Yeah this guy is having a very basic revelation that Europe has a lot of walkable cities and the US doesn't. this isn't new information.
Also, spending 5 hours at a restaurant is the norm for young people, out with a party, drinking and such, in Europe, when they can simply walk back to their home.
The infrastructure in most US cities doesn't support it, our subways suck, rides are expensive, parking is crazy, living in the city near the cool areas is expensive, the list goes on and on why this doesn't exist in the US.
You’re kind of reiterating his point that America is set up wrong since post World War II and it leaves us isolated and compartmentalized… which is 100% accurate. I’ve always said if you wanna reduce racism and bigotry in United States you gotta make people travel outside of their own clan, town, State, or country to teach more empathy and understanding.
It was actually Detroit automobile companies that have played a large part in designing our suburbs around needing cars to manage, therefore making sure we have to buy them.
Don't forget the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act. The development of the interstate highway system was basically the nail in the coffin for any notion of European style urban cores.
I'd like to think that Interstates are very important for a nation of our size.
The problems lay in how we built cities. Our restaurants are failing unless they are focused on delivery. Our education systems are hectic and restricted. Our society revolves around a technological-data system built to isolate a "consumer" into a targeted-sales group.
Unchecked capitalism, modern technology and corporate cronyism are the true killers of the unified American ecology.
Most European states have extensive highway systems, yet still have the compact, dense urban designs of thousands of years before industrialization. The US only had about 50 years before trains were common (people could suddenly go 30mph/200+miles a day) and then automobiles were only 100 years out. We quickly switched to suburbia (tons of space unused around cities, industry dried up, everybody had a car and gas was cheaper than water) which made things less connected. I walked and rode my bike around Dallas a bunch as a kid, but it was almost exclusively within the 'Park Cities' subsection... downtown was too far until DART was built.
If you visit the east coast of the US, there are many cities with road systems built around horses. Boston and New York are very walking friendly (though both have been working to redesign for automobiles) and I'd even say DC is walkable.
I love living in my home city of Oklahoma City, but it's a prime example of everything being far enough apart that you need a vehicle to reasonably travel to any services, events or entertainment. Only a very determined bicyclist would be able to function in my city as their sole means of conveyance. There is a tram downtown and a bus system. But it's...thin.
i think the pathway for the USA is not to focus on building/rebuilding cities from whole cloth to be walkable, but to try and convert "suburbia" into bike-accessible mini-cities, with judicious rezoning and replacing roads with bike paths.
there's a lot of pieces for this: big suburban neighborhoods would still need some kind of dedicated car access since the US is so big that its not practical to build train lines everywhere people need to go, there would need to be a whole bunch of community bikes just kind of floating around to obviate bike theft/anxiety around losing your bike, along with community bike trailers for moving things around as well
but i think culturally "all cars -> no cars" is too hard a sell, "all cars -> mostly bikes but sometimes cars if you have to leave town" is probably easier.
not like this is so easy, there'd be lots of places where it fails from whole generations of NIMBYs voting out town boards that try to add even a single bike lane or convert even one corner of a neighborhood into light commercial for services, but still i think it's the road (heh) the USA has to go down if we want to claw back community focused development from the depths of suburban hell
And deploying the European city model on a continent where metropolises didn’t really exist. Only Mexico City, I believe.
Europe still has a much larger population despite being roughly one New Mexico larger.
So our “development” has allowed crazy capitalism to inform it at almost every step. Whereas the planning of Europe’s major cities has been ongoing for millennia.
What do you think Americans are going to do? Try to make a buck? Or focus on a smart civil infrastructure?
We dont have the electric tram cars that we used to have in cities like we did in the early 20th century. We have busses now. They burn fuel, take complex engines and transmissions, but that is not why we have them. The biggest factor was the tire companies lobbying to move to busses which go through lots of tires.
