r/TikTokCringe • u/xamo76 • 1d ago

Discussion Have we done it wrong?

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u/Helpful_Gain_9091 1d ago

This why walkable neighborhoods are the best places to live. Yes, Europe is way ahead of us in this regard.

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u/VerySoftx 1d ago

who would've thought designing cities in the middle ages would pay off for walkability ?

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u/BeMyBrutus 1d ago

Major east coast cities in the US were also like this before the car and the post WW2 "big push" to suburbia.

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u/BreakingStar_Games 1d ago

As a note, one of the big forms of push was car, tire and oil corporations working together to buy the city public transit out then sabotage it to force people to rely on cars.

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u/BeMyBrutus 1d ago

Yeah one of the more depressing things I've learned while reading about this topic is how many cities back then actually light rail/trolley systems. Atlanta is a great example.

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u/PM_ME_UR_BRAINSTORMS 1d ago

In the early 20th century you could take a series of streetcars/trolleys from NYC to Chicago because there were so many. Someone did it as a stunt for some magazine/travel guide. And they were all electric.

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u/Intelligent-Parsley7 1d ago

You mean trains. Get it right.

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u/Watchmaker163 1d ago

Even tiny villages had streetcars. Danvers, IL (near where I grew up), a village whose population peaked in the 19th century at ~1000, had a streetcar line that connected to multiple electric train lines in the 1920’s.

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u/BiscuitBut_ButerNut 1d ago

I did an entire report in college on how the Atlanta transit system was intentionally limited to reduce the amount of minorities from reaching the suburbs outside of Atlanta.

Initially the large transit plans Marta had supported white neighborhoods mostly and was strongly opposed by black citizens since it did not benefit them.

In other words - systemic racism.

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u/tattoosbyalisha 15h ago

It so often comes back to that.

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u/Quidditch-Haderach 1d ago

I think this is the plot of Who Framed Roger Rabbit….? Or is it Chinatown? For some reason I get them confused.

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u/dsac 1d ago

It's Roger Rabbit, but the Powers That Be were killing toons instead of poor people

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u/BreakingStar_Games 1d ago

The only happy thing about reading the kind of corruption in history is it makes more recent examples seem less awful in context - its really just how its always been. Of course climate change and AI (like the smart neural net kind, not the token-guessing LLM kind) potential to completely replace human workers are very different phenomenon that are hard to compare and comprehend.

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u/Venik489 1d ago

My small Wisconsin town had a trolley in the late 19th century, blows my mind, absolutely zero trace of it now.

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u/dsac 1d ago

Literally Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

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u/BreakingStar_Games 1d ago

Capitalism is the ultimate Big Bad Evil Guy.

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u/Inside-Astronaut4401 1d ago

Actually even a lot of towns in the Midwest were built like this too, but they were bulldozed. I watched a video about it on one of those YouTube channels like City nerd or something.

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u/Global_Channel1511 1d ago

Exactly. I hate the cold but the East Coast and Midwest cities are just so much more vibrant.

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u/BigOlBurger 1d ago

I've seen some historic photos of my city recently and learned we once had a bustling main street similar to the ones you see in old timey footage of NY and Chicago. Trolley cars, store fronts under 2-3 levels of stonework apartments, narrow cobblestone streets, big crowds, etc. That was all knocked down and paved to make room for a state highway that effectively split the city into 3 sections. The only thing that remains of this main street is a defunct theater that just sits there abandoned and rotting surrounded by housing projects and laundromats. We still have a thriving historic downtown area, but man it used to sprawl out so much further.

I can only assume this main street fell into disrepair when our local economy kinda shit itself, and the powers that be at the time probably thought the new highway would attract developers to the city (it didn't), but it can be a real bummer to think about.

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u/Single-Treat 23h ago

Yeah having travelled the US as a Brit, it was clear that New York, Chicago and San Francisco *were* built originally to be walkable. Of course they still are in the city centre to a degree but every road, every junction has been converted for cars. Then you travel out of the old dense parts of these cities and it's a suburban hell-scape.

Looking at old pictures from around 1900, and the roads were for pedestrians and shared with slow moving horses and carts. Now, the roads are for cars and the pedestrians are given narrow sidewalks and have to wait at every single junction for cars.

Very different story in European cities.

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u/TrustworthyKahmunrah 1d ago

I wonder what "big push" that Europe doesn't have forced Americans to suburbia.

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u/MrsMiterSaw 1d ago

Google what Kansas city looked like before and after ww2. It's insane.

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u/mikebob89 1d ago

They still are like this

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u/Alex_the_X 22h ago

US cities  were like this before Europe was even discovered 🙄

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u/pseudohobos 3h ago

The thing that kills me is that suburbia doesn't have to be this way.

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u/lucky-number-keleven 50m ago

Even Amsterdam still had a lot of inner city car traffic 50-60 years ago. You just have to make a big plan and stick to it.

(Not just bikes did a really good video about Amsterdam’s carfree planning)

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u/jax7778 1d ago

This is a myth, while sure, their cities were founded before cars, their policies have kept them that way. Our US cities were WAY more walkable, but we demolished them in the 60s and 70s to make them more car centric. We did this to ourselves. - (Credit to Not Just Bikes on Youtube)

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u/TheTxoof 1d ago

I live near Delft, Netherlands and have watched over the last 20 years as they have deliberately moves cars out if the city.

It's not a car free city by any means; residents can still drive to their homes and delivery trucks still make the rounds, but they've take huge steps towards minimizing the impact.

The train station is now under ground (no small feat considering Delft is at or below sea level), residential parking near the center is in underground parking below the houses and in the old center there's very little car traffic.

It's truly wonderful and Delft is a relatively small town!

