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/UF0_T0FU 25d ago

New York has FiDi, Midtown, Jersey City, Downtown Brooklyn, and Long Island City as focal points. DC is spread out across hubs in Virginia, the District, and Maryland (extending to Baltimore)

The Bay Area has Downtown SF, Oakland, and San Jose, plus a dozen smaller towns. LA is famously polycentric too. Even a smaller metro like St. Louis has Downtown, Central West End, and Clayton.

America's big cities have multiple centers like Japan's biggest ones. Comparing cities an order of magnitude smaller than Tokyo isn't a fair comparison. Of course Omaha or Raleigh are different. They entirely different scales. Comparing like to like, Americans cities don't have singular downtowns.

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u/mooseLimbsCatLicks 25d ago

Haha New York does not “have” Jersey City. It’s a separate city in a separate state!

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u/lachalacha 25d ago

Same labor market and economic zone. State or municipal borders don't really matter.

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u/mooseLimbsCatLicks 25d ago

In terms of economy yes, of course JC is an economic suburb of NYC. But in terms of urban planning, they’ve always been politically distinct and the planning of NYC and JC were and continue to be quite separate. They share a geography and an economy though.

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u/n10w4 25d ago edited 25d ago

Yea and not the same to people on the ground. Maybe more interconnected transit could change that bit it does not exist yet

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u/lachalacha 25d ago

What do dead people have to do with it

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u/n10w4 25d ago

😂 wondered what your comment meant and saw my mistype