[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LaLaLand', 'I')'ve long held the belief that Americans sacrifice quality for quantity while Europeans sacrifice quantity for quality.

[LaLaLand]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Plantagenet', 'A')merica is a very diverse place.

When you say "Americans" do you mean just white suburban families or do you also mean young hip single urbanites in downtown coops, or Eskimos in traditional villages in Arctic Alaska or Mexican immigrants in barrios in LA and Houston or black Americans in inner cities or artists living cooperatively in University towns and artist colonies or retired folks waiting to die in Sun City or ski bums with trust funds living out of their pick-up trucks or working class people struggling to get by?

[Plantagenet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('LaLaLand', ' ')there are some broad commonalities here as well.

Believe me. I live in Madison WI and when I go to visit my parents in Sturgeon Bay, it seems like the locals and I live in different worlds yet we share some core cultural beliefs.

[pea-jay]

Finally back to city scapes and not dentistry...

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 't')he love affair with the automobile swept across the country and commuting by car made suburbia possible.

[Anthrobus]

the habitation patterns in germany are steadily shifting.
(young) people move away from rural areas that provide them little economic opportunities and move into the more prosperous regions and towns. Generally from east to west and from village to town. Vast areas in germany are expected to be devoid of population in some ten years, with wolvepacks strolling the deserted landscape.

The lucky ones like programmers who only need the internet, or retirees move in the opposite direction (on a much smaller scale) where large houses and land are cheap..

There are lots of interesting cities and towns in Bavaria on every scale. In the town close to us there are even family owned shops who stuff your pillow with feathers you bring them for 5 Euros. I live in the country because i need some forest close to where i live to get lost in occasionally.

On the downside, there are lots of building projects here too, new homes, suburban shopping centers, enterprise zones burying the old farmland and encircling the old homes of our parents.

[Bas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pea-jay', '
')
What's got me real puzzled is at the same time we are kicking of suburbia here in the US we export this Marshall Plan to Western Europe. Did we bring our interstate and mortgage financing to Europe with us? Nope. We rebuilt the place as it was, made improvements here and there but didnt alter the cityscape radically in many areas (even though they were being completely rebuilt).

[pea-jay]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bas', 'I') thought that subsidizing agriculture robbed poor countries of their chances to develop and that restricting city growth robbed Europeans of the opportunity to buy (US style) home in the suburbs for relatively little money. Now with peakoil on the doorstep, I think both policies will prove to have been the right thing all along.

[Twilight]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bas', 'P')ersonally, for a long time I was very critical of these European, and national policies; I thought that subsidizing agriculture robbed poor countries of their chances to develop and that restricting city growth robbed Europeans of the opportunity to buy (US style) home in the suburbs for relatively little money. Now with peakoil on the doorstep, I think both policies will prove to have been the right thing all along.