bur(ule)ger

Also we Americans are pretty good at paving every square inch inch of an island. We did Manhattan and are working on doing Long Island.
- You also just demolish everything every now and then because old is not the american way, while this side of the ocean tends to constantly maintain and improve on what already exists.
  Glass towers tend to make a boring landscape.
  
  Huh? I mean buildings get condemned or rebuilt sometimes, but talk like that tells me you haven't been to Boston or New York.

It's exhausting having Europeans assume that because I live here I A) endorse everything about it with every fiber of my being and B) have no ability to conceptualize any other way of living at all, much less a better one than my current American lifestyle.
It's true we don't have a quaint medieval village on an island, but we never had invading Huns or something force us to live on a postage stamp of land and make a quaint little village there.
- So what you're saying is that we need the Huns to invade the US
  
  I'm so glad someone understands. It doesn't necessarily have to be Huns. Tartars or Mongols or really any nomadic horselord invaders would do well. Just drop them in the middle of Nebraska and let them get started.
- Honestly. Am I missing something in the picture? It's just a city? Am I supposed to be unable to comprehend a nice, coastal city?
  
  No roads for cars is what I assume is what we can't comprehend.
- You and I'll even risk most of your close circle of friends and acquaintences might understand the teasing that comes with such a picture but would that be true to the average american?
  This is the picture of a high density populated area, where there are no roads for vehicles nor wide spaces. Streets are narrow and do not form straight angles. Construction is also very old.
  If I'm to try and emulate the level of idiocy I often encountered on the days of Reddit, the average american will spout "that's a fire hazard, with no room for parking or moving around in your car and the roads don't make any sense".
  It's good people like you exist. Now you only need 1000x those numbers to make a dent in the idiocy running that country.
  
  You're literally asking for the 'average' of a country containing everything from desert to tundra to a variety of types of forest and just about every biome in between. We've got political situations ranging from state endorsed persecution and torture of minorities on the one hand to policies that are at times to the left of the European mainstream on the other.
  You might as well compare Norway and Turkey as Massachusetts and Texas. In the latter case they share a federal government, but both also ignore that government when it suits them. Like, look at the confusing legal situation around marijuana in the US. It's legal in more and more states, but it's federally illegal. So like, technically it's federally illegal in states where it's legal, but we just ignore that for most purposes. It does mean that dispensaries largely have to operate with cash, though.
  In Massachusetts it's even weirder. We have a ballot initiative process, so the people can make new laws by making a big enough petition and putting it on the next election ballot. That's how we passed decriminalization, then medical, then legalization. No Massachusetts politician really took up the issue and endorsed it, we just voted it in. Which forced our state law makers to basically ignore the federal prohibition.
  You could also expect to see this happen in Massachusetts if, for example, abortion were federally criminalized. We already ignore other states' laws about things like family planning and immigration.
  The US really isn't a monolith legally or culturally.

Any American who lives in Hurricane prone areas can't comprehend this lasting for more than a decade at best before it is washed away clean.
- I'd give it 3-4 years. Maybe five if they're sturdy, but not a decade.
  And yet, we continue to live directly, knowingly in the path of multiple hurricanes every year instead of simply moving. I always thought going into the construction business around the Outer Banks must be a money cheat.
  
  That might be about to change now that insurance companies are tightening the purse strings in areas that see a lot of Natural disasters
- We have very few hurricanes in Europe. Most of these houses are hundreds of years old.
  That being said, rising sea levels could destroy this and lots of other towns for good.
- Yeah, cause drywall is so much stronger than stone
  
  Mad because America still has access to trees, huh.
  More seriously, the coastal county near me has seen 15 hurricanes make landfall in the past 35 years. Of those, 9 have been a category 2 or higher. You guys in your latitude get little tornadoes and some half-hearted shaky-shake that barely even registers, not earthquakes and hurricanes.
  Unless your windowless, single-story house composed of 8in. of reinforced, perfectly uncracked concrete comes with an identical roof like a bomb shelter, I would strongly recommend weathering it out with whichever distant family member will take you. Anything above a Cat. 1 can just rip the ceiling off and stone in an earthquake stands a chance of aerating your skull, for all the expense you put into building it.
  Brick in particular is fucking terrible for this. This is one of the reasons every now and then, you'll see a stone building totalled while a wooden one down the street sits untouched. Wood's pretty flexible and natural disasters are weird.
  Also, lol you live in a fancy oven you can't even renovate and you'll be dead long before I am
  
  We have a lot of reinforced concrete coastal fortifications built during WWII that have been destroyed due to storms. The storms wash away the land around them, the foundation collapses, and the structure breaks.

