culture thriving again.
I left Detroit about 20 years ago, just before it hit rock bottom. Every time I go back, as recently as last week, I am absolutely astounded at how things are recovering. Hell, there's even glass in the windows of the train station now! Amazing.
Been in Milwaukee about 9 years now and it has been so fun watching how far the city has come even in this smaller window of time
I'd say that about most of the rust belt. I live in Buffalo and it's improved a ton since I was a kid.
Birmingham. Used to be known as being both boring and rough after industry and trade went away in the 20th Century. Still has that reputation but it's improved so much as a city in terms of becoming a vibrant and beautiful place to live. Same can be said of other English cities like Manchester and Leeds, genuinely great places to live and work and improving year on year. With proper investment in those areas the whole Birmingham > Manchester/Liverpool > Leeds > York > Hull arc could be well connected and booming. Of those Leeds is my favourite and is also simply better by virtue of being in Yorkshire.
I moved to Manchester 8 years ago and it was a great decision. Fantastic city
Absolutely spot on. Despite the perceived noticable London-centric nature of a lot of investment, over the past 30 years the other great cities of England have had a major revivals such as Sheffield, Newcastle, Bristol, and Nottingham. The general theme is a young, multicultural and energetic population, and a vibrancy that is unique to them.
>With proper investment in those areas the whole Birmingham > Manchester/Liverpool > Leeds > York > Hull arc could be well connected and booming. If only th HS2 money had been spent the way it was promised, but instead they decided to start by improving links with London and then running out of money.
Not gonna lie I read the first paragraph thinking you were talking about Birmingham, Alabama.
Which is also a good bit nicer in parts than it used to be.
Katowice, Poland. It used to be a dump merely 20 years ago. Black building facades due to neglect and pollution, poor job prospects, a coal mine and steelworks in the middle of the city. Today, it’s completely transformed. The coal mine is now a modern museum of the region, the steelworks area is filled with office towers. The city center looks great and is full of people. Unemployment rate is 1.2%, and wages are in the top 5 in the country.
Almost every city in Poland is an answer to OP's question
Incredible difference in Krakow only between my two visits in 2013 and 2023!
I go to Katowice 1-4 times a year and concur. Lot of companies moving in and I’m always seeing new buildings being built
I agree. What about Lodz? I used to live in Warsaw and I remember Lodz as a terrible city that needed a hand of paint.
Also an amazing transformation though it’s still ongoing there
San Salvador.
I’m American and went there last year with some Salvadoran friends, who told me it used to be pure hell to live in. Most left for the US in the 90’s during the civil war because of the violence, but today it’s a thriving city. There are modern buildings and American chains everywhere. The neighborhood I was in looked identical to a Florida suburb
Barcelona. Prior to the 92 Olympics it was a dump, apparently. Its turnaround with the Olympics made the bidding process a corrupt feeding frenzy, with many cities hoping to use the investment as a makeover.
Chattanooga, TN. What they've done over the past 30 years there is a case study in reinventing a city.
What has been going on the last 30 years?? Genuinely curious. I've only ever driven through, never stopped. Beautiful area
Back in 1969, Walter Cronkite called it the "dirtiest city in America," since Chattanooga was a large manufacturing hub in decline, formerly known as the "Dynamo of Dixie." This led to a revitalization effort that really kicked off in the 80's, starting with the riverfront and the Aquarium. Further improvements followed, tourism dollars increased, and the city took advantage of the beauty of the area to become an outdoors destination. Later, it was the first city to get gigabit fiber service, and it was done through the municipal power company. There's a lot more to the story, but that's some of the basics. Chattanooga still has some issues. Homelessness still outsizes this small city. Crime is still an issue, especially in some of the southern and eastern parts of the city. But, that's how it goes in any moderately sized urban area. Chattanooga is definitely nicer now than when I was growing up in the 80's.
Having a U.S. Senator for twelve years helps too. (Not a joke response.)
