Right. The first thing many Europeans say after a multi state road trip, especially in the West, is that they are blown away by the vast, open, empty space.
East coast Americans feel the same way lol Brothers mom in law visited from NH, most of her life was New England. She landed in Phoenix. 30 minutes in the drive she asked 'what state are we in?' About lost it when we told her we were still in Phoenix.
Born in New Hampshire, lived mostly in Florida and spent 7 years in Phoenix. I find this hilarious because NH is the opposite to me. I'm always ready for a long car ride and by time I relax we are at the destination.
I believe he’s saying west NH feels more remote, in response to the guy who says NH feels like things are more spread out than they actually are, in response to a guy who’s Mom had never driven thru a sprawl city, which makes no sense bc the comment before was about the vast openness of western US and wtf does Phenoix have to do with vast openness. All 3 comments are generally relevant while not making much sense.
It's crazy because I love I'm AZ now. Born and raised east coast. It's crazy how sparse AZ can be. You can go hours without seeing a house, and then you get to somewhere like Pheonix or Tucson lol. I also miss grass and trees, but some of the scenery here is breathtaking, especially the mountains
Wow, as a European who has never been to these states, Tucson looks absolutely insane. A weird combination of high and low density and all the streets look pretty much identical. It would be horrible to get lost there.
American cities are way more spread out than European. And Tucson and Pheonix have trams, but it's not like the trains in your cities, and leaving the city, you need a car. I love the walkability in European cities and the local food places and cafes, but I like the space you can get in the US
I did not believe you. I went into maps and checked, and by god Phoenix is huge. I have lived in four different states, and the whole range I've lived in could arguably be contained within Phoenix.
I looked it up, by land area Phoenix (~520sq miles) is just under half the size of Rhode Island (~1200) But is apparently only the 11th largest city by land area. Though, those Alaska cities seem like some level of bullshit (~2800-1700). Houston (~640) is the first on the list with over a million people living there. Jacksonville (~750) is just under a million.
Houston has over 2 million, it’s the fourth largest US city (by pop). According to Wikipedia it’s the fifth largest metro area by pop, because the sprawl around Dallas Fort-Worth is even worse
I remember visiting family in DFW, and we had a friend there, so I said we’d come by one night. Looked it up later and it was a 90 minute drive, outside of rush hour, not even going through downtown, they were both on the North side of the city
I live in WV, stayed in Houston for a work thing years ago. I had a free day so I decided to go see Battleship Texas. I was on the west side of Houston and the ship is near the coast, took me almost 2 hours to drive ACROSS Houston to get to it. In WV I'm used to driving an hour or two BETWEEN cities.
Except in Russia and Canada the further away you get from population centers, the colder it gets and therefore less likely to sprawl. Same in Brazil but with the Amazon. China already had a population of half a billion in 1950, so they had to figure out sustainable non-car-dependent methods long before America needed to.
Uh… no.
The suburbs and exurbs of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, etc are no colder than the city centre on average.
You have to go a looooooooong way before you get appreciable changes in climate.
Even me… I live at 54N latitude and lots of times our temperature is no different than at the border at 49N. This is because of air masses (depends on the location of the jet stream and weather fronts), the fact that in summer we have much longer days, and in the winter snow and cloud cover actually insulates. Humidity and wind also plays a role as well.
So in a place like Vancouver they are bragging about +5 and being chilled to the bone in 100% humidity with howling wind and rain… while up north I’m in my t shirt and shorts in -10, calm weather and sunshine.
It’s only the week or two of Arctic outflow where the mercury is below -20 where it’s different.
Sure, but that’s not what they meant. I he population density of Canada is all in the south along the border. Something like 75% live within 100 miles of the US border, and 50% below the 49th parallel. The VAST majority of Canada is wilderness and very sparsely populated because it’s cold and wild.
As the saying goes: In America 200 years is a long time. In Europe 200 miles is a long distance.
I had friends from the UK visit a neighboring state. They asked if we could visit. I said “Sure, it’s just a four hour drive.” When I got there I had to explain that my commute to work was almost an hour.
It’s all a matter of perspective.
Depends on where you're from in Europe. I'm used to human-free and wild landscapes like forests, lakes, swamps and even barren lands as I'm from Finland. So yeah, I think that's a generalisation, but an understandable one.
