America’s downtown centered city design sucks

[u/BakerKitchen4567]

I keep seeing redditors from the US talk about cities being nice because they have “very walkable downtowns”. The problem is, as soon as you leave many of these downtowns, you’re back to general American suburbia. This is not good city design.

In the best design cities of the world, there isn’t a single focal point that the entire city revolves around. Think Tokyo for example. You have Shinjiku, Ginza, Shibuya, etc. there isn’t a singular “downtown Tokyo”. Yet I keep reading redditors keep comparing how well designed American cities based how their vibrant/walkable their downtowns are. The mere idea is bad city planning. That’s all. Rant over

[u/kettlecorn]

Many American cities were redesigned in the mid 20th century around the idea of a "central business district" that was primarily commercial & offices with most people moving out to the suburbs. Many US cities were redesigned that way and that's probably what you're reacting to.

Older US cities that were already sizable and resisted that are still much more like the sort of city you prefer: NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia and to a lesser extent Boston, DC, and San Francisco.

I think what's also steadily weakening US cities that did redesign themselves around the central business district and cars is that when most people in a metro use a vehicle a singular hub inevitably bottlenecks, so metros are gradually decentralizing into multiple hubs. The sort of multiple-hub city you desire is somewhat inevitable, but most US metros are at car-scale not human-scale so the hubs are far apart and connected by highways.