This is part of why I love visiting Japan, so much nature scattered throughout otherwise urban areas. Lot's of other places in the world like it as well. Makes me jealous since I love in the concrete wasteland that is Phoenix.
I actually have a different experience in Arizona. The masterplan communities here are great at prioritizing community space. My neighborhood is connected by an interior park-like trail that twists and winds for 22miles. Most houses are within 2 blocks of an entrance to the trail system, and there are two separate k-12 schools attached to the trails so kiddos can ride their scooters/bikes to school in the morning.
There’s also some of the best hiking in the world around here. The camelback ridge line is awesome, a bunch of abandoned mines with surrounding settlements to go explore, etc. and it’s only 45minutes to the rim where, thanks to the jump in elevation, you start seeing more green.
Lucky! I'm happy to have my house given the real estate situation these days, but I'm definitely in a "poorer" area :) Can't get anywhere green / nature without some sort of car.
Part of the reason I am jealous of these other countries is there isn't as much of a divide between who gets the nice / and who is relegated to the commuting "concrete wasteland" as I phrased it. There's a strong sense of community / wanting everyone to have access. I'd love for our cities to start investing in the same way so everyone can reap the benefits (which I think are numerous, it has crazy dividends and life long impacts). Hard to push that here though.
Sweden is pretty similar, lots and lots of nature with urban areas scattered on it.
Stockholm, as an example, does it very well: a dense but small city-centre with lots of parks and greenery with the remaining sprawl outside the centre being scattered urban areas in the middle of the green with great public transportation connections.
Stockholm is almost cheating though, with all the water flowing through the city.
What's impressive though is that Stockholm manages to keep (most of) that water clean, and you can go swimming in the city center, without ever visiting a swimming pool!
Take a stroll around the intersection of north Randolph road and north 14th street. Randomly stumbled upon this when I was visiting Phoenix and it was a nice surprise. Overall I would say that concrete wasteland is a bit too harsh, at least the parts I walked through had a decent amount of vegetation here and there.