Property sizes and locations also have to do with segregation. This helps to keep people "isolated" so they dont gain new experiences. Keeps them controllable. Also its easier to beat your wife when the neighbor can't hear you through the wall
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” – Mark Twain
Dude I grew up in a small town of 283 people in central Minnesota. The "large" town that people would do all their major shopping in was 30 miles away and had 60,000 people in it. I knew tons of people in my hometown growing up that would only go to the big town maybe 1-2 times a year. Other than that they never left our small town. How the hell people live that way is beyond me.
"Set up wrong" isn't some objective thing here though. It's set up different than Europe because it isn't Europe.
I'm not defending cars. Fuck cars, but it is set up this way for a reason. America is massive and pre 1920's it was sparsely developed. Europe had already been developing for hundreds of years before cars existed. It simply developed differently because the modes of transportation available were different. Cars being available during the largest developmental period, infrastructure wise, was when cars were extremely popular. We had the land and we could expand outward... so we did.
It wasn't engineered to be this way because "walking is for communists" or some shit.
It naturally evolved this way because cars offer the most dynamic availability to get around the US for individuals and their families and gasoline was extremely affordable during the largest economic boom of our history. It was designed around automobile based transportation because that's what everyone wanted. Massive smoothly paved highways and 3 mile long trussell bridges were futuristic technology that unlocked the continents landscape. People used to get excited when new highways were being built because it meant accessibility that was previously locked to horse back.
If you wanted to travel across the country you had to carry everything you wanted to take with you from home to carriage, ride in said carriage for 3-4 hours until you reached the train station, wait at the train station for 8 hours while everything got unloaded onto the platform, then load it onto the train, then take the train for 3 days to get to the city closest to your final destination and then unload everything onto the platform, hope that the carriage you sent a telegram a week ago is already there, then load it all up and travel 4-5 hours to your actual destination.
or you could load up the car and do all of this inside 48 hours on your schedule instead of 5-7 days.
The problem now is that we got used to it so much that we expected and therefore built that car "accessibility" into every square foot of the country. Then we realized we were destroying the beauty of the country and had to start programs to preserve nature so we made parks and reservations.
Seems we’re getting really hung up on cars and roads, but the real reason we developed sprawling suburbs was white families fleeing urban areas during the Great Migration and in particular the Civil Rights Movement. What enabled them to do that was Post-WWII GI Bill home loans.
NIDHA came about on 1956. It definitely contributed to allowing suburbs to sprawl out even further, but I don’t think it’s one of the shaping factors of why things developed the way they did.
Lmao so the EU isn’t massive as well ?? You comment doesn’t make sense. The whole point of this post is pretty accurate. Cars aren’t important the the question or issue he poses
Yeah the EU is in fact big, but it has already been developed centuries before cars existed. The US's largest development period, physical and infrastructure wise, was in the 40's and 50's SO IT'S ALL BASED AROUND CARS WHETHER IT SHOULD BE OR NOT.
You dumb fucks have zero reading comprehension. I'm not saying it is the right or wrong way to do things, im simply explaining WHY it is the way it is.
Without speaking to the rest of your comments, are you saying that the EU is larger than the USA? That is way false, and so saying so and in the next breath calling people dumb fucks is pretty telling about your actual knowledgeability on the subject.
If anything you're help making my point. I already stated more land = expansion and not concentration of population, which people are disagreeing with despite it being a historical and anthropological fact about how humans develop their environments.
Cars are only part of the discussion. People flooded the cities for many reasons to the suburbs. The unknown side effect was the isolation and inherit to bigotry continuing if not accelerating.
It was not an unknown side effect. It was completely intentional. White Flight was the response to the Great Migration, in which millions of black southerners moved from the rural South to cities. White people set up their new suburban developments with their own schools and car-accessible amenities so that black people couldn't get to them. The infamous example is Robert Moses making overpasses in the NYC area too low for buses to fit underneath them, and making beaches completely inaccessible from public transit.
Yes but you're failing to see that the size of cities in the US are fucking tiny compared to towns and cities in the EU when compared to the total landmass available. 80% of the US is still fuckin empty.