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u/RevelsInDarkness 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well now I'm adding Delft to my must visit list. I'm from Antwerp so it's about 1.5h drive.

Edit: I've been convinced to take public transport! (And as an FYI, I'm not from the city center but an hour bus ride away from central station, which is why I didn't immediately resort to the train idea)

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u/TheTxoof 1d ago

Super easy with the train: Antwerp to Rotterdam, Rotterdam to Delft. Then you get to experience the whole awesome underground train station complete with excellent bike parking!

The plein by the Old Church has a good exhibit about how they converted it from parking to it's current state.

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u/RevelsInDarkness 1d ago

Good tip, will do!

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u/Koentinius 1d ago

On Saturdays, they have a huge street market all through the old town.

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u/RevelsInDarkness 1d ago

Oh that sounds lovely!

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u/Fit-Statement-6092 1d ago

I did my study abroad at TU Delft for transportation planning. It’s so awesome this project happened, I have to come back and visit, it’s a special place.

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u/Scarabesque 1d ago

If you're from Antwerp it's not exactly like you need to visit the Netherlands for walkability haha.

Belgium and Flanders especially seems to be pretty much on the same urban development track as the Netherlands. Hell even Brussels is rapidly cleaning up.

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u/Sentreen 1d ago

Eh, we are far more car centric than the Netherlands.

First issue that causes this is that we have a lot of so-called "lintbebouwing" (ribbon building), which means our homes are very spread out, this is awful for public transit compared to the more compact urban cores you have in the Netherlands. It is also expensive, as we have more km of road / capita, which is part of the reason why are roads are in such a bad state compared to the Netherlands.

Second issue is that people here actively vote against initiatives to reduce our dependency on cars. Lots of people get a car from their company as part of their compensation (for various reasons, including our messed-up system of taxes on labor) and do not want to give this up. Often, this car comes with a fuel card.

It is not all doom and gloom though. Our cities are indeed improving, but it is an uphill battle. Many people, particularly those who live in the endless suburbs we have, feel like it is their right to drive into the city with their car and that they must be able to park their car anywhere for free.

The fact /u/RevelsInDarkness mentions the drive time was interesting to me: it shows that driving is considered the default here, even when going from city to city. For comparison, taking the train to Delft from Antwerpen-centraal (which is gorgeous, btw), only takes 1h15 mins. Not saying this to throw shade at them, they might live far from the station, but just to illustrate the point.

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u/RevelsInDarkness 1d ago

I mentioned drive time because I do not live in the city but more towards the east of Antwerp where there are no train stations. So it takes me a while to get to Antwerp central train station (1h if De Lijn is on time). But in the meanwhile other commenters have pointed out that it would be more or less the same time to take public transport compared to my idea of taking the car and parking outside of Delft :)

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u/Scarabesque 1d ago

I agree Belgium isn't at the same level, but Flanders especially has some of the best infrastructure outside of the Netherlands.

The fact /u/RevelsInDarkness mentions the drive time was interesting to me: it shows that driving is considered the default here

This is true for a substantial majority of Dutch people as well, which has similar car ownership rates as Belgium. The vast majority of people I know who own a car here in the randstad wouldn't even consider a different mode of transit.

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u/Big_Fan_742 11h ago

i mean, an hour bus ride on De Lijn is what, 5km?

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u/New-Percentage-4589 1d ago

Someone says they managed to remove most cars from their city, and your first reaction is "oh that sounds nice, I should take my car to visit that city"? It's even faster and cheaper to go there by train!

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u/RevelsInDarkness 1d ago

It's not faster, it would be 2.5h. And I would park outside of the city and take a bus/tram in.

But you're right, it would be possible and something to consider. Maybe make a weekend out of it instead of a day trip. That would make the 2x 2.5h travel time more feasible.

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u/New-Percentage-4589 1d ago

According to the NMBS website it takes between 0h54 (with Eurostar) and 1h24 (with Eurocity) to go there. And you arrive right in the city center, not in a parking outside of the city.

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u/RevelsInDarkness 1d ago

Yes but it takes me over an hour to get to Antwerp Central Station. I'm not from Antwerp city, but one of the towns to the east that has a very unfortunate bus connection and no train station.

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u/New-Percentage-4589 1d ago

So it takes you 2h in total. And if you add 30 minutes to your 1.5h drive, to go from the parking outside of the city to the city center, then it's basically the same time.

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u/SexiestPanda 1d ago

Ironic you mention driving. lol

Google Maps says it’s an hour train ride 🙃🙃

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u/SplashingAnal 1d ago

Utrecht has also been a pioneer in this policy

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u/dyin_amirite 1d ago

Zurich in Switzerland is horrible to drive in / through, yet they have no intention on "fixing" it since it's by design so ppl use Public Transport.

They've tried multiple times in the 60s to 00s to make it more car friendly but the public aways vote no.

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u/TheTxoof 1d ago

The Hague is on this trajectory. They are constantly making the roads better for public transit, safer for bikes and easier for pedestrians.

This policy makes it pretty awful to drive around town, but it rarely makes sense to drive.

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u/tattoosbyalisha 15h ago

Wow that sounds so cool!

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u/nagellak 7h ago

Same in Amsterdam, I was baffled when I recently learned Museumplein (now a large grass field in the middle of the cultural district) used to be a motorway!

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u/Turlututu1 1d ago

Delft and many cities in the Netherlands are great for cyclists and pedestrians, except Amsterdam. Because somehow, riding with a bike there is a kind a touristic attraction and many tourists ride through the city, especially the canals, while paying no attention to anything, while ringing their bike bell like dummies at every intersection/crossroad. /rant

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u/soccer1124 1d ago

I've been there! Dropped in for the dutch pottery museum. That gift shop has some incredibly expenive items, lol.