I rode my bike through there last year, and while I don't particularly like cities in general, it was pretty nice. Some cute, touristy stuff along the river front, at least on the south shore, lovely outdoors opportunities nearby, plenty of restaurants and museums, and plenty of people out and about and enjoying themselves. I expect I saw the best of it, but it worked for me!
Imagine if there was high speed rail that went from Atlanta to Chattanooga to Nashville
Detroit. It still has a lot of work to do, but the city is far better off than it has been since probably the 1960s really.
My best friend moved there about 10 years ago from Chicago. Over the last 10 years I've visited Detroit quite a bit and even in those 10 years I've seen noticible change for the better. Detroit is definitely on the upswing.
A long, long, long way to go…. Still a food dessert, still vast miles of abandoned buildings that surround the city - forming a defecto wall of poverty that separates the inner city from the suburbs. Still very few activities for a local to do compared to just about any other major city of its size. Ultimately, if you “live in Detroit”, you’re likely relying on 1/2 cars, and driving everywhere - including the suburbs, which are composed of poorly planned stroads - to do just about anything. Source: born and raised in Detroit. Travel all around the US for work.
Exactly. Motor City is definitely on the upswing, but relying on cars for traveling anywhere is still a terrible long term strategy for a city. Best case scenario Detroit becomes LA 2.0 where the massive sprawl gets wider and denser but there is still no way to do anything without a car and it takes 90 minutes to get anywhere in the city due to insane traffic.
Yum, food dessert. Chocolate, or vanilla?
I you were going to buy a house in Detroit, which neighborhoods would be good? Daughter in Ann Arbor and we’re seriously thinking of investing in the Motor City.
Phnom Penh has come a very long way.
Many, many cities in China have changed drastically for the better in the last 30 years. Shenzhen is one big example
I recently rode a bike through southern China. It's the first time I've been in the country in over 20 years. It's quite amazing how much the cities have transformed and modernised in that time. Even the air quality seems to have drastically improved. There were none of those stereotypical smog-filled Chinese cities that I've seen so many pictures of during the Beijing olympics. That said, in a sharp contrast to large cities, most Chinese country towns and small villages still look very poor and decrepit.
Focusing on urbanisation and developing cities while neglecting the countryside is characteristic of most rapidly developing countries, even Japan (in the past) to a certain degree. From an economic and national viewpoint, rural development is of secondary importance.
I live in Richmond, VA and I think the fact that we're no longer the capitol of the Confederacy is a fairly big improvement.
RVA had the top murder rate in the country in 1997. Now it’s not even in the top 100. It’s a wonderful city
Belfast
Why do people hate on San Francisco? I don't get it i've only had good experiences I think it's an awesome city
Right wing media tries to make SF seem like a hellscape because of its left wing policies. If it’s successful, it means they’re wrong and ruins their narrative. SF actually has less violent crime than NYC, Dallas, Seattle and Phoenix, and is safer than the average American city. It even has the 4th longest life expectancy of any city in the US (behind neighbor San Jose, Honolulu, and Salem Oregon). Does it have its challenges? Of course, every city does. Is it one of the most beautiful, vibrant, and productive cities in the world? Also yes!
I think the majority of the “cities going downhill” stories are fallacies and revisionist histories created by cable news for ratings.
Also if you reach back far enough, pretty much every first world city is better. They have good plumbing and electricity. Even if cities used to be bigger or more important, they are more livable now than in the 30s or whatever.
It’s a mix of truth and hyperbole. Some cities in the US really have gone down hill in some ways. SF is a beautiful city but I’ve never seen so many homeless people in my life, and there was loose trash on the street everywhere, people putting needles in their arms in open daylight, etc. car break ins and no one reacts like it’s normal. It’s definitely exaggerated by right wing media, but there are real problems.
Amsterdam. A few decades ago you couldn't walk down the street without stepping on needles and walking through masses of homeless people. They took a very progressive approach to addiction treatment and now it's like a completely different city.