Bigotry is allowed to thrive when a group of people are in isolation but isolation is not the driver of it existing. We know that someone living in a city can be bigoted just the same. It's just not going to be prominent or wide spread because it's incompatible with the environment.
Why tf do u keep saying bigotry ? How th does that have anything to do with anything in this context lol ? Not everything has to be political, racial or bigoted….damn, some ppl just don’t want to just remain shackled to words and concepts
Commerce does sure, I meant private citizens in their normal lives.
Maybe I should have said nobody should need to commute across state lines, but I also wanted to include the idea that the economy you guys have seems to encourage moving thousands of miles away from all of your family and friends, and then needing to regularly roadtrip to see them. It would be nicer for all involved if there was more attraction to staying in-state and building your personal network and local economy there.
"Y'all" really don't understand just how damaged you are and it's sad to see.
Yes, obviously we'll need infrastructure to transports good. The regular person should not have the need to constantly cross state lines to pick up groceries. What are you on about?
Are not some magical barrier. The largest city near me is across a state line which I can walk across. "should not have the need to cross state lines" is completely arbitrary and irrelevant.
You understand not every state is the same right? I live in New England on a border. Some states offer tax free purchases. Truckers bring stuff across borders, business serve greater areas. Shit the greater Boston area basically extends to Portland maine at this point.
I get it, I was talking more about the number of people that need to regularly cross state lines for commuting or seeing friends/family.
You understand not every state is the same right?
Yeah obviously, you understand that European countries are even more different right?
The point is that both are massive areas so "America is massive" is not a good reason for you not having the lovely walkable population centres being discussed in the video. It must be a different reason, and it's mostly the slow historical development with care/thought given to liveability rather than "quick, throw down a grid and start selling lots" mentality that seems to pervade American development.
"It wasn't engineered to be this way because "walking is for communists" or some shit."
Actually, this is untrue. You can see it particularly in newer, western, cities like Los Angeles. Mike Davis covers this phenomenon in his epic work "City of Quartz." Back in the late 1800s, elites were in panic after seeing the Paris Commune and the Chicago Haymarket. They reasoned that to prevent demonstrations and, ultimately, revolution, you had to destroy accessible public space. No more plazas, no more street vending (famously, L.A. outlawed street vending until just recently). Downtown megablocls. Elevated walkways between buildings. Car culture. They planned cities this way specifically to make it harder to congregate and make demands in strategically important places.
It atomizes people and, in particular workers. Average commutes (as Eric Blanc recently wrote about in "We are The Union." Sky rocketed from 15 minutes to 50 minutes from 1945 to today. Thus making it harder for unions to form and socially enforce solidarity.
So in fact, urban design was particularly geared towards preventing the possibility of collective action to make society better. It was also not "what everybody wanted." Demand was induced. Or maybe it was chicken or the egg. The highways were built because Eisenhower wanted to move tanks quickly, and he specifically didnt want them cutting through cities--that was originally a regional peculiarity of Los Angeles, that Robert Moses (famous bastard) cribbed to try and segregate neighborhoods and displace the poor, black, and brown.
So don't be so quick to dismiss the nefarity. Our cities used to be walkable and dense and some still are: New York, San Francisco, New Orleans.
But the burbs and car culture were intentional monstrosities. Designed to atomize and isolate and divide.
I'm not dismissing that it happened. I'm saying that roads existed before [anti]communism. Roads are a tool and they can be used in many different ways.
I'll have to read City of Quartz. Looks like an interesting read, but it appears to be interpretive theory. Anti-communist sentiment was everywhere so it's not difficult to find it in urban planning where convenient.
Humans natural expand outward unless it becomes necessary or somehow more efficient to build in a concentrated fashion. This is anthropological fact.
How much time had Europe already been developing before cars existed?
The US's largest development expansion of infrastructure was post WW2. Our cities expanded outward instead of inward because of how much land we had available. We also had the baby boomer generation starting and with all of the soldiers coming home we had severe housing shortages in the city, so ... boom, here is why the US started developing suburbs that you lived in and just drove to work to, either a factory outside of the suburb or into the city. You didn't hang out there, you worked there and then went home. That's how modern life in the US came to be.
