People always focus on these extreme endpoints, but to get a vibrant walkable neighborhood you don't need anything remotely close to New York or Tokyo densities.
My street in Somerville, MA has a WalkScore (91) that's higher than the average score for New York city (89), yet every building in my neighborhood is detached and three stories tall. I have a back yard with grass. Not a big one, but it feels nothing like lower Manhattan. And I can walk or bike to literally everything I need in a given week.
People equate "crowded" and "ugly" with "walkable" when it's just not accurate. Being more green and more attractive is literally one of the components of being walkable, because people need to actually want to walk.
Is it really fair to compare Somerville to NYC? For example since you post on Ynews and live in Somerville, there's a high chance you work at MIT or one of the offices at Kendall. It's almost like someone who lives on 70th street in NYC, and works on 55th saying "NYC is perfectly walkable, most weeks I can get everywhere I need to by just walking." I.e. I don't really know whether it's worth talking about small towns or neighborhoods in the context of this thread.
In terms of density, yeah, I think they are comparable. At least, as much as any other place in the US is comparable to NYC. Somerville's astounding density is one of my favorite facts, since it seems so neighborhood-y to walk through. Somerville is the most dense area in the US outside of the metropolitan areas of NYC, LA, and Miami. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
The GP's point was that we should look at extremes between super dense cities and super sparse cities, and Somerville fits nicely there.
It would also be illegal to build almost any of Somerville as it exists using current building codes, in Somerville. Discussion from a year and a half ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11918230
My street in Somerville, MA has a WalkScore (91) that's higher than the average score for New York city (89), yet every building in my neighborhood is detached and three stories tall. I have a back yard with grass. Not a big one, but it feels nothing like lower Manhattan. And I can walk or bike to literally everything I need in a given week.
People equate "crowded" and "ugly" with "walkable" when it's just not accurate. Being more green and more attractive is literally one of the components of being walkable, because people need to actually want to walk.