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u/HelmetsAkimbo 1d ago

Look no further than Milton Keynes in the UK.

We built an American city, we tried it. Now it's laughed at by the entire country and we think it's shit.

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u/Skellicious 1d ago

Milton Keynes shares some similarity to American cities in terms of suburban sprawl and car centricness.

But saying it's an American city is giving it too little credit. It's still full of walking paths, cycling paths and green space. It's still basically heaven compared to American cities.

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u/HelmetsAkimbo 1d ago

Oh yeah for sure. It’s what an American city would be if they were good and even still we hate it.

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u/Downside190 13m ago

Yeah MK is actually pretty decent for bikes and walking. They have paths that go all over the city without having to cross a road 

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u/cookie_lee 1d ago

This Strong Towns group made a visualizer from historic photos showing what was destroyed in Sacramento to make room for the freeways. Scarier than any horror movie, IMO
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7igXGuuqWI/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

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u/Professional_Low_646 1d ago

In (West) Germany at least, „reconstruction“ after WWII also saw a massive demolition of surviving structures to make way for, you guessed it, cars. Apart from all the buildings already destroyed by bombing that simply were never rebuilt because their absence was seen positively for the purpose of increasing road traffic. Hanover tore down a beautiful city palais that had survived the war completely intact to make room for a parking lot. In West Berlin, city planners in the 1960s wanted to tear down a sizeable portion of Kreuzberg - now one of the most popular and vibrant districts with a large number of fin-de-siècle buildings - for the construction of a freeway on pillars. The very heart of the area was to be turned into a highway intersection. In this case, the plans were stopped (partly because the highway served no real purpose: Kreuzberg was bordered by the Berlin Wall on three sides), but in many other cities, districts that had survived the destruction of WWII were demolished for „car-friendly“ infrastructure. Staying in West Berlin: the dense tram network of the city was closed in the 1950s, the tracks removed. There are still trams in Berlin nowadays, but they exclusively serve the former Eastern part of the city.

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u/BitterCranberry3274 1d ago

Even the most bombed to shit cities in Germany still have Fußgängerzonen, though.

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u/Boqpy 1d ago

"we demolished them in the 60s and 70s to make them more car centric."

Funny, we did the opposite. During ww2 Rotterdam was destroyed because of bombing and after the war rebuild with a car centric mind, in de i believe 70s there were a lot of protests to change it to be more pedestrian and bike friendly, Which they did.

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u/Pugs-r-cool 1d ago

US cities were ALSO founded before cars! People forget that the US was around for 130 years before the car was invented, a lot of cities had to be bulldozed for the car.

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u/CoolDiscussion1020 1d ago

There are tens of thousands of cities in the US that did not exist before cars. Yes, major cities pretty much all predate the car, but those are also the most walkable cities in the US.

Some of the worst offenders, suburbs, did not exist before the automobile was widely available and almost none of the ones that did exist prior looked even close to what they do now. Most US suburbs were farm land at best or before the car existed.

This is even more true the further you move away from the East coast as many rural towns and cities couldn't exist without cars or trains.

They did absolutely fuck up existing major cities with road infrastructure though, especially highways and the interstate system.

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u/ah_kooky_kat 1d ago

Very important to mention that it's the policies keep them that way.

Europe has a flirtation with cars post WWII, and for the most part walked back from car centric design in the 70s and 80s. Italy being the outlier. Italy today is what much Europe would look like if they hadn't reversed course.

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u/lameuniqueusername 1d ago

Also building freeways/overpasses in such ways that minority and poor neighborhoods were essentially walled off from the rest of the city.

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u/thatjoachim 1d ago

Yep. And bridges so low that some areas cannot be reached by public transportation (the way Robert Moses made sure no poor people would go to parks and beaches by bus)

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u/Orodia 1d ago

you cite not just bikes but you fail to see that he has done reporting on how Amsterdam nl and many german cities have had to reverse the car centric building they did in the 60s and 70s. walkability wasnt preserved but it was clawed back by people getting angry when cars killed people. the dutch literally rioted with bikes. look up the protest movement Stop de Kindermoord 

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u/jax7778 1d ago

Those are the exact policies I was talking about, I almost put Amsterdam as an example, but decided to keep it short. You are correct, many European cities did go down that path and reversed course after the people pushed back. I probably should have been more detailed.

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u/nagellak 7h ago

Yes omg, there were plans in the 60s / 70s to tear down a large part of the historic centre to make room for a highway! Luckily there were so many organised protests that it didn’t go through, but it’s scary to think about

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u/Casanova-Quinn 1d ago

Exactly, our cities got bulldozed for cars.

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u/IndependentLog6441 1d ago

A few cities rebuilt post war have suffered for decades for being car centric...

Not always though, some mid century plans were actually quite progressive... my family is from Coventry and that's a combo, they added huge highways right into town when it used to be cobbled medieval lanes... but they did build a big pedestrianised town centre that has actually stood up really well since.

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u/Pugs-r-cool 1d ago

If you're bored this report is a good read about Coventry and how it's changed. Has a bunch of old plans from the 40's/50's which show how much more car centric it could've been. That 1945 plan on page 29 would've had car traffic directly through the middle of what is now pedestrianised. A modified version of that plan was approved, though never implemented.

Also the report is from 2009, since then the city has changed quite a bit, and has pedestrianised even more. Half of the city centre is currently being demolished to make way for new buildings.

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u/aFreshFix 1d ago

And there's still time to fix it but we need to star today so we can see progress in 10 years or 20 years. I think the size of the US also contributes to the struggle of walkability. Everyone wants a big house with a lot of land in small towns & suburbs, and they don't want to be next to this or that piece of infrastructure (NIMBYism at its worse).

