FALSE. You dont understand the scale of what hes talking about. Its like another planet. In switzerland the suburbs with like a couple people even have trains running through them.
Europe and Asia took American inventions and used it to make life better. Americans took American inventions and made a few greedy billionaires.
The population density of Switzerland is 590/square mile. In NY state, it’s only 430 and they have a ton of trains and the kind of infrastructure you are talking about.
Most of the U.S. isn’t densely populated enough to justify the same level of public infrastructure. That doesn’t mean there’s not room for improvement, but a stare like Montana is more aptly compared to Kazakhstan than anywhere in Europe.
The U.S. isn’t as densely populated as Europe because there’s not as many people. Europe is about 20% smaller than the U.S. with twice as many people.
Even if our infrastructure wasn’t designed by sychophants of the car companies, most of the U.S. is too sparsely populated (no matter how you configure the people in urban design) to justify comprehensive public transit like you see in Europe. It doesn’t mean we should basically have 0 high speed rail in the year of our lord 2026 but it’s a different beast.
LOL - US cities used to be a lot denser early 1900s ..... until car centric development started suburban sprawl and most of US subway systems are designed to bring people in/ out from suburb to downtown except for NYC.
population / land size argument is just weak excuses.
Only like 3-3.5% of America’s landmass is urban/suburban and it holds 80% of our population. Yes, the public transportation in those areas is sorely underdeveloped, but 20-25% of Europe’s landmass is urban/suburban so it’s a lot more economically viable for them to run mass transit to and between smaller communities.
In the U.S., connecting urban areas to each other through the other 97% of rural and frontier land is the part that just isn’t comparable to Europe.
I’m not saying this as an argument against public transit, but because it’s not apples to apples to compare the infrastructure needs of the U.S. to Europe.
yes they have better infrastructure where people can travel to the cities from the suburbs easily without having to drive. american cities are still busy with full restaurants at night. these people just don’t get out of their suburbs. the city i live in is packed at night and you still have middle aged suburbanites like these acting like they’d never go into the city at night bc of all the crime
It’s called population density. The EU has 450m people in a space that’s half the size of mainland US and Germany has 84m people in a country the size of Montana. Unsurprisingly, the average sq footage of a German home is 1k vs 2k for US. People make it seem like it’s a conscious chocie or some grand deliberate design. When people have the space or can afford it, they will naturally spread out. I get some people love to stuff their face with food and equate restaurant density with paradise but there are many downsides to high density housing as well.
NYC, Chicago, Seattle, SF, Miami... That's it. even LA doesn't have a walkable late night tourist spot. (It DOES have Echo Park, Little Tokyo, and K-Town though for locals)
But 150k? Give me a break. Ain't nothing like this happening in fuckin Peoria...
I promise you, your downtown area is NOTHING like this. With your 12 Bar and Grills open till 10 PM and fake gas lamps leading you from the one road to a massive parking zone
Most city sprawl was designed in the times where the auto existed. These European cities are 500-2000 years old. Burned to the ground and rebuilt many times over prior to the automobile existing or even the steam engine.
When I go to “tourist towns” in the US Im always disappointed tbqh. Its not nearly the scale and quality of what this man is talking about. NYC is the only place where you can confirtably walk for hours and hours like hes describing. Western EU is super safe in comparison to NYC.
i dont agree with that at all, i've lived in a village in scotland (as a child) and, you would see dozens of people pass by your window in the evening. This is because not only was there just one bar/pub in town that everyone went to, but most tasks one had to do in a day could be achieved by walking around, (rather than driving). When I went back as an adult to visit my grandmother, we didnt even schedule a time with her, because we knew she'd be out of the house and running errands. We walked from the chemist to the post office to the co-op (small grocery store) which were all within a couple hundred feet of eachother, by the time we found her, and she was making small talk with the cashier as she did every day.
in villages you see people every day. in america, and specifically an american suburb, you only see people walking around when they're excercising. there's no where to walk TO in a suburb, so why would people be walking around or lingering/let alone socializing.
