How satisfied/dissatisfied with your city are you?
 

How satisfied/dissatisfied are you with the city that you live in? What changes would you make if you could?

I like Chicago and it works quite well for me. It doesn't work so well for everyone though. I wish the gangs would somehow lose power and that places like Englewood or Roseland would become safe and stable. Also wish that the Metra Electric would accept my Ventra monthly pass so I could choose between the ME and express bus when going to work :).

Love where I live but I am disatissfied for 2 reasons:

1. The homeless issue is out of control.

2. Affordable housing for working and middle class families is nonexistent.

Oakland isnt the only city with these problems but I dont live in other cities.

I love Houston. It has a good economy, lots of culture, great architecture, access to good shopping, restaurants, theaters, museums, parks, stadiums and is very laid back. Just to name a few.

My only gripe is how spread out it is. It’s sad that the city turned out that way but I also understand that there was no preventing it, with there being no natural boundaries to the sprawl and most of the city being built after the invention of the car.

I love London - how interesting it is, how diverse and pluralistic from people to architecture to history, how pretty and regal the centre has become, yet still so cutting edge, how great the food is now, how atmospheric it is even on moody days, how beautiful and numerous the parks are, how culture is free (museums, galleries, events, art, community), how the kids these days are so much nicer than when I was their age, how education is the best in the country (and one of the best in the world) no matter the income levels, how easy it is to mix with others and how frequently people do, how anything goes in fashions to lifestyles to (lack of) public decency, how the ugly affront of postwar tat and decay has been wiped clean, how great the safety net is if ever you'd need it, from free healthcare to mental support to jobseekers allowance to free accom for the homeless, how convenient public transport reaches all corners, how it's the world centre of cheap flights, how 100 foreign cutures are on its doorstep across the Channel. How swearing is just another form of expression, often artistic and finely nuanced, how irony is celebrated, how tradition is celebrated, how change is celebrated.

I loathe London - how expensive it is to sleep and travel, how far one has to live from the centre, how badly run and ransomed the transport system (and pretty much everything) has become by big business, how crap the weather is for 9 months, how you can't just chat to strangers, how the vast majority of people live in substandard accommodation to what they pay for (cold, small, ugly, shared), how polluted it is (world's highest NO2 levels), how subconscious bias is endemic, how expensive it is to just daytrip or staycation (cheaper to fly abroad), how so many billionaires push up the costs, how hierarchical the society is, how public money is ransacked by private contractors, and how elongated every process becomes in order for them to charge us more, how badly the world's biggest nightlife has been killed off by big rents, how badly run and nepotistic almost every management tier is, how corrupt the system is but noone calls it, how even the upper middle classes are being priced out, how you need to be a millionaire to have a house, a garden, a car, a dog, or walk to work. How damn squeezed in space everything is, how one problem on the line takes out the entire network, how entitled people are, how lazy people are.

I'm satisfied/very satisfied with São Paulo.

The city is great, amazing and diverse nightlife and food scenes, cosmopolitan, very open-minded, work-oriented culture with this sense you can achieve anything here (something common to primary cities), efficient and comprehensive public transit, several dense/pedestrian-friendly districts.

About the cons, people are still very autocentric which led to crazy traffic jams and stressed drivers. Even though there are many neighbourhoods with tree-lined streets, green areas are very few for a city this big and dense. As result, parks are overcrowded on weekends. It's an expensive city. Shopping center culture is very prevalent, they are everywhere, even in dense districts. You work a lot, you do long commutes and after years it takes a toll.

And yet to Americans, London has a transit system that is light years ahead of anything on this continent, and my husband noted on our first visit there that London was the first place he had ever been where he did not feel -- and was not relentlessly reminded -- that he was black, and lesser, other, and an outsider.

I'm not knocking your perspective since you live there and know it better than I ever could, but I find the different perspectives fascinating.

I love Asheville: I love the variety and quality of our restaurants, where I've had food much better than anything I've eaten even in some major cities. I love the terrain and the chaos it has begotten in a street grid that looks like a toddler with a crayon scribbled on a map, and where one neighborhood was literally laid out by a developer following a horse as it wandered around the property. I love the architecture, and I love the way that the architecture of buildings downtown seems to have been deliberately chosen to clash as much as possible. In no universe would these two buildings ever belong on the same block, let alone cheek to cheek, for example. Nor these two. Or these two. I love how all roads seem to lead here, or did at one time when anybody who was anybody vacationed here, wrote here, caroused here, or taught dance lessons here at the Battery Park Hotel. I love the ghosts and weird history to be found here, including -- really -- a group called the Silver Shirts that in part was devoted to helping Hitler take over the world by magical means. If you search the archives at the Asheville Mystery Museum you'll find they gained a touch of notoriety when they summoned some sort of interdimensional being that was last seen bounding down Brook Street in Biltmore Village. Not to mention a haunting at the county jail that was so bad it made the news in Christchurch, New Zealand in the June 4, 1908 edition of The Press.

This is not a normal city, and you can't say that about just any city.

