>>>London, which used to be my favorite city in Europe has become a hellhole
with the widest gulf between rich and poor that I saw in Europe. Oxford
looked fit for a postcard but not much else and Exeter was like the most
revolting suburb you could imagine except English. Yuppie English. <<<
I do not mind yuppies that much - I give them generally a Mencken treatment - i.e. watching them like zoo animals, which can be amusing. But otherwise they can be easily avoided simply by not fraternizing with them. Moreover, they have some usefulness in the form of the so-called "neighborhood effect" (e.g. clean streets, a good variety of shopping within a walking distance). It is the lumpen that I dread more, because it is not possible to avoid them that easily - they are loud, aggressive and obnoxious, leave their shit everywhere, steal from you, and have a very negative neighborhood effect.
But what matters more to me is not the presence or absence of this or that group (which is true of any place on Earth) but something far more fundamental - the organization of space. This affects every living organism, not just human, albeit it is affected by culture. There is something that I viscerally hate about sprawled, low rise and low population density spaces. I am like that deep see fish that suffocates when taken to shallow waters. I grew in a city - not a metropolis - but a city with relatively high population density, relatively well developed and dense infrastructure, where most things are accessible either on foot or by transit. I cannot stand small towns and rural areas - I find them suffocating and depressing. This has nothing to do with the quality of life, human relations, etc. - just the organization of space. Other people may react in the same way to big cities - it is visceral not rational.
Unfortunately for me, most settlements in the US are sprawled and low density - even the cities, especially in the South. Baltimore is pretty sprawled - it is really a big suburb without suburban amenities but with urban problems. It has a fairly rich cultural scene by most standards and it is pretty diverse - and I generally appreciate that. It is the organization of the physical space (sprawl and fragmentation) and the necessity to travel long distances to do everyday business that I find uncomfortable - albeit not as bad as suburbs where most people live. So ideally I would like to live in NYC because of its organization of space. Baltimore's organization of physical space is not what would be my first choice, but it is far, far more preferable to burbs and small towns - despite its lumpen (btw, some piece of shit broke into my car again a few days ago - the window that he broke cost more than the CD that he stole - am I still supposed to feel any empathy toward this element?).
In short, my attitudes toward life in the US are affected to a large degree by reaction to the physical organization of space that prevails in this country. The low density sprawl that prevails here make me very anxious and depressed. I prefer the high urban density of Europe. As far as quality of life or organization of economy are concerned - I think they are generally comparable and differences in thatregard are simply to insignificant to explain my visceral reactions.
Btw, proxemics, which is the study of the organization of space and its effect on human and animal behavior is a quite interesting but under-appreciated subject. Somehow, people prefer moral stories to materialistic explanations.
Wojtek