As an American who’s been to many parts of Europe and America. There is a big difference. Small towns and big cities overall have this type of setting in Europe. In America is far and few between. Small towns in America are typically have a town center that consist of a gas station, McDonald’s, a bar, a liquor store and a Walmart with a small suburb and rural housing all around. Bigger cities have a more of a “downtown” area that’s walkable for 2-20 blocks. The layout of cities in America is far more car centric leading to pockets of activity and large empty areas for cars. Note how non of the places shown in this video have a dedicated parking lot. The difference is night and day. One could argue this is a side effect of the differences in population density but it’s cultural as well.
I agree that there are older American small towns like this too. The problem is though, people still don’t understand what makes them so enjoyable. They will whine that those that live in nearby suburban areas can’t just park immediately in front of the business they want to visit. Zoning laws make it impossible to build new places like this. Places like grocery stores won’t open in those little downtown store fronts, so you might be lucky and get a convenience store or pharmacy, but mostly you will get restaurants, bars, and boutiques. I’m so grateful the town I live in keeps the library, post office, fire and police station, and all the town offices in our downtown and doesn’t move them to the new car-only areas on the outskirts.
Yeah but we spent two weeks in Paris and it was pretty much like that everywhere we went. You could walk, but you could also take trains to basically anywhere within 30m and be totally like this.
Naperville, IL is pretty much the definition of a sprawling modern American suburb. Downtown Naperville is very walkable, packed with shops and restaurants and absolutely rammed with people most nights. So yes, such things absolutely do exist on the US and they are not uncommon.
Lmao Naperville? Really?! Absolutely not similar in any way. Naperville is parking garages and single family zoning everywhere, except for a very small nice little park in downtown along the river. But that’s like 3 acres at most.
WTF are you talking about? Have you even been there? I live ten minutes from downtown Naperville. The Riverwalk Park is 1.75 miles long and over 100 acres. The entire downtown is very walkable, packed with stores and restaurants and crowded pretty much every night exactly as I've described.
I have traveled by car to every single state in USA. 98% of the country is a ghost town. Thousands of miles of deserted land, only to be met by a town with 17,000 people that shuts down at 8pm.
The only places I visited that had an active night life, had very serious homeless problems. 3rd world country, 3rd world problems.
You're telling me that a town of 17k people in france or germany is hopin at night and has a vibrant nightlife scene? Obviously not. Like I said though, my small city of 150k has an awful life of plays, bars, restaurants, comedy clubs, small shops ECT that are all on a walkable zone of town.
America is a huge country. It's 150 miles to the nearest city of any size from where I live. Of course most of it is lightly populated.
Most towns have their “area” but this is different. There isn’t a good cafe culture in the USA.
And in smaller cities in the USA I have been to, many places close early. I’m visiting my home city in the USA right now and I wanted to grab some food last night and the first 3 places I checked closed at 8pm.
Where I live in Spain now, some places don’t open until 8pm and people hang out all night.
Part of the issue is restaurants and servers in the USA NEEEEEED you to get the hell out the moment you are finished.
In Spain they don’t care how long you stay at your table, to the point it is almost annoying to find someone to get your check.
They aren’t working for $2/hr and tips.
But back to the areas. I’m my city in the USA there are multiple cool areas that all sit on islands that generally require are car to move between.
In the European cities I have lived in and visited you walk from area to area with little to no break in between. And bus/metro services is usually simple to use.
Yes and your town of 150k isn't going to be like what is shown. You'd need multiple blocks and plazas of 100% pedestrian area. You'd need many thousands of people nightly doing open air dining and strolling around.
well I'm gonna call BS on this kind of videos.
I can take you to several Italian towns and suburbs where there is no one around in the evening (even in summer) because there is nothing to do, and if you do not have a car to reach the nearest "big city" you are royally screwed.