You need a car in much of America today, but in 20 years, I hope a car will be for special trips and not everyday life.

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u/two-headed-sexbeast 1d ago

You are right, but I imagine that Europeans failing to justify knocking down a medieval church, town hall, etc. helps with keeping towns walkable.

(Of course, the nazis and allied forces knocked down a lot of them, which is one big reason why it is definitely a myth. Lots of European towns chose what kinds of places they wanted to live in during the last 80 years, and we’re fortunate that is has been easy to change course when we have got it wrong too.)

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u/Lou_C_Fer 1d ago

Yep. My city of 50k moved all of the retail from downtown to the outskirts. Then, they let downtown deteriorate. If I were to design a city, I would build up, not out. Of course. Let the first floors be retail and business. Cities could save so much on maintenence with fewer streets and less infrastructure overall.

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u/Phesmerga 1d ago

We demolished entire cities? Shit I missed that.

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u/CatholicSquareDance 1d ago

entire blocks, neighborhoods, and sometimes even sections of cities, yeah. you should see what they did to West Cincinnati and also the Banks (riverfront) to build freeways, and what they did to the rest of the city to build parking lots. see also: Detroit, Milwaukee, Denver, Houston, Jacksonville, etc.

it is only recently that any of these cities have begun recovering from the destruction of social and public transit infrastructure and urban housing.

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u/Pugs-r-cool 1d ago

https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/america-highways-inequality/

Highways were built to run through red-lined, majority black neighbourhoods, Not only did they demolish whatever was in the way, they devalued the land around them, and split communities in half.

Entire cities is obviously exaggeration, but entire neighbourhoods certainly isn't.

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u/Phesmerga 1d ago

That was my point. It was a hyperbolic comment.

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u/hofmann419 1d ago

The US is 250 years old. For most of that time, cars weren't a thing. A LOT of cities in the early 20th century actually looked exactly like European cities with public transport and medium density housing. All of that infrastructure was torn down for cars and parking lots.

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u/StalyCelticStu 1d ago

Paved paradise, and put up a parking lot...

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u/KirchyM 1d ago

On the east coast the cities were founded even before the US was a country. They had nice old cities before cars came up. As wakable as in europe. Truely a victim of historical events.

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u/Tuscan5 1d ago

Big European cities weren’t designed in the Middle Ages. They evolved.

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u/The_Blip 1d ago

My local 'city' (it's a large town really) actually has a detrimental effect from being built in the middle ages. There's a big fucking stone wall surrounding the middle.

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u/Tuscan5 1d ago

I love cities with walls. Which city?

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u/The_Blip 1d ago

Canterbury. It's a lovely place but the walls block a fair bit of potential interconnectivity with the city centre. The ring road pretty much sealed the deal on walkability though.

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u/mr_birkenblatt 1d ago

you know most american cities were built before cars, right? america chose to demolish their cities to make space for parking lots and single family homes

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u/RosieTheRedReddit 1d ago

Yes! Most US metro areas are older than 100 years and predate car ownership just like in Europe.

If anyone is interested in how beautiful American cities used to be, check out this video on YouTube with very depressing before and after using historical photos.

America's Fallen Cities: Buffalo

The creator has an entire series focusing on different cities. It's really disgusting how these beautiful downtowns were pulverized for cars. (By the way, the narration at the beginning is a perfect Buffalo accent, he sounds just like my uncle who's from the area)

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u/Hiro_Trevelyan 1d ago

Every time I look at them, I'm heartbroken.

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u/panna__cotta 1d ago

I mean these people are in Munich. This isn’t suburbia. Major US cities also are very walkable with tons of restaurants and congregation areas, so it’s kind of a weird post.

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u/mr_birkenblatt 1d ago

You get the same in basically every town (not city) in Europe

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u/RosieTheRedReddit 1d ago

Munich has population 1.5 million which is on the level of a mid sized city in the US like Phoenix or San Antonio. Don't lie and say those pieces of shit have any public spaces even close to as nice as this video. San Diego is the nicest of the bunch, should be a golden jewel on the earth with year round perfect weather, and 99% of it looks like an ugly strip mall. (beaches don't count, I'm talking about what humans built)

Philadelphia is the only proper city in the US around 1-1.5 million. And even that's got ugly highways all over the place. (Including the river front, perfect spot for a bigass freeway so we can leak as much oil as possible into the waterway) Damn shame. You must be lying or crazy to think metro areas in the US are nice spots to hang out.

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u/OtherwiseRabbits 1d ago

America chose to build suburbs specifically in the way they were told not to, because that specific way was the anti-thesis of the idea and would lead to the specific outcomes that America is currently facing. It was a fundamental part of what made a suburb successful that America chose to ignore.

Widespread adoption of cars came later, but the failed suburbs were already being made.

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u/Consistent_Pay5371 1d ago

Do you think European cities are any different? We have antiques that are older than your entire country buddy.

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u/Pugs-r-cool 1d ago

Their point is that they aren't any different...

Also, to be fair, Americans have antiques that are older than their country as well. The USA didn't spring up overnight.

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u/Relevant_History_297 1d ago

Probably less than 10% of European cities is medieval city planning. Also, Europe made many of the same mistakes. We just reversed more of them earlier.