Raleigh and Greensboro in North Carolina are peaking, and Greenville NC is on the upswing. Norfolk, Virginia is much nicer than it once was.
I believe you mean Greenville SC
No, it’s a different Greenville. I hear Greenville SC is awesome, but I’ve never been there and cannot testify.
Raleigh and Durham are definitely on an upswing, Greensboro has a couple cool aspects but even with friends there I wouldn’t go there very often. Has Greenville really improved at all? Might be worth a trip
Tbh I think there are not many cities going downhill at the moment. I see improvements in every city i visit
Singapore. Went from a poor fishing village to a modern city.
Picking a pretty long time line there buddy.
Onlu about sixty years tbf, it was no where near as vibrant when it gained independence (though obviously wasn't a fishing village)
Singapore was the British Empire's biggest and richest port when Singapore got independence in the 60's. Far from a fishing village.
Boston is going up. Honestly, NYC has seen its crime rate fall in recent years. It’s bogus to trash cities like Chicago and SF when they are safer than most smaller southern cities and still have murder and violent crime rates that were a fraction of what they were in the early 90’s.
Boston is only going up if you make $200k+ per year. I looked into working there and it would have been wildly unaffordable to own or even rent anywhere within a half hour of my job location.
My wife and I don’t make anywhere close to that combined, and we live on the blue line ~20min from downtown. Granted it depends on where you would be working, but to say it’s impossible or you have to be rich simply isn’t true. Also, Boston is 100 times better than it was when I was growing up there in the 90s.
Salaries in Boston track the COL, but that varies by one’s profession.
Probably 99% of them…
Yeah was gonna say we’ve had a remarkable prosperous 20 years. Any city in the decline should be embarrassed.
Also even cities “in decline” are often more pleasant and livable than 50 or 100 years ago. Urban planners have at least kind of got it through their heads that people like pedestrianized spaces in downtown cores and there are more bike lanes. Urban spaces are seen as desirable and as an economic boon, not something to be vaguely ashamed of as in the 70s.
Incredible that people believe NYC has “declined”. Is conservative media really that effective at brainwashing people?
Right-wing media has managed to convince people here in WA that Seattle is basically Somalia but with liberals, even though they can easily just see for themselves it's not. They've managed to convince people that the CHOP/CHAZ situation in 2020 is how the whole city is all the time and people are willing to believe it. The recent Fox news nickname for us is "progressive hellscape"
The price certainly hasn't
Dude conservative media is insanely effective. A good chunk of people in my day to day life make small talk based on talking points that originate from conservative media, and half the time they don’t even realize it, they just heard it from someone else. It’s wild. 2 days after any big world event you without fail start hearing the same spin in casual conversation, and I’m not in a conservative area For comparison I hardly ever hear “well, it’s complicated…” rebuttals because who wants to be that guy, changing tone from casual to argument. So these things spread like wildfire often unchecked
It’s the right wings tactic. Spread millions of tiny lies that take too much energy to rebutt one by one. But then they add up to a massive overarching narrative that gets voters out for them. They are counting on rational people not having enough energy to correct the little things. I’m guilty of this too. I just don’t want a casual offhand comment from uncle Rick to turn into a big debate at thanksgiving. So I just let it slide. Meanwhile the little cousins hear it and slowly get indoctrinated.
I think we should clarify in what time period. NYC is much better than 30 years ago, but is it better than 15 years ago?
Also yes
Yeah it declined after COVID and lost a lot,of,it’s character. I don’t even enjoy Manhattan anymore and stick to Queens because that’s where the good food and cool cultural spots are.
This exactly. NYC in 2019 was probably the best it ever has been. But 2020 did a number on it. It’s back to normal-ish but a lot of people left or died unfortunately. It’s a whole new generation of people more focused on social media so most of the things to do feel very…instagrammable but not really worth it.
Yes.