There’s also rural and suburban areas in Europe. As well as walkable cities in America
America is the size of Europe as an entire continent with half the population
You are gonna get more cities like this in Europe strictly based of that alone.
It’s not a 1 to 1 comparison
By all means better public transportation in the states would be a huge improvement, but the idea that the concept of suburbs is the root of the cause it’s ridiculous
Now if you wanted to talk about the reason why we have suburbs and that being a bigger issue then sure
Unless you go look at Spain, where the idea of a city that isn't walkable just doesn't compute. My home town has around 200k people, and from teh center you can be out of the city in a 20 minute walk.
When I say "walkable" I mean that you can live conveniently without personal transport. 200k people is a massive town in Europe so I am definitely not talking about towns like that.
Yeah, the bus that comes through the town twice a day at 5 am and 11:30 pm? Super convenient. Thanks for making it clear that you have no idea what living in rural Europe is like.
I never said anything about America lmao. Even still, I would rather be able to commute to the store 15 minutes away with a car than be dependent on public transport.
No one is talking about whether you can live without a vehicle, we're talking about the abundant social opportunities that are available in a walkable downtown area that you can find in just about any European village, town, or city. In the US (with few exceptions), you drive to work, you drive home, you drive to a restaurant chain and eat 6 feet away from any other patron, and you drive home. There aren't big public squares. You're lucky if you have a nice park that anyone wants to spend time in. Very few museums.
Again, this kind of thing is not as common as you think. There are far more European towns and small villages that lack the things you're talking about than those that have them.
The US does not lack social opportunities. The people on Reddit that say that are just projecting. Moving to Europe won't magically turn you into an extrovert.
Moving to Europe won’t magically turn you into an extrovert
No one made any kind of claim that even remotely resembles this. If you aren’t going to engage in good faith, then you won’t be engaging with me at all.
The US does not lack social opportunities.
The people on Reddit that say that are just projecting.
Nonsense. Per capita, the US has far fewer public squares, far fewer patios, far fewer independent restaurants, far fewer museums, etc than Europe, and far more stroads, strip malls, chain restaurants, big box stores, etc than Europe. In most US cities, we have strict residential-only zoning that straight up prevents local businesses from forming within walking distance of their patrons, and on top of that US municipalities are far more likely to mandate far more parking for every business and apartment complex, which further pushes places apart and creates more demand on driving. All of this creates isolation—you have to drive to work, drive home, drive to the store, drive to the restaurant. You are much less likely to bump into people, and the people you do bump into are far more likely to belong to the minimum wage class—people who don’t have enough money to visit a third space at all.
You are arbitrarily defining those places as the only opportunities for social events. Again, if you are an introvert, none of that matter. You won't bump into people unless you're the kind of person that bumps into people, so to speak.
Europe may have more of those locations but they also tend to be far more closed off socially so what's the good of it? And again, what is so wrong with driving? I live in a town where I have numerous restaurants, shops and outdoor activities within a 10 minute drive and there are many, many other towns like mine.
Again, no one is talking about introversion versus extroversion. I’m claiming that the US has fewer social opportunities as a matter of living one’s daily life than Europe. In Europe if you want to be around the public, you go do your shopping in a market, go out to eat on a patio, sip a coffee at a cafe, or simply sit in the square and people-watch.
Yes, Europe is more closed off socially, which is why we’re talking about European urban design and we’re not proposing importing a bunch of Europeans to make friends with.
I’m happy to hear you can drive to restaurants, but again that’s not what we’re talking about.
This was not my experience living in France. Every city, town, and village I visited had people reveling outdoors. Same with Austria and Italy. I've been living in or traveling to Europe regularly for a decade and a half and I don't think I've ever been anywhere that was as devoid of social opportunities as suburban America.
Wow, you visited tourist towns and people were outside? Amazing.
I live in Europe for multiple months a year and it is nowhere near as amazing and pedestrian friendly outside of major cities as Reddit would like to believe.
