Cities You Need To Travel To More Than Once To Appreciate

[Double L]

Atlanta isnt like any other city in the world. You have to go to that city more than once to understand the way it's neighborhoods work and how the city is laid out.

[Omaharocks]

^ +1 for Atlanta.

L.A. and Atlanta are I think the best examples of cities that take multiple visits to truly understand.

[dc_denizen]

Whereas I loved LA the first time I visited and didnt really understand the disparagement it gets from outsiders.

[ozone]

I'll make it easy. Any and every city must be visited more than once to be appreciated or at least understood. Done. Thread Closed.

[ozone]

Originally Posted by Double L

Atlanta isnt like any other city in the world. You have to go to that city more than once to understand the way it's neighborhoods work and how the city is laid out.

You probably need to travel more.

[a very long weekend]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

I probably owe Toronto another chance. My impression was of just a big generic city without much charm.

this is my assessment of toronto too. very generic, not particularly attractive, a very high number of chain stores, much more auto-oriented than i expected and overall quite forgettable. even in the non-CBD neighborhoods i explored (annex, west queen, danforth, distillery), the cool shops, restaurants and bars are set to a pretty standard midwest taste and aesthetic, lots of burgers and beer. after falling passionately in love with montreal, i was ultra disappointed to discover what toronto is about. if there's something happening there, i think it'd take multiple visits to discover it.

[LosAngelesSportsFan]

LA, SD, NYC, SF, Paris, London, Rome come to mind

[ChargerCarl]

Originally Posted by LosAngelesSportsFan

LA, SD, NYC, SF, Paris, London, Rome come to mind

I still don't get San Diego.

[a very long weekend]

with san diego, it's all about the 30th street corridor (and the turf supper club).

[softee]

Originally Posted by a very long weekend

this is my assessment of toronto too. very generic, not particularly attractive, a very high number of chain stores, much more auto-oriented than i expected and overall quite forgettable. even in the non-CBD neighborhoods i explored (annex, west queen, danforth, distillery), the cool shops, restaurants and bars are set to a pretty standard midwest taste and aesthetic, lots of burgers and beer. after falling passionately in love with montreal, i was ultra disappointed to discover what toronto is about. if there's something happening there, i think it'd take multiple visits to discover it.

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but your description of Toronto bears little if any resemblance to the Toronto I know. Weird how that happens.

[dktshb]

To sound like a broken record Los Angeles takes a while to figure out. To have an amazing vacation here requires a bit of research. The best way to have an outstanding trip is if you're coming to visit someone or know someone who lives here. I would definitely recommend staying Downtown and take advantage of the transit lines for getting around.

[a very long weekend]

Originally Posted by softee

Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but your description of Toronto bears little if any resemblance to the Toronto I know. Weird how that happens.

i think one major problem is that you have very little retail off the high streets, so that neighborhoods feel quite dead, particularly with those long blocks. also, the chain shops are one thing, but even weirder is that it seems like even restaurants with just one location are aiming to become chains, so they have that same sterile aesthetic, mediocre offerings and culture. so that even if you put in SF-style formula retail controls, that bland culture would still persist.

this has happened all over midtown manhattan too, and i think that in toronto like up there, it's down to the high cost of commercial leases. it just forces you to go for lowest common denominator/mass culture in order to post your number every month. the obvious move is for the city of toronto to require much more ground floor commercial in new construction, i'm thinking in pretty much every new building, no matter where. flood the market with commercial space, or even just space sufficient to match increase in population density, and the pressures on commercial lease values decrease, and then you'll start to see more interesting shops and restaurants come in.

so even without addressing your architecture problem, the curb cuts every few meters, the long blocks, etc. you could get a lot done by just forcing developers to include commercial space on the ground floor.

[kool maudit]

Berlin can be hard to immediately grasp, and Vienna tempts you to stay in the core too much, which is beautiful but overly groomed.

Brussels will underwhelm if you are doing literally anything but determinedly exploring neighborhoods (going there for EU stuff will expose you to glass expanses as bland as Juncker himself).

Cologne is also very subtle.

[emathias]

I've been to SF four times. The first two times I hated it. The last two I liked it.