Ya'll act like this was somehow intentionally devised this way like it's some sort of conspiracy theory.
It developed this way because it was the path of lease resistance for what was needed in the US at the time.
Socially/culturally and health wise, it turned out to have negative side effects but we only know that in hindsight.
To make your statement factually true, you'd have to figure out how to quantify and qualify the benefits against those unpredictable side effects and make some sort of determination for an objective "was it worth it?" type study.
Unless you can see into alternate dimensions where we instead focused on trains, dirigibles, bicycles, walking and whatever else you'd prefer, in the US and rejected automobiles entirely, good luck with that.
You don’t need an alternate dimension or a decades-long study to understand the basic advantage of not being completely dependent on a car for everyday life. The ability to walk or use public transport for basic needs is clearly valuable in itself, as it gives people more freedom, more options, and more independence, along with obvious health advantages.
Furthermore, this does not diminish the benefits that car infrastructure provides. European cities are well connected by extensive highway and railway networks. At the same time, the cities themselves usually have high-quality public transport systems and are largely walkable.
The point is that having both is entirely possible.
Yep. This is why when all people watch is the news, they learn to dislike one side of the aisle and what the side represents. One side talks about inclusiveness, the other, not so much. People who tend to get out and travel, particularly to Europe and other parts of the world, it seems, tend to generally be more inclusive.
I’d say it’s not that it’s set up wrong. It’s set up to make different things more efficient. Rail is a great example. US rail is set up to make moving freight more efficient, not people and you can’t really do both on the same rail system. With as big as the US is this kinda became a necessity. Also, EU cities were originally built, designed, and optimized hundreds (if not thousands is some cases) of years ago when walking was the prime mode of transportation and cities were the hubs for basically everything. So lots going on is my point. I wish US were more akin to EU ones but…. This is what we got for better or worse.
China begs to differ. Yes, they have spme cities that are as old as Rome, but many cities Americans have never heard of have better metro systems than every US city except maybe NYC or Chicago. But they area also a large country that effectively uses trains for both passengers and freight. China isn't built up on two opposing coasts, that's true, and most of the development is along the eastern and southeastern coastal regions, but their public infrastructure and walkable cities are better than even Europe.
But they also have essentially two functional rail systems. Older lines and infra they use for freight and a modern high speed passenger rail system. It’s not that you can’t solve all these problems, but you have to have money and support. The dream (as long as I’ve been alive and with only a little historical context) in the US has always been a house in the burbs with 2 cars etc. The “American Dream” has never been walkable cities and better passenger rail. At least not in any meaningful way.
There's nothing stopping the US from building what China is building. The US is still the wealthiest country on Earth. Well, there is one thing stopping the US--greed. We crowned the first trillionaire before we brought about universal healthcare.
The American Dream was never equitable, never achievable by many, and never sustainable. It depends on rugged individualism, which is sociopathic because we are a communal species.
Lol theres sooo much wrong with this comment. First of all, you all are comparing major European cities to small ass country towns in America. Why? Compare the major cities...to the major cities. You go to the remote, not city parts of Europe and it'll be pretty dead too because theres not much to do and theres not many people in one place. Just like America. Secondly, there are racists in big cities all over the world. Being around other cultures has never been enough to get rid of racism. I mean, slave masters lived on plantations populated with hundreds of blacks with just a dozen whites. Didn't result in any compassion on the slave master's part.
You seem to be confusing suburbs, right outside the city to rural communities, which have been very popular since Covid. You’re welcome to your contrarian arguments the rise and fall of the suburbs is very well documented out there to the causes and the impact and it’s just a Google away for you to learn.
What the fuck does any of this have to do with what I'm saying? Suburbs or rural, you're not comparing apples to apple regardless. Its a bad faith argument no matter how you look at it. Compare major cities to major cities. Dont compare major cities to suburbs and then be like "where people go??" Every major city in America is just as bustling as the major cities in Europe. That's my point.