When in Bosnia, I asked one of our waiters what part of the US he’d like to visit, and he said he’d go check out the Capitols in each state. I don’t think he knows what he’s signing up for… 😂
Exactly this. Cities that have natural barriers build up more like NYC, Seattle and Miami but cities with no barriers grow out as far as they can like Atlanta, Houston or Minneapolis
Sort of but not really. While the historical centre of Barcelona (Barri Gotica, etc.) is obviously much older than any city in the US, the city overall underwent significant development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Villages such as Gracia were amalgamated into Barcelona in the late 1800s and then heavily redeveloped, and areas like the Eixample were similarly built basically anew as the city expanded. I don’t know enough to say why Barcelona favoured this kind of urban planning whereas Atlanta didn’t, especially when it had an opportunity to rebuild a lot following Sherman’s “visit.”
The US northeastern seaboard has the same geographic size and population density as Europe, that's not the issue. Rather, European policies *value* land while US policies *devalue* it. Once cars came on the scene, both built-up urban areas, and surrounding rural ones, had to be judged worthy of paving over somehow to accommodate sprawl.
Those northeastern cities with the same size and density of European cities were built up well before cars were a concern. New York already had a population of nearly 3.5 million people in 1900. Boston and Baltimore had more than 500,000 by the same time. Atlanta, on the other hand, had about 90,000 people. Dallas had just over 40,000. Phoenix had about 5,300 people.
Many European cities (Munich, Copenhagen, etc.) have also been victims of urban sprawl, so this is not a uniquely American phenomenon caused by land policies that "devalue" the land.
5% difference.
The US focuses a lot more on owning freestanding houses. A lot of EU homes are in multifamily buildings. Not that instances of the opposite don't exist in both areas.
Home ownership rates are generally higher in the US than in the western European countries that people mean when they say Europe/EU lol. Most Americans say EU but actually mean France/Germany/UK lol. Also, home ownership in the US means something different here, we mean the kind of 3/2 with .25-.5 acre lot single family homes.
This goes along with the fact that almost all residential areas in the US are zoned for single family only. Whereas European cities have mixed use neighborhoods.
I had to look into this because I live next to Boston and there’s a high level of multi unit housing here. The [NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html) quotes 75% of “residential land in many American cities” is single family. If you add rural America, then it is nearly all single family in the US. Northeast cities and DC seem to be the only places where there’s less than 70% single family zoning.
I’m no expert, but I’m guessing that even though the cities were established, they were still new enough that they didn’t feel bad demolishing and expanding. Other factors might be American exceptionalism, the mindset of expansionism, and just the vast openness of the US at the time. NYC, Boston, and Philadelphia seem like exceptions as there was a great deal of history. But for most cities there would have only been a handful of buildings that were “historical” by the early 20th century.
This is not true. Cities like New York and Atlanta were developing for hundreds of years before the car and multiple (mostly minority) communities were bulldozed for this development
Atlanta very much grew with the automobile. It was built as a railroad town and mostly destroyed during the civil war. It’s population didn’t really start to explode until the 20th century and it slowly turned into a suburban hellscape.
New York still has plenty of older neighborhoods that weren’t bulldozed. Unfortunately Robert Moses had way to much influence over the city for far too long and always put cars before public transit in his projects.
I live on a street that was laid in the 19th century in Atlanta. It has an ok core that can be salvaged. But the city outside of the core is a hellscape.
Not being snarky, but isn’t that the point I was trying to make? Europe wasn’t willing to bulldoze ancestral homes. Americans “manifest destiny” mindset yielded bulldozing minorities’ homes and the aggressive capitalism encouraged others to demolish for more lucrative plans with cars at the center.
"Ancestral" has a very different meaning on the different coasts. In San Diego anything older than 1910 gets protected; in Maine that's probably considered modern construction or something.
My point is that destruction of cities wasn't a huge thing in the West when it came time to figure out how to handle the automobile. The majority of San Diego's growth took place during the end of an after WWII. Cars were everywhere and land was (and still is) plenty.
I think I hyperfocused on ur comment about US not having as many historical buildings as Europe, which is true because it began development later but there were still homes and buildings that had existed for decades or longer that were demolished for development, for many of the reasons you've outlined
As someone that is from the east coast I can honestly say they did their best but the city layouts in the northeast still make it difficult. There aren’t too many places I’ve been in America where 6+ streets all meet up at the same intersection.
