Definitely. Cities aren't loud; cars are loud. I'm convinced if some eccentric person built an entire car-free, transit-oriented city from the ground up, the vast majority of people would absolutely love living there. I don't know a single person who doesn't love a nice car-free street in the middle of a city.

It's a sad irony that people move out of the city because cars make the city unpleasant, then commute to the city by car.

What I hate about cities is crowds and people. I don’t think there’s a way to solve for that.

What's worse:

don't make me drive into your downtown office just to sit at a desk and video conference with people in the exact same building.

How about: change zoning laws to allow people to collectively decide what sort of housing they would like, and connect those places through complete streets that cater to multiple forms of transportation. Instead of the current suburban cookie-cutter approach of single family homes and car dependence.

I agree. I want to live in a big stone tower and have a huge beard and spend all day reading tomes and pondering orbs.

That sounds like literal hell to me to be filed into a card catalog like that.

If you like it that's fine, but I'd hate to live in a sky scraper

Swiss cities are quite small but they tend to be dense and have a quick transition to forest or farmland.

It's not so much as city as a town, but this video on Brattleboro, Vermont makes it sound like quite a nice mix of dense urbanism + surrounding nature.

São Paulo is in the top 10 of largest cities in the world, and we have an acceptably decent amount of protected natural spaces, both within the city and around it.

Basically any major city in Europe has this down already, or is close to it

Mostly smaller college towns in rural areas.

My town is that perfect medium (for me). It’s a small city as a bedroom community for a major city. I live in a single family home. I just got back from walking with my kid and dog down into the town center. We have a Common, some government buildings and businesses, mixed with higher density housing up to six stories, and a great walkable “main street” lined with shops and restaurants. This is clustered around a train station that is also a bus hub, taxi stand, bikes and scooters, and they’re just finishing a rail trail, that will eventually connect to a state-wide network

I have to admit I never took advantage of all of this until COViD. Suddenly we couldn’t drive anywhere nor go out anywhere crowded. So we made a habit of spending a weekend afternoon walking around enjoying the town - typically grab takeout from one of the many restaurants, and eat dinner on a bench on the Common!