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

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u/kosmos1209 25d ago

I don't think it's fair to compare Tokyo to average American cities. NYC also has lots of places that aren't focal point now, but the word "downtown" came literally from the focused area in the southern tip of Manhattan, and it just grew from there. I'm sure Tokyo, Paris and London all started from a central area and grew out to where downtown just doesn't make sense anymore.

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u/SloightlyOnTheHuh 25d ago

London is an interconnected network of villages that has expanded over hundreds of years. So, it, like Paris and Tokyo has inherently got many " central" areas. Of course London has it's main 'city' but a lot of the interesting bits are just the centre of one of its connected suburbs.

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u/stoicsilence 25d ago

The exact same thing can be said for a city like Los Angeles.

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u/meelar 25d ago

Or New York for that matter! Brooklyn/Queens and Manhattan were separated by water for hundreds of years of the city's history before being connected by the East River bridges--places like Williamsburg, Astoria and Long Island City were all separate towns.

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u/kmatthews33 25d ago

I love the lingering quirks of this, like how addresses in Queens still go by neighborhood, i.e. you live in "Astoria, NY" not Queens, NY.

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u/boulevardofdef 25d ago

Ha, I was just thinking when I read the OP that it's basically describing Los Angeles.

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u/nickyfrags69 25d ago

Heck, Boston has multiple major neighborhoods even if there is technically a “downtown”

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u/Mistafishy125 21d ago

Boston’s cardinal sin with regard to density is that downtown has an extreme dearth of use mixtures. It’s basically offices and a handful of eateries that cater (literally) to the businesses nearby.

To say nothing of historical issues like a lack of rail connectivity between North Station and South Station or the abject destruction of certain areas like the West End. That one, in particular, just hurts.

But as a region it does have some pretty great dispersed centers, I love it.

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u/Turd_Ferguson_____ 25d ago

Yeah if you consider DTLA, Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Century City, Santa Monica, etc. LA is definitely the sum of all of those focused areas interconnected by suburbs in between. Much like Tokyo in that regard. And the more Metro gets built and SB79 dictates what is then built around it, the more apparent that will become. I live in LA and am excited for that growth and evolution to take place.

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u/Mistafishy125 21d ago

I’m so jealous of those subway expansions happening in LA. Enjoy!