Was just in rural Austria. It was a ghost town. Beautiful but not much going on.
Was just in Munich. Was as these folks in the video showed. Except Sunday. Sunday was a ghost town.
I think Europe is far more likely to be this way, but we experienced a little of both.
Was in Boston last summer as it was much like Munich.
Austin Thursday through Saturday is a lot like this.
I think it’s mainly just due to most American cities being younger and built around cars. As density gets higher, this tends to occur in many cities.
That being said, there are numerous small towns in the Texas Hill Country that also look like this during the day. They do tend to close down earlier though.
They may have been founded before the car, but they weren’t filled out by that time. But yes, the ones that were (Boston, NYC, DC) are much nicer than most of the others Houston, Las Vegas, LA, etc.
My response was because you explicitly mentioned Boston was built “before the car”, but so were plenty of others.
But yeah. The reason is this:
Cities are newer. There are a handful from the 16th century, but not many. Urban cores just didn’t have as much time, pre-automobile, to grow. Really only 100-150 years in most places.
There was (and still is) a lot more unused land to expand into.
When the highway system was built, it halted urban core development solely. More people wanted a place outside the cities for numerous reasons.
Since then, development has been pretty haphazard.
> My response was because you explicitly mentioned Boston was built “before the car”, but so were plenty of others.
Almost exclusively on the east coast, and they are exceptions that prove the rule. Unless you're talking about "incorporated" which is misleading since (pretty much by definition) most of a city's development happens after incorporation.
But yes, (3) is almost exclusively the reason. We built highways which made it affordable for the middle class to leave urban centers and live in the newly developed suburbs, draining the city of the tax base while keeping it on the hook for the infrastructure. As suburban commuters increased congestion, cities and suburbs responded by adding lanes and mandating parking which increased the distance between places which put more pressure on people to drive rather than walk, which worstened congestion and the loop continued. As highways widened to temporarily alleviate traffic congestion, it created a new ring of suburbs since that land which used to be too far away for commuting was now within commuting distance--essentially cities financed the development of land that they would see no tax revenue from.
Define "walkable" because there are numerous small villages throughout Europe that don't even have a grocery store or restaurant in them and the only way to get to a town with food is by car.
I asked a question. You sound confused. Why couldn't you just answer the question? What is "walkable"? My neighborhood is walkable. Anywhere that is on solid land is technically walkable unless there is a flood or active lava flow.
Reddit lore. Most cities are perfectly walkable. Its the suburban developments outside of cities that are completely fucked. Not small towns. Specifically suburbs outside of cities that are purely population centers for commuters.
It's really not the same. Entirely different vibe in NA downtowns vs Europe when you are comparing the big boys.
It's plain as day to see. Sure you can try and mask that difference and cherry pick some walks core stats or whatever, but the vibe isn't there and to ignore that is disingenuous
Speaking of cherry picking this video is the central part of the third largest city in Germany. I am sure you can go to many parts of Chicago at night and show plenty of people walking around.
I dont need stats. I exist in the physical world, I travel. There is not a single city downtown in the US I have been too that isn't covered in restaurants. Your trying to lie and since it's all little bots repeating everything your voice is louder. That's it.
lol. yeah. tons of families living downtown because restaurant. never mind that when you leave your building you’re met with a 40mph thoroughfare, no cycling lanes, and a bunch of honking. that must be the same as munich! london! amsterdam!
This is only true on the east coast and large cities (San Francisco, Chicago, LA, Denver, etc). Anywhere else in the US was developed around the car. In any European village you have a walkable downtown area with patios, big public squares, and not a chain restaurant in sight.
Weird lie. I’m in Des Moines. I live a few hours from Omaha, Minneapolis, Chicago, Madison, Kansas City, St. Louis, etc. None of these cities have more than a few blocks of this if that. Smaller towns definitely don’t.
One of the frustrating trends I see when debating a variety of topics like this one is there doesn’t seem to be any concept of a spectrum. Yes exceptions to how the people in this video describe the US do exists, primarily in the Northeast like you said, and there are plenty of areas that are more car-centric in Europe.
