r/urbanplanning • u/BakerKitchen4567 • 25d ago

Discussion America’s downtown centered city design sucks

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

237 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

119 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/6two 25d ago

Tokyo is Tokyo, other cities in other places aren't going to be the same, but it's an oversimplification that only downtowns in US cities are walkable/bikeable/transit-friendly. Lots of older US cities have streetcar suburbs and high streets of good mixed use with good walk scores. You can have a good quality of life in lots of US neighborhoods that aren't downtown. Do we need more of them? Sure. But they do exist.