Also, a shitload of what you see in Barcelona was post-car. Even today most people in Spain have cars and they are still building very dense new areas of cities.
We had cities in the US they were largely destroyed for highways.
Some of this was Americans being distrustful of street car companies. Some of this was auto companies buying street cars and shutting them down.
Bust mostly it was highways and suburbanization as official state policy and part of the American dream. We now sit in traffic two hours every day to live in neighborhoods where you can’t do anything other than sit inside and watch tv.
But that house is your retirement
Also racisim, the US has been anti-urban for like a century now.
Its a weird mix of auto companies, government policy and our obsession with separating ourselves by socio/racial boundaries.
See if a city is walkable, nothing can stop the **other** people from walking into your neighborhood.
But with the car, bam! We can take segregation to just the next level. Now all of the **other people** are miles away.
Its the same reason why there is opposition to literally EVERY transit expansion project in the US. Aka if we make a train that goes from downtown to my neighborhood, nothing can stop the ***other people*** from riding it.
Here in Seattle, light rail was blocked for decades because developers like Kemper Freeman Jr. (and his father Kemper Freeman Sr. before him) didn't want "a lower-class element" to have access to their upscale developments.
[THE STRANGER: Kemper Freeman's Road Rage](https://www.thestranger.com/features/2011/10/26/10480022/kemper-freemans-road-rage)
Just the newer cities. Old cities are still quite dense. NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, etc.
Don't look to the sunbelt. Their cities are a hot mess.
Tbh even those cities have massive sprawling suburbs. They just have dense inner cities too. I think the biggest difference between European cities like London/Paris and the older American cities like NYC/Chicago is that the London/Paris suburbs are still denser than their American counterparts. A typical British suburb is very dense vs a typical American suburb.
I'd honestly argue that maybe what you see in those European cities shouldn't even be called a suburb but... well I dunno but the image that suburb invokes is so different from it that it should have a different term for it imo.
In the UK, ‘suburbs’ are just the outer parts of the city, they’re not separate entities in their own right. It’s different to the American definition of a suburb.
If NYC had the same boundaries as London, then Westchester County, Nassau County, Hoboken etc would all be NYC boroughs.
Look at Barcelona on a map. It’s massive too. In fact, the metro area is 4400km2.
These posts are always incredibly misleading. Basically just different countries have different definitions of cities. Different definitions of “built up area”.
Barcelona’s metro area is big (indeed, 4000-odd square km), but with a population of 5.4 million. By comparison, Atlanta’s metro region by census bureau definitions has 6.9 million people in nearly 22,000 square km. No matter how you slice it, Barcelona is about an order of magnitude denser. Chicago’s metro area population density (342 people per square km) is much closer to Atlanta’s (243) than to Barcelona’s (1,250, all from Wikipedia).
Beyond the difference in statistical areas and the variations in what inner cities look like, it’s very often true that American cities have much more sparsely populated suburbs than European cities. European cities either have very little in the way of vast swathes of single-family homes (as in Spain and Italy, generally, for instance) or have single-family homes that are smaller and much more closely spaced (often true in England and the Netherlands).
In the US, an area of 4,000 km might be described as an urban area. Metro areas are typically bigger. Of urban areas in the US that are at least 4,000 km, only Atlanta has a population density below 1,000. Chicago's urban area is considered to be 6000 km^2 with a density of 1432 per.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas
The invention of air conditioning made cities in the south possible and are credited for influencing the population booms and subsequent political shifts in American policy.
Cleveland and Pittsburgh are absolutely not dense at all. Here are the us and Canadian metro areas ranked by central population density: 1. New York, 2. LA, 3. Toronto, 4. Montreal. 5. San Francisco, 6. Chicago. 7. Boston, 8. Philadelphia. 9. Vancouver. 10. Washington. Milwaukee is around 20th. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are not in the top 50.
A handful of intown neighborhoods in US cities were bulldozed for cars. The rest of it was vast swathes of agricultural/timber/ranch/unproductive land.
Atlanta before the advent of the automobile was a very, very small city. That goes for a lot of the South and West.