I loathe Asheville: I hate the high prices, low wages, and the fact that the roads were designed for a city of 90,000 whose population doubles during the work day... They were not designed for a city whose population doubles during the work day and the estimated 30,400 tourists who visit the city each and every single day. I hate that the rent is too high and homeownership is to dream the impossible dream for most people. The problem is so bad that the town of Canton, in the next county over, is the new affordable hotspot that people are flocking to when they're willing to settle for being near Asheville because they can't afford to be in it. And Canton is affordable because of an enormous paper mill that blankets the entire town, and the surrounding area, in the odor of fresh, piping hot fart -- so bad sometimes that you can smell it on people's clothes. To a degree, the neighboring town of Woodfin also markets itself as an affordable alternative to Asheville... because that's where the sewage treatment plant is and Woodfin stinks too. I hate that rich people are relentless in their push to come in and take over. I hate that the city's spirit is a shell of its former self. I hate that while Asheville turns up its nose at places like Gatlinburg and Myrtle Beach, the only real difference is that Asheville is a higher class of whore than those cities, but she's still a whore: As with a whore, you pay Asheville for a good time, and as with a whore, sometimes you will go away from Asheville with a persistent but treatable infection -- particularly if you've been splashing around in that filthy river. I hate that downtown is pretty much nothing but breweries and hotels which are in the process of pushing out nearly every other business -- the conversion of the Flatiron Building from affordable office space to yet another goddamned hotel is the latest case in point. I hate that the magic is gone and that the weird, and mysterious, and macabre that used to make a day in Asheville feel like one long shiver down the spine have been scrubbed, sanitized, and put away lest they offend genteel Atlantans and Floridians. In short, I hate that interested parties took the unchained, elemental force of Creation that was Asheville, commodified it, and put it on a tee shirt and that none of us who used be a part of that force can afford to stay here anymore.

Huh? That's because they have my country not too far from them. Younger generations don't give a shit here, which is great. And the English always try to grow better than we are, which is normal after all.
That's why the UK's a bit less racist nowadays. Definitely the least racist of all English-speaking countries indeed.
Just take care of your hubby where you are. He probably needs it.

It is hard to not be very satisfied with the Paris region, that's a blessing. But I'm a fussy person, so I would call myself barely satisfied.

I want more quality and taller modern high-rises for our region. That would solve a lot of our local problems.
The region is nonetheless very smart when it comes to transit. I'm super excited at the latest mass transit projects.
We are a spoiled people. More so than blessed. Lol. I know.

I have a love hate relationship with Houston; on one hand, it's got all the amenities; culture, food, stuff to do plus a healthy economy but on the other hand, most of it is ugly and trashy.

Norfolk-satisfied.

Pro- extremely "easy"- It almost feels like a small town within the older areas of town. I love the history and I've met great people here. Close ish to DC, water everywhere, military area.

Negatives- It's a tad more expensive than it should be. Some areas have a decent amount of crime. The weather is basically what I got back in Arkansas.

Dissatisfied, mostly because what we generally build is ugly crap and we don't really care much about older/heritage buildings. Feels like we could sooo easily do better.

(By my standards, I'd be dissatisfied with 98% of cities out there. However I'm not unrealistic - for example, a place like Woodstock, Vermont would pass my test :tup:)

Woodstock is quaint and picturesque as is a lot of NH/ VT towns but I would go stir crazy. I lived in Peterborough NH and I was bored.

Oh, absolutely. I need a minimum size to be happy (my hometown works well - Sherbrooke QC, ~200k people). I find Montreal to be too big, don't like it. Could be the bias of what I'm used to, of course.

I love New York but am starting to get over it.

No doubt it's a world class city, tourism Mecca, has lots of opportunity, ect. That goes without saying.

I will say I'm really tired of the constant bad weather, the fact that it's getting really dirty, the transportation becoming unbearable, ect.

I'm considering moving somewhere else, but own property here so I'll never be 100% out the door, considering I won't ever sell it. It's a great asset. But yeah, it's been a good run of many years here but I'm ready for something different with less stress, better weather, ect.

People all over the world dream of living in New York and that's cool, but I think for the majority it's a place where you live a few years, burn out, and then leave. I'm starting to get the idea that it's a better place to visit sporadically than actually live.

i'm pretty satisfied with chicago.

but it's all i've ever really known.

it does have a shit-load of warts.

but it's where all of my people are.

This is a healthy attitude to have. Some people don't know how good they have it. If you live in a major US/European city, you're luckier than most humans who ever lived. As for me, I'm very satisfied living in SoCal. In fact, the more I see of the world, the more I appreciate living here. It's not perfect, but it also does not get much better.

Los Angeles is so frustrating to me. Our positives are through the roof, providing a variety of options in every possible category. We have incredible food of every variety, we have an unfair amount of outdoor opportunities from 11,000 foot snow capped mountains to perfect beaches, extremely urban neighborhoods and rural horse properties, 2 sports franchises in every sport and regular worldwide events, all within 40 miles. Theres an energy here thats unique and positive and so much more...

All that being said, our government and civic pride is very lacking. The homeless problem is out of control. The lack of investment in our infrastructure and basic city services drives me insane. The utter disregard to improve our neighborhoods, streets, etc is mind boggling. We have an opportunity to be one of the best cities in the world if we only had competent leadership. Everything that is done here is half assed. If the city of LA was run like Pasadena, West Hollywood or Santa Monica, this place would be remarkable.

I love this place. I have traveled a fair amount and i still wouldnt live anywhere else in the world, however, i know we can be better.

You forgot to mention that whole late-May-thru-October problem that Houston has.

there. now it's a poem.

:D