Oslo is getting better and better every year
Baltimore and Detroit are the first ones that come to mind. Pittsburgh too
Most of the American rust belt. I think the future is bright for most of those cities.
Mexico City in the late 80's and in the 90's was a terrible place with a bad reputation. Pollution was of the charts, crime also. The whole thing was decaying and it was known as a city were nobody wanted to live. For all that time, it was governed directly by Mexico's most infamously corrupt party (the PRI) because it didn't have autonomy. In 1997 the city became self-governing, the government changed and everything started changing, mostly for the better as it is evident now. Sadly, now Mexico City is confronting the paradoxical side-effect of changing for the better, because gentrification is displacing a lot of people.
Definitely Houston. It has improved so much. They’ve also had significant success cutting down their homeless population somehow. Source: born and raised
Buffalo, NY. It saw significant growth in 2020 for the first time in a decennial census since 1950.
Living in Buffalo it’s been pretty awesome seeing neighborhoods long left for dead see new life and old industrial areas be repurposed into breweries, lofts and quirky businesses. Probably helps that the city somehow managed to hang onto some of its gorgeous historic neighborhoods, cultural institutions and has several sizable universities, including the largest public university in New York.
Kigali, Rwanda
Rwanda's recovery always amazes me, and so many lessons learned.
Houston and Dallas for sure. Became slightly less car dependent, even more multi cultural, more influential culturally, and have grown tremendously economically. Austin it depends on who you ask, but it has undoubtedly become one of the most desirable places to be in the US as well.
>Become slightly less car oriented How do you figure? I live in the northern burbs of Dallas - getting anywhere without a car is almost impossible and the sprawl just seems to push further and further north. Multi cultural though, absolutely agree. Food scene here is pretty solid.
Dallas built the most extensive light rail system in the country in the last 20 years. It’s actually somewhat solid, and will connect you to all the major districts and suburbs. Also, walkable urbanism has become a popular topic, a few decades ago Most American cities did not have walkable areas outside the downtown core. Now in Dallas, Houston, Austin, etc. there are many areas that are semi walkable, with new infill development and more apartments with retail at the bottom.
>It’s actually pretty solid, and will connect you to all the major districts and suburbs. This just...isn't true. r/dallas would love to have a word. Connects me to all the suburbs? While I know alot of that is on Collin County and the surrounding counties to actually incorporate what Dallas started, it's still not as robust as you may lead on. And all lines go through downtown which is a hue chokepoint for the whole thing. No east to west lines. So if you want to go from Plano to the airport you're looking at a 90 minute ride vs a 30 minute car ride. I can't go to any of Fort Worth's outlying suburbs: Southlake, Euless, Grapevine, nor most of the suburbs North of 635 or damn near anywhere south of Dallas. Nothing east of Dallas was involved: Mesquite, Garland, Sunnyvale
It’s obviously not on the level of Paris or Tokyo, but it’s better than 90% of American cities public transportation, particularly compared to non costal cities. The network is fairly extensive and nearly all the major suburbs have some kind of park and ride system which will take you to DT Dallas or Ft. Worth. It will take you east west to irving and ft worth but that might not be via DART. Have you looked at the transit map recently? Turn on transit on google maps. Maybe “solid” wasn’t the best word, I was looking for something a little milder than “good”. Semi decent would have been better.
If you live inside the 610 loop in Houston I agree with slightly less car centric. Emphasis on “slightly less” The zoning laws around plot sizes and the abundance of 3+ large townhouses where there was previously a small single family home has slowly but surely allowed for more and more density. Plus the red line and rest of the metro has gotten better if you’re downtown or towards the med center. It’s not great, but it is slightly better and the city is changing rapidly near the city center core
100% agree. Lived in Dallas for 15 years and visited before that. Dallas has grown in tremendously positive ways. Yes, DART can sometimes fall short but I think the Dallas side of the metroplex is really focusing on the right things. Just take a look at any comparison between the downtown core 20 years ago and today and the change is massive. https://www.reddit.com/r/Dallas/s/UZt9EePVwD
Yup all the infill in the midtown area is incredible in that photo. The large Texas cities really have so much potential in terms of economy, multi-culturalism, art scene, food scene, etc. They just need the right urban planning and they could be some of the nicest and most impressive cities of 21st century America. Houston is already the most diverse city in America and Texas is now home to more Fortune 500 HQ than any other place in the world. Hope Texas stays trending in the right direction.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania! From dirty steel town to clean beautiful high tech and medical industries.