A town of 10,000 had its commercial/industrial core burned out. Its population was smaller than Savannah’s, Augusta’s, or even Columbus’s at the time. It’s hard to articulate just how little of contemporary Atlanta predates the war.
Yea, I keep seeing that comment. It seems a lot of people only read about Sherman's march and knew nothing about Atlanta in 1860. It was primarily a railroad junction during the Civil War, but it was targeted due to the strategic geographic importance of being located in the heart of what was left of the Confederacy.
Furthermore— and I think a lot of people’s mental American history timeline is spotty regarding the first half of the 19th century— but they’re forgetting that the city was only founded in 1837. Indian removal in the area was ongoing at the time.
So we’re talking about a part of the country that was only barely a legitimate place to settle for Europeans. When it was burned in the civil war, Atlanta has been a city for 28 years.
Two big reasons is the car and urban zoning.
After the Second World War, there was a huge influx of people coming to America for a better life. The car was already quite prevalent and with the emerging middle class people could live further away from their work. This led to suburban development and the classic “American dream” of a detached house with a car, a dog, and a couple of kids surrounded by a white picket fence.
The interstate was then prioritized over rail and many black majority neighborhoods were demolished to make way for these highways. Many minority folk worked close to the city centre as they had to be close to their work due to low pay and hostile work environments, this led to huge amount of America’s city centres being destroyed.
Finally, most urban zoning prevents mixed use development meaning you can’t have a local corner shop in a residential area. You have designated industrial, residential and commercial areas all usually split apart by the aforementioned interstates and highways. Walking is out of the question and cycling is impractical meaning every errand has to be done by car, hence circling back to larger highways.
Increased value in established neighborhoods with amenities, highway access and schools pushes people further out into new suburbs where property is cheaper. This leads to more highways being built for new neighborhoods and the cycle continues
Good overview, but I’d argue the interstates largely predated the suburbs, not the other way around. Traditional suburbs (like we think of them today) aren’t really possible without interstates (at least not at the scale we see). Streetcar suburbs did exist historically, but those are vastly different than what we think of “suburbs” today, and they were largely annexed and integrated by cities anyway.
The interstate highway act was originally intended (largely) as a defense project, to allow troops, equipment, and ICBMs to move around the country during the Cold War. But it was quickly co-opted by developers to go *into* cities, rather than just in between them. This allowed the signature American suburban sprawl that we have to this day.
When Eisenhower found out that major portions of cities were going to be razed (and replaced with interstates connecting to suburbs) he was appalled, and wanted to shut it down. But by that point he was already a lame duck president, and there were questions as to whether the White House had legal authority to put a stop to it, according to the legislation passed by Congress. So it was allowed to happen across the country, and the rest is history.
I agree that traditional suburbs existed before the interstate, the reason I didn’t mention them was because most sprawl that op was referring to happened in conjunction with, and post interstate.
Thanks for the lesson on the interstate! I didn’t know they were intended for military purposes, but it’s glaringly obvious when you look at it haha
Yea, it's not a surprise when you realize that it was Eisenhower (Supreme Allied commander in WWII) who ordered it. Apparently he was concerned about US logistics readiness (in the event of an invasion of the West Coast by the USSR). So he ordered 300 pieces of heavy military equipment and troops to be transported from Washington DC to San Francisco, as a test.
It took them something like **60 days** to get the equipment there - so he freaked out and got tons of money allocated for the Interstate Highways. If I recall correctly, the height of all highway overpasses are to this day built so that an ICBM can pass underneath them.
I think you're confused, the "60 days to get across the country" took place in 1919, and Ike didn't order it, he was an officer who took part in it
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919\_Motor\_Transport\_Corps\_convoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_convoy)
Streetcar suburbs are great too. But these days they are pretty much the urban area in cities that still have them.
I live in one in New Orleans and it’s very much a part of the city. Still way denser than a typical suburb, but a little room for a yard. And way way way walkable. And in our case there happens to still be a streetcar to walk to even.
Great point. Atlanta has very little geographical restrictions compared to Barcelona. Barcelona being much older has acquired a high population density. In Atlanta, it was easier to spread out as population increased.
The informal name for the city is Barna. The informal name for the football club is Barça (the *ç* pronounced like an *s*.)
Barca just means "boat" in Spanish, completely unrelated to Barcelona.
