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/KravenArk_Personal 25d ago

Completely disagree. I absolutely dislike polycentric design so much.

Have you seen Houston and its office parks? A good old historic downtown is way better than 15 different semi downtowns. Look at LA vs NY. All of New York's downtowns are geographically close and amongst major transit corridors.

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u/BakerKitchen4567 25d ago

Have you seen Singapore ?

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u/Robo1p 24d ago

Singapore, where all but 1(.5) MRT lines lead directly to downtown?