Pretty sure this is Rovinj in Croatia
- Yes it is!
- Went there last summer. Beautiful town, but also a lot of tourists. Still worth a visit.

Are you even living if you can't smell your neighbor's farts?
- There’s two kinds of people in this world … fart smellers and smart fellers.
- At least they're not smelling everyone's car's farts
- Are you American? Wanna move in together?
  
  I only sniff one woman's farts.

No parks?
- Bro you got a whole plaza, an area with a bunch of trees and the sea less than 5min away by foot, at what point do these people need a park?
  
  Obviously these things are subjective, but a plaza is not a replacement for a park to me - neither is an area with two dozen or so trees, I need to be able to escape into a little bit of nature every now and then
  The sea is definetely a big plus, but also not a park replacement - I think pointing out it's lack of a proper green area is a fair criticism, especially given the tone of the original tweet which acts like this is the peak of human living
  
  I'd argue the only people who don't need a park are ones that have enough room that it's redundant. Where do children run around and play? Where can you throw a ball or frisbee around or fly a kite or have a picnic etc but a park
- you can park it outside
- You park outside the city center, so the center is basically car free, beside some commercial vehicles to bring food to restaurants for example.
  
  Sorry, I think you may have meant to reply to a different comment. I didn't mention anything car related

Wow that sure looks expensive
- Because it is! Looking online it looks like prices in this area are around €250k for a 400-600 sqft apartment. It looks like land just outside of this area goes for ~€200k for 0.2 acres, houses go for around €500k - 1.5mil, and townhomes go for around €200k. Rents in the area are fairly affordable at ~€475 per month (one bedroom city center) but the average salary is only ~€950 per month. Also the population is only ~15k.
  The person who made the post in the image is comparing apples to oranges. My small-ish US town has a population of 10k and you can get 3 acres of land and a 2000 sq ft house for $250k. Gas station and grocery store are 10 min down the road by car. The average monthly wage is $3400 in this town.
  Basically, the average person in the pictured town would need 22 years of their full salary to pay for a townhome while the average person in my town only needs 6 years of their full salary. The American mind may not be able to comprehend this picture, but it's not like most Croatians can live there either.
  
  Who wants to live in the sticks though?

The way this image is jpeg'd to death I thought it was a Minecraft build

Cool but where's the parking?
- There's this amazing invention called walking. And in these types of cities it only takes 15 minutes to get most things you need.
  It's like a healthier, less stressful version of driving!
  
  But how I can I be a recluse and have others deliver me stuff without parking their 9' tall 21' long 8' wide van?
  
  That sounds like communism to me
- Bottom right.
  Google says the town's name is Rovinj, Croatia, and Wikipedia says that, while the preferred method of getting around town is by car, the preferred method of getting around this specific part of town (the town's center, which includes the old town) is by bike or scooter, though you can also walk, of course.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rovinj

If a fire broke out that whole town is burning
- Not necessarily, those houses are mostly made of stones, cement and other similar materials. Only the roof structure and some other internal structures would use wood, which means a fire would spread much slower than if those were built like american wooden houses.
  
  But having such a densly populated town with no parks or any open space still isnt safe right?
  I live in new york, which is very densly populated, but the city has a lot of open space so fires cant spread too much
  And most american houses are made out of concrete or brick
- Good thing there's plenty of water around, then.
- No, all these old houses are mostly stones and bricks. Fires are not a threat.
  Earthquakes on the other hand...
- probably only very bad smoke smell but the actual damage should not be too big. Still a problem but not as big as you might think. I am not sure tho because where I live roads are a bit wider

It's like a less shitty Kowloon Walled City.

Honestly I love the idea of being able to easily access places just by walking but living that close to that many people would make me go insane.

The only responsible response to marble statue twitter is a swift unapologetic block. The next best thing is to completely clown on them.
- The holy roman empire roots for you

Depends. Does it have any oil we could invade?

Looks like an overcrowded mess to me.

How do you number the streets? /s
- By the metre, from the centre or the post office, accordingly. Makes sense.
  It's easier than laying washing machines down in the street or drawing football fields on the road
  
  This is a joke about Manhattan road/street numbers.