[softee]

Originally Posted by a very long weekend

i think one major problem is that you have very little retail off the high streets, so that neighborhoods feel quite dead, particularly with those long blocks. also, the chain shops are one thing, but even weirder is that it seems like even restaurants with just one location are aiming to become chains, so they have that same sterile aesthetic, mediocre offerings and culture. so that even if you put in SF-style formula retail controls, that bland culture would still persist.

this has happened all over midtown manhattan too, and i think that in toronto like up there, it's down to the high cost of commercial leases. it just forces you to go for lowest common denominator/mass culture in order to post your number every month. the obvious move is for the city of toronto to require much more ground floor commercial in new construction, i'm thinking in pretty much every new building, no matter where. flood the market with commercial space, or even just space sufficient to match increase in population density, and the pressures on commercial lease values decrease, and then you'll start to see more interesting shops and restaurants come in.

so even without addressing your architecture problem, the curb cuts every few meters, the long blocks, etc. you could get a lot done by just forcing developers to include commercial space on the ground floor.

The thing is that Toronto has such a large number of vibrant, often noisy high streets criss crossing the old pre-war part of of the city, that the side streets running between them are meant to be quiet residential zones -- and doesn't pretty much every city in the U.S. and Canada have residential side streets running off of commercial high streets in neighbourhoods outside the downtown area? I don't see how Toronto is any different in this regard. If you explored these quiet residential areas you'd find that there are plenty of old school corner stores and small family-run cafes tucked into these neighbourhoods, too.

The sheer number of long, busy high streets (which are are full of independent, interesting retail and restaurants) outside the downtown (such as Yonge, King, Queen, Dundas, College, Bloor, Ossington, Gerrard, Danforth, Broadview, Pape, Roncesvalles, Mount Pleasant, Bayview, St. Clair, Eglinton, etc.) makes up for the quiet residential streets in between them, IMO. When you walked down Queen West, did you go past Bathurst? Or even Spadina? If you didn't go that far, you didn't even see what Queen West is all about.

As for commercial space on the ground floor of new developments, that's the norm in Toronto, I'd be hard pressed to think of very many new condos that don't have commercial space on the ground floor.

[Crawford]

Toronto's issue isn't with high streets, or chain retail. If anything, Toronto has some of the most vibrant high streets, and is among the least chain-oriented cities in U.S./Canada. Really rivals any U.S./Canadian city on both points excepting NYC. Tons of independents and streetlife on all the major streets, for many km.

IMO Toronto's generic feel is due to the bland architecture and forgettable public realm. There are no real downtown parks of note. Yonge Street, the showcase street of a major nation, feels like a back alley. Bay Street is worse. University Ave. looks like it should be in Winnipeg or Tulsa. 90% of the recent architecture appears to be glass condo boxes that would be equally appropriate in Singapore, Abu Dhabi or Dallas. The city feels like nowhere and everywhere.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Cologne is also very subtle.

Cologne is incredibly ugly, even for German city standards, but is possibly the most soulful German city. Granted, it isn't Naples or Valencia, but it has a streetlife and personality that is quite an outlier for Germany.

Catholic Rhinelanders are known as the most fun, relaxed Germans and it shows.

[austlar1]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Cologne is incredibly ugly, even for German city standards, but is possibly the most soulful German city. Granted, it isn't Naples or Valencia, but it has a streetlife and personality that is quite an outlier for Germany.

Catholic Rhinelanders are known as the most fun, relaxed Germans and it shows.

Cologne does have a lot of vitality at street level, but I agree that it is sterile. The WW2 destruction must have been monumental, and it all seems to have been rebuilt around the same time and to the same standard of blandness. The cathedral, on the other hand, is something to behold.

[Double L]

Originally Posted by ozone

You probably need to travel more.

I've traveled plenty, thanks for the nice comment. Name a place laid out like Atlanta.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by Double L

I've traveled plenty, thanks for the nice comment. Name a place laid out like Atlanta.

Pretty much every interior city in the Southeastern U.S.? Nashville, Charlotte, Raleigh, even DC, to some extent, look the same, with the green, rolling hills, winding roads, endless patchy nontraditional sprawl, density along linear corridors, etc.