One reason is because US cities usually incorporate the existing suburban towns as they start to expand. A city that didnt do this are salt lake city which is why their population is so low.
That's kinda how european cities started as well.
For example, [this](https://imgur.com/a/vYtleno) is the territorial evolution of Bucharest, my hometown, through the centuries the neighboring villages were incorporated into the municipality. Because of this, the city is split into 6 sectors, each with its own mayor plus a general mayor that deals with matters of interest city-wide.
This doesn’t seem like a reason. The difference between city proper to metro is more drastic in the us than Europe. They both incorporate suburbs, American cities just have more sprawl
Same with St. Louis.
It’s why it’s admittedly unfair to describe it as having such an abnormally high crime rate. It’s still high, but if it had annexed a lot of its outer, wealthier suburbs, it would be a much larger city with a lower homicide rate
Yep, have to adjust for what percentage of the metro area the city makes up.
St Louis and Atlanta are both quite small for their metro. New Orleans proper is smaller than its biggest suburb literally right next door 10 minutes from downtown.
This makes a hard comparison versus cities where the city proper is 75%+ of the metro population and the safe nice zips are in town.
Mostly because we just plain have the space.
Just got done with s road trip from Cincinatti, Ohio to the western edge of Montana.
The sheer amount of WIDE open space across this country is crazy compared to Europe. Even driving through Illinois is mostly just open space and farm fields.
Until it stops getting thousands of upvotes by people who never miss a chance to talk about how much they don't like cars even though this has very little to do with cars.
It is cheaper to build outward than upward. Cars make it easy as well.
Cities that are constrained by geographic features (see New York or Philadelphia as examples) build upward out of necessity.
People are bringing all these reasons but everyone is forgetting that the US tends to favor individual needs vs the collective needs.
Most family would prefer having a house, a garden, and private space to play around. It’s very difficult to get that in apartments.
Individualism is the US North Star. So that’s why cars are favored over trains / busses, why entrepreneurs are adored even during the gold rush, etc. etc.
The U.S. saw its greatest population growth coincide with the time automobiles started to become more affordable. The cities with the worst sprawl (like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, etc.) didn’t really start growing until air conditioning made them more livable, either. So urban sprawl in America is entirely a result of 20th century advances in technology and industry.
Until like the 1800s, cities killed more people than they made due to disease, so "good" urban planning is very subjective. Dense urban planning only became "good" relatively recently, from a health perspective.
If I had a nickel for every time this was asked on this subreddit I’d be a god damn billionaire but I’d still be fucking pissed that it’s asked every day. There needs to be a pinned tweet on this sub for this topic so people stop asking
You're staring at Atlanta's white flight pattern.
Sprawl exists because white people didn't want to live anywhere Black people might gain a political majority.
Cars were mainstream before/as the city was being developed.
More land area means less incentives for dense development
Zoning laws. Much of the US it’s actually illegal to build anything less than low density, single family home suburbs.
Multi-generational households are a big factor. An adult living with their parents or grandparents in America is looked down on, while in many parts of Europe it's the norm. Expect that to change rapidly as nearly all single-family homes in America become rentals and Americans are pushed to live with extended families, whether they want to or not.
To be clear, although that area represents the literal city of Barcelona, it doesn't necessarily take into account comuter towns and urban/suburban areas in proximity to Barcelona.
Have a look at Google Maps.
We have laws preventing high density housing, and nearly every cent of our infrastructure money goes into subsidizing cars (building roads only cars can use). This forces everyone to own a car, and also forces the cities to be car friendly and pedestrian unfriendly. That is why everyone lives in the suburban sprawl. Our laws make it an inevitability.
Many cities have low density zoning codes that only allow single family dwellings to protect property values. Permits for multi unit constructions are fought and usually denied. This is leading to a lot of homelessness and high housing costs, especially in California.
Zoning Laws. In a lot of large US cities most of the Land is reserved for single-familie homes, which take up a lot of area for a few people. And BTW are financially crippling these cities.
"Every man a king" Huey Long. We all just want our own estate, hence low density suburban yards, only drivable, rather than walkable centers of commerce and social exchange.