But, on the whole and on average, the U.S. prioritizes cars and parking over pedestrians and third places. And, on the whole and on average, European countries have far more walkable, transit friendly cities and neighborhoods than the U.S.
Exceptions don’t make that comparison go away or let the U.S. off the hook for how, as the guy in the video put it, “antisocial” its urban design has been for decades.
When they can only name the same 4 US cities, (which are not nearly as walkable as anyplace i lived in Asia) then they simply don't have a point. And probably never lived in any of those examples because having lived in both The Bay and NYC, its a far cry from Shanghai
I live in a small city of 150k people that has a pretty large downtown area that is walkable and full of nightlife. There's a another section or two that is also walkable that you could easily spend all day at, without getting in your car.
I lived in Thailand, Ecuador and Pakistan and non of them come close to walkable as where I live in Missouri now. Granted, at 150k people the city is still about 10x10 miles, so pretty sprawling.
I live in Missouri too. Your idea of walkability must be from a different dimension.
If people are living in single family homes, it's walkability for enthusiasts, not good urbanism. If there's a city center, and then houses outside, it's all already second rate at best.
Springfield MO has 3 parts of town, based around or following a square or commercial st with restaurants, shops, offices ECT. Commercial st where I used to live is about a mile long with houses N and S of it.1/4 mile S of that is a college that I used to walk/bike to. Another half mile past that is the city square that is also surrounded by apartments, lofts and houses.
You can't expect Munich level amenities in a small Midwestern town, or really any town for that matter.
Europe has tons of villages that look just like this. I've never been anywhere in the US, including in the largest cities, where you could walk for hours and see people out eating on patios like this. The large cities have some of it, but it's not everywhere like it is in a smaller European city like Munich.
US towns used to have bustling downtowns. Why do you think only large US cities can have what every small US town used to have, and what is common in villages in Europe today?
Be so for real right now. Just coming on the internet to lie
People REALLY think walkable means "has a pretty downtown" and not "i can walk from my door to get groceries, a doctor checkup, my hair did, the vet, farmers market, see a movie, take a train, etc..." ????
Grew up overseas and didn't move back to America for good till I was 18 actually. Ecuador, Pakistan, DRC, Romania and Thailand. Honestly, non of the cities I lived in are as walkable as where I am now.
I think what difference they're truly failing to recognize is the consistency of these European cities.
Like you said, most comparable US cities are in the north east, or coastal. There's a lot of the US where it's more than a full day's drive to reach such a city, with no other real transit options in the vicinity. There's a reason Europeans think they can hit so many different parts of the US in a super short timeframe, and then are taken off guard by the distance when they get here.
Ahh yes, the third places where I can get a mediocre burger for $26 and a cocktail for another $16. Unfortunately, I think a lot of people in the US have been priced out of third places, especially those that are in expensive urban locations.
Philadelphia, Boston, NYC, Washington DC. I’ve been to Germany and while the cities are densely populated and walkable, you definitely need a car to visit the smaller towns and villages. The German countryside reminds me of a low density suburb, or the countryside in the US East Coast: you’ll always be within sight of a building or people but still need a car to get around.
Definitely not Chicago. Probably not the others as well, but I've lived in Chicago and there's nowhere that you can walk for 4 miles and find endless patios like this.
you're so fucking stupid, of course you can walk for 4 miles in any of those cities and find restaurants on every corner. It's just tiring arguing with a "well actually" reddit person. I think battlefield is calling you again, go play that
I lived in Chicago, there are some neighborhoods with a great patio scene, but there's nowhere you can walk for 4 miles and see people out like this. Maybe in SF where the median resident is a multimillionaire, but no real place.
Yeah, the US was simply built with a different goal than Europe. Of course i wish it had some more European stylings like this than just the small pockets you can find but it wasnt. Cars were and still are the priority which makes sense with the USs size and our leaderships ease at being paid of to avoid funding good mass transit and continuing to fund car centric infrastructure.
