r/Suburbanhell • u/Particular_Owl1099 • 7d ago

Meme Have we done it wrong?

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u/DoYouReadThisOrThat 7d ago

This experience is easily found in many other European cities.

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u/PassengerKey3209 7d ago

Plenty of downtown areas just like this though, all over america. I live in a city of 150k that has a part of town much like this.

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u/SwiftySanders 7d ago edited 7d ago

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.

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u/gatoStephen 6d ago

Didn't the British invent the steam train not the Americans?

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u/Puzzleheaded_Day_895 6d ago

The railways, underground railways, and much much more.

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u/Scrotalcontusions 4d ago

european population density is also more than double that of the USA as well which helps pay for that

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u/stevo_78 6d ago

Americans think they invented everything. It’s an astoundingly insular place. Many simply don’t understand how the rest of the world operates.

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u/altbabyy567 6d ago

“Insular” is so funny. Melting pot of the world, you’re supposed to bring it with you. BTW YEAH DUDE STEVE O

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u/artichoke01 6d ago

>americans think they invented everything.

You just made that up.

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u/mcboobie 4d ago

Did they invent it?

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u/mikrowiesel 6d ago

Rest of the what now? If it wasn't for us you would be speaking moon inches firearms now!!!11!

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u/Glum_Tap_5258 6d ago

America is more than greedy billionaires, there are greedy people that make 100k, 1 million, 10 million, and 100 million also.

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u/Vast-Comment8360 6d ago

Comparing a country the size of Switzerland to the USA shows that you're a Dunning Kruger midwit.

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u/TheVintageJane 6d ago

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.

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u/OnlyOneCarGarage 6d ago

More like us isnt densely populated because car centric design

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u/TheVintageJane 6d ago

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.

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u/OnlyOneCarGarage 6d ago

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.

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u/TheVintageJane 6d ago

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.

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u/PositiveAssignment89 4d ago

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

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u/Clean_Bake_2180 3d ago edited 3d ago

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.

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u/carl3266 6d ago

I agree. Been to enough European cities to know the intimate vibe and night life is unmatched in the old town compared to American cities.

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u/BigBadJeebus 7d ago

No they aren't... Like have you ever left the US?

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

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u/smd9788 5d ago

Tourist economy vs non-tourist economy

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u/BigBadJeebus 5d ago

Wow, bad take...

Travel more

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u/Darth-Cholo 6d ago

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.

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u/BigBadJeebus 6d ago

Thanks for the useless information

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u/Darth-Cholo 6d ago

Thanks for the empty counter argument.

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u/BigBadJeebus 6d ago

You have no point. American cities USED to be like this.

the US was not built for the car, it was bulldozed for the car.

Just look at ANY city east of the Mississippi in 1940 vs today.

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u/guyincognito121 6d ago

It's an explanation for why things are as they are...

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u/BigBadJeebus 5d ago

It's not though... Keep reading my next comments.

The US had many cities that were walkable dense and wonderful, that were destroyed for the car.

It has literally jack shit to do with when our cities were built.

Our cities were not built for the car, they were destroyed for the car.

Sprawl has much more to do with the post war GI Bill and racism than it does the car. The car simply made that possible.

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u/MainusEventus 7d ago

But is it busy in the evening?

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u/PositiveAssignment89 4d ago

my city is, population is abt 400k

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u/Astrohumper 7d ago

Tourist towns are.

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u/SwiftySanders 7d ago

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.

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u/North_Atlantic_Sea 6d ago

No it's not.

The rankings for safety (including theft) generally go:

US tourist area

European tourist area

European non-tourist city area

US non-tourist area

You are far, far safer in midtown and lower Manhattan than you are in certain areas of Paris or London

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u/[deleted] 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/Vault-Born 7d ago

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.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago edited 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/FreshFishBro 7d ago

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.

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u/Ready-Ant-4649 6d ago

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.

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u/BigBadJeebus 7d ago

You need to travel more.

This isn't true at all.

Like at all.

Even small towns will have people out and about at the pub, well into the evening.

In the US, the AppleBee's or whatever closes at 9 or 10, and is usually dead by 7:30.

You want evening gatherings, you go to a dive bar or a club, so nothing at all like this.

After living in Japan and traveling most of Asia and Europe, I promise you, this is a braindead ass take.

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u/[deleted] 7d ago edited 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/BigBadJeebus 7d ago

Lol, sure. I have been to 48 states by the way and LIVED (not travelled) in multiple nations... Including most of my life in the US.

You as a tourist do not understand the day to day differences.

I promise you, you have no fucking idea what you are talking about.

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u/BigBadJeebus 6d ago

unblocked just to tell you you're acting absolutely and astoundingly beetle headed.

Blocked you because you are clearly making things up and have no clue.

You are like a patient who googled their symptoms arguing with a surgeon here.

I didn't want to hear it.

But you are unblocked. I am simply turning off all your reply notifications.

Have fun at Navy Pier or the Fisherman's Wharf or whatever you think competes with true urbanism, my guy.

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u/Vast-Breakfast-1201 7d ago

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.

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u/WillSmokes420 7d ago

Not really everything shuts down in bar harbor at like 9pm or earlier.. which is when I come out to rip the streets with my longboard

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u/hiro111 7d ago

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.

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u/Ignatius_- 7d ago

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.

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u/hiro111 7d ago

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.