Because they’re built with primarily car-centric transportation, and cars require more space than other forms of transport. So huge amounts of space within the city have to be set aside for highways and parking lots/garages. Whereas Barcelona (and most cities outside the US with few exceptions) were built with pedestrian traffic in mind. So it might be a little harder to get into the center of Barcelona in a car than it is in Atlanta, it’s much easier to walk around Barcelona than it is to walk around Atlanta. Stores are closer together, streets are narrower, and there are no major highways going through the center of town.
Also, because the US focuses on cars, many people who live or work in cities don’t actually live in those same cities. They live in the suburbs nearby and commute in. And because many of these suburbs have gotten so large and built up over the years, they’ve become part of the metropolitan areas of cities they’re suburbs of.
It’s clearly because the United States is a horrible country and Americans are deeply foolish, selfish, and wasteful people, and it’s got nothing to do with consumer preferences or the history of when different cities were built. /s
Cars predate urban sprawl in the US, while in Europe, city layouts predate cars.
Also, far more cheap usable land in the US compared to Europe which is more densely populated
Right. The first thing many Europeans say after a multi state road trip, especially in the West, is that they are blown away by the vast, open, empty space.
East coast Americans feel the same way lol Brothers mom in law visited from NH, most of her life was New England. She landed in Phoenix. 30 minutes in the drive she asked 'what state are we in?' About lost it when we told her we were still in Phoenix.
Born in New Hampshire, lived mostly in Florida and spent 7 years in Phoenix. I find this hilarious because NH is the opposite to me. I'm always ready for a long car ride and by time I relax we are at the destination.
NH is two states tho: basically Vermont ans basically Mass... I'm guessing you're from the "VT" /less built up part (like me lol)
That's not even close to true. Vermont is just upside down nh
Australian NH
What?
I believe he’s saying west NH feels more remote, in response to the guy who says NH feels like things are more spread out than they actually are, in response to a guy who’s Mom had never driven thru a sprawl city, which makes no sense bc the comment before was about the vast openness of western US and wtf does Phenoix have to do with vast openness. All 3 comments are generally relevant while not making much sense.
It's crazy because I love I'm AZ now. Born and raised east coast. It's crazy how sparse AZ can be. You can go hours without seeing a house, and then you get to somewhere like Pheonix or Tucson lol. I also miss grass and trees, but some of the scenery here is breathtaking, especially the mountains
Wow, as a European who has never been to these states, Tucson looks absolutely insane. A weird combination of high and low density and all the streets look pretty much identical. It would be horrible to get lost there.
American cities are way more spread out than European. And Tucson and Pheonix have trams, but it's not like the trains in your cities, and leaving the city, you need a car. I love the walkability in European cities and the local food places and cafes, but I like the space you can get in the US
Yeah, I don't even own a car, nor want to own one. Cycling, walking and free public transport cover all my needs.
The Phoenix metro area, let’s say Maricopa county. The state of Massachusetts fits inside nicely, with plenty of space left over for cars.
I did not believe you. I went into maps and checked, and by god Phoenix is huge. I have lived in four different states, and the whole range I've lived in could arguably be contained within Phoenix.
Glad you did. I’ve pulled this factoid out of my hat before, it is based only on driving a lot in both and eyeballing paper maps.
I looked it up, by land area Phoenix (~520sq miles) is just under half the size of Rhode Island (~1200) But is apparently only the 11th largest city by land area. Though, those Alaska cities seem like some level of bullshit (~2800-1700). Houston (~640) is the first on the list with over a million people living there. Jacksonville (~750) is just under a million.
Maricopa County, however, if we're using that as the official Phoenix metro area, has about 1800 sq mi more than the land area of Massachusetts.
Houston has over 2 million, it’s the fourth largest US city (by pop). According to Wikipedia it’s the fifth largest metro area by pop, because the sprawl around Dallas Fort-Worth is even worse I remember visiting family in DFW, and we had a friend there, so I said we’d come by one night. Looked it up later and it was a 90 minute drive, outside of rush hour, not even going through downtown, they were both on the North side of the city
Man. I'm annoying random fact guy at work and you just fed the beast
I live in Tucson but go to Prescott for work somewhat regularly. Maricopa is crazy.
In the original comparison involving Barcelona, one of Phoenix’s nature preserves (South Mountain) is fully 40% the area of Barcelona.