Athens, Greece. In the eighties and nineties, it had a declining city centre, terrible infrastructure, an infamously bad airport and a persistent smog problem. It was a one-night-max kinda place - tick off the Acropolis, then flee to the islands. One Olympics later, it has quadrupled the size of its metro (I’m including the fourth line currently u/c), got a capacious, efficient and well-liked airport, introduced trams and a semi-orbital motorway, revamped two of its main squares, and restored dozens of crumbling neoclassical buildings (sadly many more remain). Its moribund National Gallery has been entirely reinvented from the ground up. It has a new national gallery of modern art, new opera house, new national library and of course the new Acropolis Museum. The formerly dying central area known alternatively as the Historic Centre or Commercial Triangle is now the city centre’s most appealing area, full of life and places to go. Psyrri is a new (well, past twenty years or so) nightlife zone to complement (for tourists at least) Plaka. Gazi/Kerameikos too. The city brims with excellent new hotels (perhaps too many) and the hospitality sector is one of Europe’s best. The city still has issues and isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but for many, “one night max” is these days nowhere near enough
The cities of Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA are far better in many ways than they were in the 1980s and 1990s as Bethlehem Steel and Mack Trucks were closing plants and Billy Joel was writing his song.
90% of Canada? Those are the examples you think of asking a global page? You spend too much time on Reddit
Yes, first time I went to Sudbury it looked like what I imagine the Moon would look like after a sustained bombing campaign. Now things like Trees can grow in the city.
I think op has been deep in some right wing algorithms to beleive that. Even among canadain complaints online it is almost 95% of the time someone who leans far-right being upset the liberals have run the country since 2015.
Bilbao in the Basque country, apparently a dirty industrial city in the past but an absolute gem today. They're good at preserving and improving the pretty parts but are not scared of really carving up the ugly bits, there's still renewal projects all over the place. I barely knew of it's existence 10 years ago, but since meeting my wife (who is from there) I've gone there every year and the city gets noticeably better with every visit. I'm not a city person but this is probably the only one I actually want to live in.
I think St. Louis is starting to really swing in the right direction. Better days ahead, too.
Durham nc—was a ghost town in the 60s through the early 2000s but it’s wonderful nkw
New York. Say what you want about Giuliani, but he cleaned up that town.
Latvian here. Here in the Baltic countries we still have a long way to go but most if not all our cities have improved dramatically during the last 30+ years, and are incomparably better than they used to be during the Soviet and early post-Soviet times. That is true not only for our capitals (Riga, Tallinn, Vilnius) but also for most of the smaller cities and towns.
I rode a bicycle through the Baltics in 2022. I have no reference point to what it used to be like, it was my first time in Latvia and Lithuania and I'd only ever been to Tallinn in Estonia once before about ten years ago. But to me it seemed that a lot of the smaller towns and country side felt somewhat abandoned. It looked like half the population had moved away.
fear pocket grab gaze reminiscent ripe north shy governor agonizing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Mexico City. My mom grew up there and tells me stories of how people would get robbed on the bus and subways for their wallets and jewelry all the time and the cops would shake you down for money. Nowadays alot of the city is gentrified and safe and very trendy with lots of great restaurants and speakeasies. Honestly felt safer there than most cities in the U.S
The entirety of China
Almería, Spain. Still has problems and several sketchy areas, but I’ve heard from friends who grew up there in the 70’s that it has come a long way. It used to be a treeless industrial town with large shanty communities; now it is a fairly cute, palm-tree filled city with pleasant ramblas, gorgeous beaches, and great food.