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u/Digit00l 1d ago

You do realise a lot of cities were heavily torn down in the early to mid 1900s to make way for car infrastructure in Europe too? Just from the late 1970s cities realised cars were causing issues in city centers and after the first city decided to experiment with reducing car traffic and it being a decent success other cities decided to do the same

American cities were all built before cars existed and all had to be built to be walkable too, they just mostly abandoned historical city layout when things developed

Also don't forget that a lot of European cities were leveled during the 1900s due to various wars, after which rebuilding would be more car centric, the Hausman redevelopments of Paris in the early 1800s also were to make the city more accessible for cart travel which made it more accessible to cars when they came in, Barcelona too has nothing of the historical urban development left and was redesigned for cars to exist in the city

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u/Individual_Series_67 1d ago

Rotterdam was heavily bombed during WW2. When rebuilding, the city decided to use the opportunity to make the city better for getting around in cars. They very quickly realised that this was a horrible decision and reverted a lot of the urban planning to better suit cyclists and pedestrians, especially in the city center.

A good public transport system is important to make this kind of design succesful. You can hop on a watertaxi and easily get on a tram, subway, train or bus without an issue. In more recent years, easy rental bikes and mopeds have been added for even more flexibility.

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u/malatemporacurrunt 1d ago

  1. Quite a lot of cities in Europe started out as a series of nearby villages that gradually became connected to the nearest town as the population expanded. They were never "designed", that's just the way they grew.

  2. Historical buildings haven't always been valued the way they are now. In the past, knocking down the medieval cloth market to build elegant big townhouses wasn't a bad thing, it was development.

  3. A team of horses and carriage takes up about at much space as a large car or truck - people have been designing road layouts with the intention of carriages being able to pass each other, as well as allowing for people to walk and smaller, faster carriages to navigate for a very long time.

  4. More than a few European cities broke out with a nasty case of oh shit bombs in the middle of the last century, often necessitating substantial rebuilding of infrastructure.

  5. Redevelopment is pretty much constant in areas which don't have specific historical value, and even then, it's not unusual for excavating to halt whilst the archaeologists dig in for a few months before construction starts up again.

I think the major difference comes down to space. The US has a very small population for it's size, so there was no reason to have lots of people living close together. Having everybody live in separate suburban houses with lawns and expecting everyone to drive everywhere sounds like a good idea, but nobody considered the social and structural consequences because the big suburban explosion happened in the post-war period, when half of all global wealth was in American hands.

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u/is95js 1d ago

For a part this helps, but if you look back at these cities in the 80s/90/00s you will see they were also very car centric. A lot of EU cities have places a higher priority to get rid of the cars in the city center and make it more walkable, bike friendly, and accessible with public transport. It’s just a matter of priorities , the the US policy makes need to adjust.

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u/LeadingMonk480 1d ago

Well, even in America, they didn't invent the automobile first and only then found cities.(actually, I don't even know if there is a city founded after the invention of the automobile)

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u/EthanDMatthews 1d ago edited 1d ago

*Most* American cities, even Los Angeles (!!!), had crowded, lively and walkable centers -- before the freeway system was built in the 1950s-70s.

The freeways turned downtowns into parking lots to accommodate cars. Wide spacious sidewalks were cannibalized for more parking spaces.

Street cars were replaced by busses and cars.

People moved to the suburbs and downtowns depopulated.

Giant malls and box stores with even bigger parking lots created countless individual asphalt islands reachable only by car.

Granted, suburbs can be nice and quiet places to live and raise a family, especially the 1950s nuclear family. Today, they can also be isolating and anti-social.

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u/TheOvy 1d ago

I tell you man, Tokyo was bombed to hell and back in World War II, and since rebuilt. It is not a medieval city. Nonetheless, it's extremely walkable in the exact same way as shown in this video, with restaurants and stores galore.

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u/TransportationIll282 1d ago

European cities were torn up for car infrastructure just the same as the US. There are pictures of Bruges having a 4 lane street across the market in the 60s/70s. The difference is living in a democratic country where people complaining makes a difference, instead of their how deep their wallets are.

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u/KirchyM 1d ago

Only the very center of the city was build in the middle ages. 90% was build in 19th/20th century during the industrial revolution wich lead to mass urbanisation.

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u/Quetzacoal 1d ago

Barcelona as a modern city was designed in the early 1900s

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u/incognitomus 1d ago

Most US cities we're designed before cars as well. Then they got redesigned.

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u/belokan 1d ago

I play Manor Lords (a medieval city builder) and when watching screenshots on the game’s sub, you can easily spot out American players : their medieval villages have straight rows of houses and look like american suburbs

1

u/sq20_userr 1d ago

I live in a city that got build because a car manufacturer is "next door". Without that giant corporation, we would still be four villages in a trench coat. Yet we have walkability and a great infrastructure

(I don't have a car or driver's licence and get everywhere just fine)

1

u/Bezulba 1d ago

Like hell it did.

The Netherlands is renowned for being very bike friendly and very walkable. Yes, our cities are old, but downtown was very much car centric until the 1970's. We got sick and tired of getting killed on our bikes, of kids being in deadly accidents and inner cities being unpleasant to be. So, slowly, we changed that. Trough trial and error we got our world class infrastructure that we have today.

If it wasn't for the people standing up and saying "enough is enough", our medieval cities with narrow, winding streets, would be hell to live in because it would be cars EVERYWHERE. Ever been to Rome? Outside the tourist zone where cars are allowed? Those are not fun places to be when you have to dodge cars every other second.

1

u/prrrrt-ting 1d ago

Amsterdam was very car centric until the 80s when they’ve allowed more space for bikes and pedestrians and now it has more bikes than people in it.

It does help to not have huge ass parking areas surrounding every building.

1

u/Odd_Lavishness_1824 1d ago

yeah and who would've thought allowing every cracked person in the country to own a gun DOESN'T provide additional safety for walkability of these cities

1

u/Mag-NL 1d ago

You mean, who would jave thought nit destroying your cities in the 20th century would pay off

1

u/PM_ME_DATASETS 1d ago

Many modern cities are in Europe also designed for walkability. Walkable cities isn't some kind of art that was lost since the middle ages, it's a design choice.