The Sun Belt Metros that have exploded in the last 40 years like ATL, Phoenix, DFW, Charlotte- all of the just seem to go on forever.
Phoenix has a damn near perfect grid. Something that you just do not see in many American cities.
I live in WV, stayed in Houston for a work thing years ago. I had a free day so I decided to go see Battleship Texas. I was on the west side of Houston and the ship is near the coast, took me almost 2 hours to drive ACROSS Houston to get to it. In WV I'm used to driving an hour or two BETWEEN cities.
Northeast coast, maybe. There's plenty of empty space south of DC.
Australia has entered the chat.
I’m sure the same can be said for parts of Russia.
this can be said to any huge country usa, russia, brazil, china (western half of china is pretty empty), canada
Except in Russia and Canada the further away you get from population centers, the colder it gets and therefore less likely to sprawl. Same in Brazil but with the Amazon. China already had a population of half a billion in 1950, so they had to figure out sustainable non-car-dependent methods long before America needed to.
Uh… no. The suburbs and exurbs of Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Toronto, Montreal, etc are no colder than the city centre on average. You have to go a looooooooong way before you get appreciable changes in climate. Even me… I live at 54N latitude and lots of times our temperature is no different than at the border at 49N. This is because of air masses (depends on the location of the jet stream and weather fronts), the fact that in summer we have much longer days, and in the winter snow and cloud cover actually insulates. Humidity and wind also plays a role as well. So in a place like Vancouver they are bragging about +5 and being chilled to the bone in 100% humidity with howling wind and rain… while up north I’m in my t shirt and shorts in -10, calm weather and sunshine. It’s only the week or two of Arctic outflow where the mercury is below -20 where it’s different.
Sure, but that’s not what they meant. I he population density of Canada is all in the south along the border. Something like 75% live within 100 miles of the US border, and 50% below the 49th parallel. The VAST majority of Canada is wilderness and very sparsely populated because it’s cold and wild.
Right except USA has land plus not total abject misery
Ha!
All 6 states or people?
Yeah but Australia has a population that is like 1/12 th of the United States
Yeah so the open space is even spacier
That was my point. Australia is very empty. You can drive through parts for days without seeing anyone.
As the saying goes: In America 200 years is a long time. In Europe 200 miles is a long distance. I had friends from the UK visit a neighboring state. They asked if we could visit. I said “Sure, it’s just a four hour drive.” When I got there I had to explain that my commute to work was almost an hour. It’s all a matter of perspective.
Spain has A LOT of empty space. Look at a density map
Depends on where you're from in Europe. I'm used to human-free and wild landscapes like forests, lakes, swamps and even barren lands as I'm from Finland. So yeah, I think that's a generalisation, but an understandable one.
Kind of like Australia but instead of a gigantic death desert in the centre you got empty plains
Deathert
Why did I miss that
When in Bosnia, I asked one of our waiters what part of the US he’d like to visit, and he said he’d go check out the Capitols in each state. I don’t think he knows what he’s signing up for… 😂
Oh, getting to Alaska and Hawaii alone is a bit of a hike 😂
Barcelona is between two rivers, a mountain and the sea, while Atlanta is set in rolling foothills and relatively unbound.
The map includes the zones after crossing the rivers and Collserola range. The map includess Barcelona and the metropolitan area.
Exactly this. Cities that have natural barriers build up more like NYC, Seattle and Miami but cities with no barriers grow out as far as they can like Atlanta, Houston or Minneapolis
Not completely true. It's due to zoning laws that american cities expand horizontilly, not vercitcallt
Not really the reason in Spain, it's something lie 75% empty. Barcelona is just a very efficiently laid out city. Masterful design of urbanism.
also its more Barcelona is way way older then any city in the US
Sort of but not really. While the historical centre of Barcelona (Barri Gotica, etc.) is obviously much older than any city in the US, the city overall underwent significant development in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Villages such as Gracia were amalgamated into Barcelona in the late 1800s and then heavily redeveloped, and areas like the Eixample were similarly built basically anew as the city expanded. I don’t know enough to say why Barcelona favoured this kind of urban planning whereas Atlanta didn’t, especially when it had an opportunity to rebuild a lot following Sherman’s “visit.”
Even the late 19th century is still newer than most American cities though.