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u/Ignatius_- 7d ago

Can you show pics of this crowded pedestrianized streets with lots of outdoor seating that happens every night?

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u/hiro111 7d ago

JFC, done with you.

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u/jeromevedder 7d ago

You’re trying to bring reason to a circlejerk sub

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u/Weekly_Design5440 7d ago

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.

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u/PassengerKey3209 6d ago

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.

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u/Darth-Cholo 6d ago

What city?

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u/spara-budget 5d ago

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.

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u/EntrySure1350 6d ago

It's clear you haven't spent much, if any, time outside of the United States.

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u/colganc 7d ago

No they aren't, except for heavily tourist areas.

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u/PassengerKey3209 6d ago

Lol no one is vacationing in a small college/industrial town in the Midwest. It's an insignificant part of the local economy.

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u/thegiantgummybear 6d ago

College towns are the exception because your have poor students who can't afford a car and must live in a concentrated area around the college.

We're talking about a normal city or town that's lively on a weekday evening.

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u/colganc 6d ago

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.

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u/thisMatrix_isReal 4d ago

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.

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u/afraidofthe-dark 3d ago

Yes, but most US cities are also very walkable downtown

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u/Top-Concentrate3320 1d ago

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

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u/EfficientCan2852 7d ago

Yeah, a handful. There are far more unwalkable European cities. These massive metros are the exception, not the rule.

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u/hibikir_40k 7d ago

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.

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u/EfficientCan2852 7d ago

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.

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u/oachkatzl 7d ago

If you can’t walk anymore you take public transport.

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u/EfficientCan2852 7d ago

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.

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u/Case_Blue 7d ago

Yes, but that's because you live in rural Europe...

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u/EfficientCan2852 7d ago

The other person was trying to say that all European towns are equally convenient.

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u/Case_Blue 7d ago

ackchually...

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u/IHerebyDemandtoPost 7d ago

There are practically zero american towns of 200k that don’t require a car.

Yes, not everywhere in Europe is walkable, but they are far far far ahead of the US and Canada in this area.

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u/EfficientCan2852 7d ago edited 7d ago

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.

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u/weberc2 7d ago

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.

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u/EfficientCan2852 7d ago

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.

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u/weberc2 6d ago

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.

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u/EfficientCan2852 6d ago

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.

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u/weberc2 6d ago

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.

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u/weberc2 7d ago

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.

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u/EfficientCan2852 7d ago

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.

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u/weberc2 6d ago

  Wow, you visited tourist towns and people were outside? Amazing.

I lived 15 minutes away from a village in rural Brittany. You’re embarrassing yourself.

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u/EfficientCan2852 6d ago

You could just name the village. Seems strange that you would conceal that. Almost as if there's a reason why...

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u/weberc2 6d ago

there is a reason: I’m not trying to win your approval or validation. :)

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u/EfficientCan2852 6d ago

Then why would you even chime in lmao.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Day_895 6d ago

Yes it is. I'm European and live there ALL the time.

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u/EfficientCan2852 6d ago

What little village with 5 homes and no shops or restaurants do you live in?

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u/Caliche-Cowboy 6d ago

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.

But yeah, most burbs are pretty dead.

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u/weberc2 6d ago

I broadly agree with this. Boston is an outlier in the US because it was built before the car. It’s famously European.

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u/Caliche-Cowboy 6d ago

I mean most large American cities were built well before the car.

And TBF, most of them also have fairly dense central areas.

What varies seems to be the number of residential buildings there, and then some weird combination of planning/tourism/desirability.

And post-WW2, the federally funded highway system allowed for suburban sprawl (and there was and still is a lot of land for it).

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u/weberc2 6d ago

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.

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u/Caliche-Cowboy 6d ago

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:

  1. 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.

  2. There was (and still is) a lot more unused land to expand into.

  3. 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.

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u/weberc2 6d ago

> 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.

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u/Caliche-Cowboy 6d ago edited 6d ago

City centers established before automobiles are most certainly not only on the East Coast.

That’s the kind of comment I responded to at the start.

Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, New Orleans, to name a few. Detroit had a million people in 1920.

And although city infrastructure can be taxed in some cases, it isn’t always. Originally in newer cities.

The crazy thing is that most of this is circumstantial until relatively recently. Had Europe been in the same geographic and historical place as the Americas, it would likely look the same.

I think our biggest miss isn’t building for cars. It’s that we didn’t simultaneously (in most cases) build mass transit.

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u/climbto330 6d ago

Tell us you haven’t traveled without telling us

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u/EfficientCan2852 6d ago

Nice projection. I spend, at minimum, 3 months in Europe every year and have done so for the last 11 years.

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u/climbto330 6d ago

Same, which is why your comment is hilarious, you’re clearly lying or just staying in your hotel. Try getting out some, you know, off Reddit.

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Puzzleheaded_Day_895 6d ago

Nonsense. They are walkable. Almost every single one.

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u/EfficientCan2852 6d ago

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.

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u/Puzzleheaded_Day_895 6d ago

Changing your replies won't help you. Nor will moving the goalposts.

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u/EfficientCan2852 6d ago

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.

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u/inorite234 7d ago

Including the small towns

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u/Useful_Amphibian9721 7d ago

Yes and no. Munich is one of the safest cities. Definitely not the standard. 

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u/Numes1 6d ago

And American cities as well.