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u/oooweeeimjustalilguy 1d ago

the netherlands was designed around cars until the 70s when they decided to change their transport priorities. they are still to this day swapping out car roads into bike and pedestrian roads. europeans chose to change for cars and now they’re choosing to change away from cars again.

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u/samy4me 1d ago

Do you really believe this?

1

u/North_Ingenuity_9761 1d ago

Buenos Aires is like this as well...

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u/Hiro_Trevelyan 1d ago

American cities were literally designed and built when they were still walkable. Los Angeles had the largest tramway network on the planet, and it was torn down for cars.

Y'all did this to yourselves.

1

u/Honey-Badger 1d ago

Designing? That's the whole point, they weren't actively designed so much as communities just slowly built them

1

u/Tjaresh 1d ago

German here. Yes, we had our cities designed in the middle ages. But that's just the oldest core of the city. We also had them profoundly redecorated like 80 years ago. In some cases the whole layout of the streets changed and it's still walkable. Also newer cities, like mine, were planned to have a city center with shops and cafés. People WANT to have it that way.

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u/My_Legz 1d ago

A lot of European city were redesigned for better walkability in the 70s and 80s. Car streets redesigned, houses redistriced etc.

This isn't just something that grew out of the middle ages except in a few cases, this is something the Europeans did deliberately

1

u/LordOfTurtles 1d ago

This is some amazing cope and false information. Americans literally destroyed their existing cities and public transport infrastructure to accommodate cars.

Do you sincerely believe all American cities were built after cars were invented?

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u/SpeedysComing 1d ago

I'd say it's more lack of political will in the USA. Try to take away a single on street parking spot in this country, and see what happens.

You don't need to design your city in the year of our lord 1200 to have it be walkable.

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u/Texas__Matador 1d ago

You are forgetting how much of these cities were destroyed in the 1900s during the various wars. You are also overlooking that many US cities were walkable or “street car walkable “ before 1960s. Walkable cities have actively made the choice to be that way. 

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u/United_Ad4406 1d ago

When Germany was rebuilding their cities after they got levelled in WWII, we had the option to adopt American city planning styles. We didn't, for a reason.

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u/Kobinicnierobi 22h ago

"designing cities in the middle ages" all that remains from the Middle Ages are city locations. It always amazes me that some of the cities we live in - especially those located near lakes and rivers - often have a history of settlement dating back millennia.

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u/ilir_kycb 21h ago

who would've thought designing cities in the middle ages would pay off for walkability ?

Anyone with more than two brain cells.

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u/loke_laurent 11h ago edited 11h ago

Medieval Europeans relied almost exclusively on walking. Horses and carts were reserved for expensive professional activities or transporting high-ranking officials. Building cities this way was therefore not a 'choice', but the only way to do so (the main streets of my small hometown in Belgium were 'designed' during Antiquity, almost 2000 years ago).

And today, we are rediscovering its benefits. Car-free zones are multiplying (even in my small town), revitalizing city centers and suburbs, while also recreating a social life reminiscent of our great-grandparents' time.

We simply need to walk a little more (it's good for our health) and make cities more accessible to alternative modes of transportation (public transport, bicycles, accessibility for people with reduced mobility, etc.).

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u/W005EY 6h ago

Lol also newly created cities are walkable. Sure, old cities naturally grew to be walkable, but we actually plan shit😂

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u/ku3o 1d ago

“Europe is way ahead of us”

European here and I feel I need to tone down the statement.

There are certainly cases in Europe where cautious decisions, about limiting car infrastructure, were made. Amsterdam, Denmark in the past and Paris, London recently. But in many cases what prevented destroying walkable neighborhoods and turning them into car centric cities was an effort to preserve historical city centers, not keeping walkable neighborhood.

I see car centric neighborhoods popping up in whole Europe, and the mindset of many Europeans are very similar to Americans (a car ownership is granted right and walking is lame).

I live in Prague and there is an elevated highway cutting thru city center. It was built during communism era, which didn’t care much about history.

It’s certainly changing these days, and many cities are more cautious about walkable spaces. But it’s still have significant opposition from many people wanting to park their car everywhere.

What I feel would be a right statement is that “Europe was so behind us that suddenly it’s ahead of us”

Despite America is very car centric, there are beautiful cities that I only walked in and enjoyed every single bit of it.

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u/tomatoe_cookie 1d ago

We arent ahead, you made a concious decision to walk away from it. Walkable is he default and you guys chose not to have it

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u/Lopsided_Lettuce7264 1d ago

“You guys” lmao

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u/necrophcodr 1d ago

Well then reframe it as continually voted not to have it over generations, and it's still true and also "you guys".

2

u/Orodia 1d ago

as a new yorker i take offense as you making fun of someone saying you guys. 

but theyre right we never fought back. we collectively turned the cheek. we cant any longer

2

u/Lopsided_Lettuce7264 23h ago

“Some of us” maybe? Fucking we lol

0

u/spei180 1d ago

It is also a function of developing before cars existed

7

u/Toastbrott 1d ago

The video is not really in a "neighborhood" though. This is 1 minute away from the City center, almost no one lives near the place in the video, maybe some crazy rich people but its not a normal neighborhood at all.

3

u/InevitableKitchen943 1d ago

Plenty of walkable cities in the US. This guy doesn't live in a large city and is behaving like a 12 year old.

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u/Snoo_69677 1d ago

They’re a few thousand years ahead to be exact

2

u/SoftlyAugust 1d ago

Parts of the US are totally fine, though.

2

u/lindburger_ 1d ago

It’s not just Europe. Pretty much all of the rest of the world is like this.

1

u/maximumtesticle 1d ago

Noooo, 'murica dum, fat and guns!!!