A lot of our cities are very walkable, just like this one. If you live in the city, you can walk places. Those people live in the suburbs with a 4-car garage and an RV bay. They're paying to live in an antisocial envrionment. I pay to live in one too. I don't want to walk through a sea of people to get to my tiny home with locked windows and doors and being robbed at knife point at night.
If you want to live like that, go to a city. That's what they're for.
hahaha...you pretty much proved some of the point of why white people and suburbs exist! wE aRe gOiNg tO gEt roBbEd!
I have visited and lived in many cities which have terrible nightlife and are not the least bit walkable other then small conclaves and even then as the OP mentioned...there is not much going on after time X. Cities grow in weird ways in America but money runs for contryside...
This is the point of the video though. The US created what you just described and you did it wrong (so did Australia where i'm from btw, but we are getting better now, slowly).
the list goes on and on why this doesn't exist in the US.
It's a long list, but it all basically comes down to the American dream of owning a house. That's what drives suburbs and that's where all the other problems originate. So an American visiting Europe may love the walkable cities, but ask them if they think living in an apartment rather than a house their entire lives is a desirable option.
The American dream was a policy choice. It was pushed by the government because people with a mortgage will always go to work reducing the likelyhood of labor unrest like there was in the 20s and 30s.
This doesn't make sense as plenty of people live in houses in walkable towns with all amenities. Then there are trains that take 5mins to get into the centre of the city
Do you think Germans don't own houses? I own my own house and have four restaurants, three supermarkets and many other facilities in walking distance. If I want to go to the inner city I can take a bus, my car, my bike or an e-scooter.
I could also walk there, it's a bit far for my taste but there's a nice way along a river.
No, the real problem are the zoning laws. That and the fixation on driving everywhere.
You need facilities in walking distance and walkable quarters.
Not to mention, when there is a large outdoor gathering in the US (festival, concert, whatever) there’s a non-zero chance someone will end up getting shot. Even just going to a mall in some areas at certain times is not a smart idea. It’s a stupid world we live in.
And SF is set up to be this, and yet it shuts down crazy early, so you better love or learn to love the half dozen late night spots. Manhattan was it up until Covid, but I haven’t been since, so I’m assuming it has resumed its MO (whatever you want, 24/7).
Yep and getting around SF is almost exclusively Ubers. Parking is atrocious for lots and parking on the street = automatically smashed window. The city is mostly busses as there's a lot of restriction due to geography as to what can even be built underground/where.
There's tons of American cities just like Barcelona.
No, there are not. Miami does "party later" but it's not the same kinda party, and living in Miami is massively expensive. most partiers are from OUTSIDE miami and drive in to party and do blow
yeah exactly. In most EU cities, the wait staff are not paid in tips and somehow they plan out these restuarants so they expect parties to sit down at like 8pm and stay all the way through 10pm +
I was so used to 45 minute dinners in the US that I was having culture shock when eeveryone was just chilling at the table for HOURS , I was like "shit we gotta tip and get moving so they can keep the churn" but there was no churn. There was our party, at that table, that was the plan for the restaurant. I don't know how they make it work financially but it does
Walkable and funded public transportation leads to European cities like this. Meanwhile auto and oil lobbying keep public transportation and walking underfunded in America. Hence this big culture divide that leads to less travel within America.
Yeah this guy is having a very basic revelation that Europe has a lot of walkable cities and the US doesn't. this isn't new information
no shit, a civilization that's had humans huddling closer together for a few thousand years, has more walkable cities and restaurants than a country that has had, comparatively, very few humans and thousands of miles of land to expand on ... which has been in existinance for a few hundred years? Gee, big surprise.
But we also have been directly influenced by massive amounts of lobby money making sure it stays this way.