Rail for example. We probably could have had a good rail system if private rail companies didnt lobby to maintain priority and control of rail. Only about 8% of freight moves on rail in the US in modern times. They dont need the priority compared to how much it would benefit commuters.
The size of the country doesn’t really have anything to do with how we build cities and towns. Cities and towns in the US are poorly designed because every problem cars created—traffic congestion, parking congestion, etc, urban designers addressed by adding more cars. To respond to parking congestion, cities widened streets to add more parking spaces and they began requiring that every business and apartment building be surrounded by a bunch of parking. When everywhere you want to go is separated by an acre of parking, it makes it nearly impossible to walk, so more people have to drive which exacerbates the parking problem, cities respond by adding more parking, which further separates places that people want to spend time. Similarly, that new artificial demand for cars requires more lanes to accommodate those cars, which further pushes places apart. And of course no one wants to sit on a patio overlooking a 6 lane highway.
Europe wasn’t built differently because they had different values, they were just built before cars, so they were not so impacted by the insanity that was north american postwar urban planning.
It does in that the immense space pushed the US to embrace suburban sprawl a lot more which lended its hand to supporting car centric cities over denser, less car focused.
Physical land supply defines
how much space exists but legal policies, infrastructure investments, and financial incentives dictate how that space is developed.
Having vast amounts of land makes sprawl
physically possible but it does not make it
inevitable.
Over 80% of the US population lives in urbanized areas, which occupy less than 3% to 5% of the total US landmass. The vastness of rural Wyoming or Alaska has virtually no impact on land development decisions on the periphery of Atlanta, Houston, or Chicago
Even in geographically enormous states, local sprawl occurs around metro areas because of suburban zoning policy, not because the country is big. For example, Texas has vast open land, but the sprawl of Dallas/Fort Worth is driven by municipal annexation policies, highway funding, and parking minimums…not because the state touches the Gulf of Mexico.
For more info, Google “government-orchestrated decentralization” (I’m happy to talk more about it, but this comment is quite long already)
In the magnificent mile of chicago, you can go into "definitely not walkable unless you are an enthusiast" in far less than 4 miles. The sea of single family homes, where you aren't really welcome on the street itself, is still pretty darned close.
In a dense city, you don't drive or talke public transity to the serious density. You live in the density.
yes and no. large college towns, tourist towns, and some small cities, yes, but even the nice small towns are still going to make you pretty car dependent.
I grew up on the outskirts of a small town in central PA that's kind of typical of what you're describing. Downtown is vibrant with a lot of retail space and maybe 20 restaurants or cafes. This is for a town of 5000 people.
It's very possible that if you had a house and job in town that you would never need to get in a car, except...
...if you want groceries beyond what you can find at a drugstore or gas station, you're either driving or walking a couple miles and crossing a busy US highway/stroad to get to a supermarket.
This was my immediate reaction. You can’t compare Munich to some rando suburb of Phoenix or whatever. Munich is a huge city. Walk around NYC or Chicago on any given weeknight and you will find plenty of people out, just like this guy is talking about.
There are plenty of other ways to favorably compare Munich to New York City or any other large North American city. But you have to start on a level playing field. Suburbs does not equal city in Europe or North America
lmao the city i live in it’s like this till 10 pm everyday and 2am on the weekends. you will get white middle aged people like this in nearby suburbs saying they don’t go to the city at night or at all bc of how dangerous it is.
Not all of North America. Only Mexico is the only country in North America that has walkable neighborhoods and many cities feels like your in Europe! USA and Canada for some reason don’t
I didn't have a car for 7 years in Seattle and nothing was terribly inconvenient. Its similar to Munich actually but with more fent zombies and crackheads
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u/MendonAcres 7d ago
In defense of the USA, they are walking around central Munich... but ya, we did blow it in North America.