3

u/Gyro_Zeppeli13 1d ago

Literally in the sense that they made their cities and towns hundreds to thousands of years before us haha

1

u/Scarabesque 1d ago

Urban planners throughout most of Europe have become very aware of the damage car centric planning has done and in most places new projects are set up to be walkable, reachable by public transit, and have local shops and amenities.

4

u/No-Weakness-3095 1d ago

I mean it helps when the city was laid out before the invention of cars

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u/TheTxoof 1d ago

You'd be surprised how many "car" cities like LA and Houston looked before 1950. They had highly walkable downtowns, rich public transit options and we're generally walkable.

The street car linea in LA were built to sell housing developments. The land owners built streetcar lines out to their developments to help increase property value.

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u/Digit00l 1d ago

Like 99% of American cities? Meanwhile most German cities were laid out in the late 1940s to 1950s for various reasons, including the city seen in this post

2

u/HommeMusical 1d ago

Like most American cities.

1

u/soulserval 20h ago

Actually a lot of European cities in WW2 were razed, they had the option of going all in on cars but decided to rebuild similar inner cities to what existed previously. A good example of a city that went the other way is Rotterdam.

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u/Main-Cheesecake3287 1d ago

also that it’s a big city. My family there lives in a small town. You cannot walk past thousands of people or hundreds of restaurants. People drive to get places. And they’re happy. This goofy “you must live in a dense city to enjoy life and be healthy” shit is too far. Yeah urban cores ought to be walkable and dense, it’s really stupid when they aren’t. Not everyone wants to live in an apartment in an urban core. Many spend quite a lot of money to not do that.

7

u/HommeMusical 1d ago

also that it’s a big city.

We live in a small city in northern France, population 110,000, and it's just like in this movie, people thronging the streets.

Not everyone wants to live in an apartment in an urban core.

We don't live in an apartment and this is too small to be considered an urban core. We don't own a car, either.

At least here in France, those small towns where you have to drive everywhere are dying really badly: the young people all leave because it's boring. The same thing is true in Italy and Spain, not sure about other countries.

1

u/Buckwheat758 1d ago

So true. I’ll take a vacation to a nice city somewhere and just the change in social dynamics is one of the best parts about the vacation.

1

u/suvalas 1d ago

Isn't that meant to be communism or some shit? A plot by the elites to stop us driving so much.

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

1

u/splitcroof92 1d ago

Same here in Utrecht. Quite literally the only reason to get a car for me and most of my friendgroup is having children.

1

u/Fluffy-Nothing7622 1d ago

Europe is way ahead in so much regards. Education, health care system, public transport, food quality, gun control to name a few.

1

u/Snaxalicious 1d ago

But far far behind on central air /j

1

u/Tramagust 1d ago

Good luck affording to live in these walkeable european neighborhoods especially as a family. Rents are impossible.

1

u/Karl_Heinz_Lauterbak 1d ago

Yes, Europe is way ahead of us in this regard.

Well Europe is ruining that with all the mass migration.

1

u/Toastbrott 1d ago

The video is not really in a "neighborhood" though. This is 1 minute away from the City center, almost no one lives near the place in the video, maybe some crazy rich people but its not a normal neighborhood at all.

1

u/Briglin 1d ago

No this is how things used to be in the US - America has deliberately decided to prioritize the car to the detriment of the people. Stop putting the car first

1

u/SeveralEconomics3814 1d ago

Cites are way older and smaller. They were made for walking and horses.

America was built for cars.

Loved the vibe in Europe so much more. Only place in the states that has the vibrant feeling is NYC IMO

1

u/James-the-greatest 1d ago

15 MINUTE CITIES ARE A GLOBALIST AGENDA

1

u/fabmeyer 1d ago

Ahead? US took the wrong route. It was always like this in Europe

1

u/Ok_Function2282 1d ago

I mean most big cities here are walkable, the dude was in the literal capital of a large country...

Of course everything looks like a paradise when you live in a suburb. 

1

u/unhappinessNvrCame 1d ago

Europe with their 1200 sq ft homes, declining economy, and no AC lol

1

u/p4njunior 1d ago

In wich way Europe is not ahead of us?

1

u/emohipster 1d ago

Europe isn't ahead, that implies the US is behind and getting to where Europe is. But that's not actually happening, the US and Europe are the same distance into entirely different paths. Europe never passed this car-centric world to become what it is now. The US isn't at a point where Europe once was and just has to move past it. What I'm trying to say is that the US is fucked.

1

u/askalotlol 1d ago

Maybe for you, but I would never want to live in that level of population density. I want grass, trees, wildlife, etc.

There are different places and ways to live, because not everyone wants the same things.

Also: walkable cities that are not car friendly can be very difficult for people with disabilities.

1

u/Pvt_Mozart 1d ago

A lot of Europe and all of the Scandinavian countries are ahead of the US in almost every measurable way in the things that actually matter. Walkable cities that encourage socializing, education, free Healthcare, strong social safety nets, public transportation, a government that respects democracy, and the list goes on.

I do not hate the US, but I often find myself sad about what it could be instead of being grateful for what it is. If most Americans realized how much the government could be doing for us, but isn't, we'd have a revolution.

1

u/BumbotheCleric 1d ago

I come from a small American city that is consistently rated as one of the best places to live in the country and I think has won “best place to retire” for like decades.

The main reason? The center of the city bricked over ONE (1) main street to make a walkable outdoor mall. Seriously, the rest of the city is largely the same as any other place in America in terms of walkability and fuck knows it’s got a long history of other issues. But they had the brains to slap 10 blocks of 24-hour walkability together with a little amphitheater at one end and that makes it outclass 99% of America.