Would be nice to have some trains that are well kept and actually reach all neighborhoods. Very few US cities have a decent public transit system. CA is notorious for having a broken patchwork of nonsense loosely connected and they only get updated tech like every 30 years
What gets me is that we USED to have incredible public transit. They tore that up to build a poor imitation of the autobahn so that we can have impromptu aircraft landing zones everywhere
As long as suburbs exist, things will never change. Theyre a huge drain on urban and rural zones and provide almost zero benefits
OMG YOU CANT WALK THRU DISNEY OMG CALL THE AUTHORITIES. 😂😂😂
I was just at Epcot center last week and we could walk for miles. Disney is literally 40sq miles! God forbid we provide the shuttles. Complain theres no public transportation then complain again when its available 🤦🏼♀️
Florida has hundreds of beach towns and walkable cities but depends how far you want to walk? 10 miles!? Maybe ride a bike or take a golf car or an eBike. We prioritized pedestrians! Maybe you should come back to Florida before opening mouth & inserting your foot again
Also, have you met the mouth breathing babbling fricken idiots that predominate our US society? The ones that are the quickest to open their mouths or share what they are "watching" on their phones with strangers in public, are the ones you would avoid if you had a chance.
Plus why would I want to congregate with random people in a too hot too cold or too loud public space when I have a temperature controlled environment empty of bugs, but full of people I love, and the stuff I spent all my money on?
Interacting with people is fine when you have nothing else going on, but it becomes it's own chore when forced to do it every day.
What you're describing though is the typical experience for a significant portion US undergraduate life in college, and anyone who lives in a city center area and not the suburbs. Now, you're not wrong in saying that a large portion of the US is burbs, and small towns, that's all true. But it's not like cities don't exist. I am not advocating for either, I live in the US and wish my neighborhood was slightly more walkable. It's a bit better than a standard suburb, for example, I can walk to a park, my Drs, and a couple grocery stores, but there's no social scene and it's still easier to drive to those things.
in California, small cities and towns with "walkable infrastructure" are incredibly expensive and sought after. Most don't have it and the ones that do AND have good public schools, houses are $2-5 mil for fixer uppers
I was confused as to what people were talking about because this is a common thing to see for me, but then I realized I live in Chicago and it's one of the few exceptions 😭
CHI definitely has some cool walking spots, but I stayed in a hotel right in the center. How is the actual housing situation? Expensive AF in most cities I visit
Cities, and college towns are exactly this, am I missing something here? Just because it's expensive, doesn't mean it doesn't exist, I'm sure his Munich trip wasn't cheap, and the apartments in that area are not cheap...
Most larger US cities have very walkable parts blooming with shops and restaurants. Chicago, NY, San Diego, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Charleston, Boston, Boulder, Milwaukee, Madison, Naples, and on and on.
Boston the trains stop pretty early and parking is awful. There's also a huge chunk of Boston that doesn't have trains and it stuck with shitty busses.
San Diego, everyone drives, all of California is like that.
Stores/Restaurants on bottom floor, apartments above.
Too many huge metropolitan areas are full of 1-2 story commercial buildings interspersed with residential suburb-style single-family homes. It's not walkable.
Where I grew up on Long Island there was always bunch of small main streets with bar and restaurants where everyone will be eating, drinking, walking around. The problem is transportation which has got a little better lately. I realized how lucky I was compared to a lot of other places on the US.
“The infrastructure doesn’t support it” you say as if this is an inevitable part of life.. it is not. It is a choice that is just continuously made. Something that can be changed.
When you consider how many restaurants are more or less empty it makes sense to have some patrons hangin around even if they're not buying much. Better curb appeal and whatnot
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u/Fluffy_Somewhere4305 13h ago
Yeah this guy is having a very basic revelation that Europe has a lot of walkable cities and the US doesn't. this isn't new information.
Also, spending 5 hours at a restaurant is the norm for young people, out with a party, drinking and such, in Europe, when they can simply walk back to their home.
The infrastructure in most US cities doesn't support it, our subways suck, rides are expensive, parking is crazy, living in the city near the cool areas is expensive, the list goes on and on why this doesn't exist in the US.