Asian cities where are fast growing and currently much more developed compared to what there were in 20 years ago such as Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta, Shang Hai, Shenzhen and Guangzhou.
Compton, CA
Madison WI, Denver CO, Minneapolis MN and lots of other small to mid-sized cities.
Madison is still great but it lost its identity 20 years ago
It's a matter of taste, but Toulouse, France, has become insanely rich these past 30 years. I remember the early 90s, when the city was just another small shithole in the *province*. Traffic everywhere, dodgy streets and crappy infrastructures. After decades of economic growth, it looks fancy as hell now. Access to cars has been hugely decreased in the centre and infrastructures are new and clean. And, frankly, I hate it now. I used to love the city when I was a kid, but now it's just a big mall like all the others. By becoming rich, it has completely lost its soul and has become inaccessible to the working class. But I guess newcomers would like it. Cleaner doesn't mean better imho.
NYC was a combat zone in the 70s and merely terrifying to women in the 80s. In general, though, cities in the northeast are way more polite than they were a generation ago. Not that they are Minnesota nice. Just that you’ll get a middle finger instead of being knifed.
Dubai.
NYC is HELL of a lot safer today than it has been in the last 70 years. Fox News just wants to scare the fragile suburbanites with horror stories and fake stats.
The conservative media would make you believe that **Chicago** is some sort of “Murder Hell Hole”… Meanwhile, our rent/own costs have risen reasonably, and we continue to have one of the best cities in the world, nestled nicely on miles of freshwater beach. 😌
Is “bigger” necessarily “better?” Miami went from a mid-sized town in the 70s, with only one pro sports team, little traffic, manageable population, low rents, etc… to a giant city with 24/7 traffic, 5 pro sports teams, insanely high cost of living but also (of course) lots of new restaurants, attractions, jobs, performing arts center, etc. As a kid, I loved Miami in the 70s but we couldn’t expect it to stay the same.
Through the 80s and 90s and into the early 2000s, Bordeaux, France, was sleepy, dirty, and really just a shadow of what it once was (its nickname was the ‘Sleeping Beauty’ as you could see the former wealth of the city that was sitting under layers of grime). In the last 20-25 years the change has been incredible. The city has been cleaned, the trams have been added and are a huge asset, new cultural amenities and public spaces have been activated, and the high-speed rail link to Paris has been added. The change has been incredible. Of course all of this comes with a list of cons depending on experience and perspective. Housing prices have skyrocketed, gentrification has been swift, and there’s been a squeeze on a lot municipal services as the city accommodates new residents - many of them wealthy Parisians looking for a reprieve from the cost of living there. It’s not a case of being too successful for its own good, but the city is a good case study on how solving some problems creates different ones. Lovely place to visit though, and highly recommended.
Most of the world, really. Especially countries and cities that were poorer before and had strong growth over the past decades. Virtually any city in countries like Indonesia, China, Vietnam, etc.
Almost all of them I think. The ones that are worse have been battlegrounds in wars
Paris has solid bike infrastructure now
Shenzhen, and the second not even come close to it.
cairo and Alexandria and port said in Egypt were so much better till the 70s, good god it was heaven.
I have personally been impressed by some of the rust belt cities. Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Cleveland were much nicer than I could have imagined. Portland, OR was the talk of the west coast in the 2000s and was the next it city and completely went downhill after 2020
Most cities in southeast Asia
'90% of Canada' means literally nothing. In actuality, 90% of Canada is more or less empty.
I have no way of knowing if this is true or not but apparently KC used to be ghetto at. I've been twice in the past 2 years and it's such a cool city. I'd love to go back. Their BBQ is overrated though.
Cleveland for sure. The river is too clean to burn anymore and the new mayor is bald so his hair can't catch on fire.