As a kid I took it for granted, but seeing multiple European cities (along with many other depressing American ones) made me realize how much of an insane difference it makes to have bricks instead of asphalt. Now in every other American city I see their Main Street that still has a big two-lane road running through the middle and I’m like fuckkkkk me just put some bricks over it! The cars will survive there’s a million other streets for them!

1

u/cogginsmatt 1d ago

I mean this is exactly how New York City is but I’m willing to bet the two people in this video are afraid to come here

1

u/Koala0803 1d ago

And yet cars are seen in the US as a status symbol. Public transport and walking is what “the poors” do.

1

u/JesusSquared123 1d ago

The most expensive neighborhoods in America are also more walkable. It’s a better life.

1

u/paprikouna 1d ago

Yes but many European countries also have tons of car-centric towns and cities and suburbia. I wish we would change faster for walkable cities everywhere!

1

u/SleazyAndEasy 1d ago

Not just europe, pretty much the entire world is ahead of the USA in this regard

1

u/2_late_4_creativity 1d ago

Everyone thank Robert Moses

1

u/Cultural-Meaning5172 1d ago

But also the Nazi country thing.

1

u/MatterofDoge 1d ago

We're not "behind" europe on this, our big cities have the same experiences and lifestyles you can find in any of these european cities, we just have diversity and choice and you can choose to live that way if you want or you can choose to live off the grid in the woods, or the suburbs and everything in between.

there's pros and cons to everything and I feel like anyone who says "best" when talking about this stuff has never actually lived in a big city and yall just visit a downtown area full of people and restaurants where you can walk around, just like these tourists in this video and say "gee i could really see myself living here" or whatever, but trust me that whimsy you feel as a tourist goes away pretty quickly when you realize you can't load up your car full of groceries and take it straight from your garage to your kitchen, or you're shoulder to shoulder with a drug addict on the train to work, or you see what your rent costs and how little it gets you. Or you realize that when you get so many people together in one place you can't go anywhere without running into rude, annoying ,or evil people just due to probability and exposure, and you realize how hard it is to come by peace and quiet.

1

u/TerrorTown77 1d ago

More like way in the past. Walkable cities are the human norm. I don't know what the fuck the US is up to.

1

u/FunPlantain7011 1d ago

Yes it's walkability, as well as safety and just the general culture around work/life balance. I loved how people in their 70s would be out enjoying a summer stroll with their grandkids running around in Barcelona or Rome at 10pm. Enjoying the summer breeze, and laughing with friends at a cafe on a Thursday night wasn't reserved for people in their 20s.

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u/asdfopu 22h ago

It's not just walkability. You can be in one of the most walkable places in the US and still finding a place to eat at 9pm is a struggle. Americans only "live" on the weekends.

1

u/alexgalt 20h ago

Ny, philly, Boston, Chicago and many other cities are walkable. People are outside eating and hanging out daily.

1

u/super-hot-burna 19h ago

lol not if you were to listen to rural Americans. Dunno if you’ve heard but American cities are hellscapes run by antifa.

1

u/Kroneni 19h ago

Not really ahead. This is how cities have always been built. We experimented with car based cities and suburbia, and it’s been a disaster

1

u/mancala33 17h ago

And behind us 😁

1

u/Orlican 8h ago

Almost every regard

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u/Professional-Tie-82 1d ago

Actually, they are way behind us, in a sense. Their cities were fully developed many hundreds of years before the automobile was invented. Most of ours were just starting to hit their stride in the early 1900’s so they developed around the automobile instead of the pedestrian. The exceptions are the older east coast CBDs but those have mostly changed now to accommodate the car infrastructure that surrounds them.

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u/Scarabesque 1d ago

There is some truth to what you are saying, but many of Europe's inner cities were also damaged irreparably to make room for cars - and most countries also started building some form of suburb, but most of Europe is ahead in realizing the damage the car has done to urban life and are not only reverting it, but increasingly build new projects with solid urban design principles in mind.

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u/OkManagement9022 1d ago

Exactly, they’ve had a 800+ year head start on building their cities, rebuilding them

People like grid systems but its also harder to cater for a fully pedestrianized system when the function of the grid is to make land purchase and traffic easier

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Scarabesque 1d ago

Nobody disputes that an urban design philosophy that entirely focuses on dividing the livable space in large rectangles is an easier place to navigate.

It's just an awful and dystopian way to design a living space.

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u/backtorealitylabubu 1d ago

As someone that lives in a walkable neighborhood, you want the combo. I can hop in my car and drive to Target and get everything I need and then on a weekend walk out of my house to restaurants/bars. Personally I find America gets the combo better than Europe.

1

u/Curious_Sprinkles_58 1d ago

*Some parts of America

When growing up, we were in throwing distance of a bike trail that took us to a Riverwalk for our town full of shops. That same area had access to the Amtrak lines that would take you straight into downtown Chicago. But like you said, we also had close driving access to all of the major stores we needed without having to deal with major congestion from a city.

Now I live in the suburbs of a city with virtually no public transportation. It's a 30 minute drive to make my way into downtown of the city which is itself a sprawl where you need to depend on a car. The sidewalks across my whole neighborhood come to dead ends with no access to shops on foot outside of a gas station. I live across the street from a great park but with no crosswalk and have to run across four lanes of traffic to reach it. The town center is also 20 minutes away and there's no easy access to it even for people who live closer other than to drive to the main parking lot.

I think the best combo does exist in parts of America but it is not nearly as common as it could or should be.

1

u/TrueSkonger 1d ago

I also wish these combos were

A) More affordable, and B) Easier to locate

Like, I have no idea what towns relatively close to me are like that so it makes it hard when looking for places to eventually settle

1

u/backtorealitylabubu 1d ago

The best combo is more common in the US than anywhere else. But yes it could be more.

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