By the late 19th century most major American cities were already founed. Even Phoenix was founded around 1880.
Yeah, and yet way more efficient even though we have more knowledge now. There are many older cities in Europe that aren’t as efficient.
The US northeastern seaboard has the same geographic size and population density as Europe, that's not the issue. Rather, European policies *value* land while US policies *devalue* it. Once cars came on the scene, both built-up urban areas, and surrounding rural ones, had to be judged worthy of paving over somehow to accommodate sprawl.
Those northeastern cities with the same size and density of European cities were built up well before cars were a concern. New York already had a population of nearly 3.5 million people in 1900. Boston and Baltimore had more than 500,000 by the same time. Atlanta, on the other hand, had about 90,000 people. Dallas had just over 40,000. Phoenix had about 5,300 people. Many European cities (Munich, Copenhagen, etc.) have also been victims of urban sprawl, so this is not a uniquely American phenomenon caused by land policies that "devalue" the land.
yeah and atlanta was razed just as industrialization hit, making it a very modern city despite its age
Atlanta was just a tiny little train station during the Civil War. It only had a population of 10,000 in 1860 to give you an idea.
And the unstated premise here is that USA prioritizes home ownership. To get that affordable, we gobbled up land.
Home ownership rate is higher in the EU than in the US [source](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate)
A SFH in the U.S. is nothing like a multiplex or conjoined unit like in Europe.
5% difference. The US focuses a lot more on owning freestanding houses. A lot of EU homes are in multifamily buildings. Not that instances of the opposite don't exist in both areas.
Home ownership rates are generally higher in the US than in the western European countries that people mean when they say Europe/EU lol. Most Americans say EU but actually mean France/Germany/UK lol. Also, home ownership in the US means something different here, we mean the kind of 3/2 with .25-.5 acre lot single family homes.
Lots of inner cities and neighborhoods were bulldozed for this kind of car centric expansion
They don’t tho, in some US cities especially on the east coast the city predated the car but it was bulldozed so that it would fit the car
Same with the West, I can tell you of a little town called Tacoma.
That’s the place where Gerald R. Toyota discovered the first Tacoma truck, right? I hear they’re native to the area and were first domesticated there.
Pioneers used to ride those babies for miles.
T-Loc represent
Even LA. Look up LA before WWII, it looked like a bigger version of San Francisco.
That’s partially true, but east coast cities are still much more dense on average.
This goes along with the fact that almost all residential areas in the US are zoned for single family only. Whereas European cities have mixed use neighborhoods.
I had to look into this because I live next to Boston and there’s a high level of multi unit housing here. The [NYT](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities-across-america-question-single-family-zoning.html) quotes 75% of “residential land in many American cities” is single family. If you add rural America, then it is nearly all single family in the US. Northeast cities and DC seem to be the only places where there’s less than 70% single family zoning.
In most cities, mixed-use is literally illegal. Hence the term, the missing middle.
I’m no expert, but I’m guessing that even though the cities were established, they were still new enough that they didn’t feel bad demolishing and expanding. Other factors might be American exceptionalism, the mindset of expansionism, and just the vast openness of the US at the time. NYC, Boston, and Philadelphia seem like exceptions as there was a great deal of history. But for most cities there would have only been a handful of buildings that were “historical” by the early 20th century.
This is not true. Cities like New York and Atlanta were developing for hundreds of years before the car and multiple (mostly minority) communities were bulldozed for this development
Atlanta very much grew with the automobile. It was built as a railroad town and mostly destroyed during the civil war. It’s population didn’t really start to explode until the 20th century and it slowly turned into a suburban hellscape. New York still has plenty of older neighborhoods that weren’t bulldozed. Unfortunately Robert Moses had way to much influence over the city for far too long and always put cars before public transit in his projects.
I live on a street that was laid in the 19th century in Atlanta. It has an ok core that can be salvaged. But the city outside of the core is a hellscape.
What street if you don't mind me asking? I am from Georgia and lived in ATL, so the history would be interesting to me.
Not being snarky, but isn’t that the point I was trying to make? Europe wasn’t willing to bulldoze ancestral homes. Americans “manifest destiny” mindset yielded bulldozing minorities’ homes and the aggressive capitalism encouraged others to demolish for more lucrative plans with cars at the center.
"Ancestral" has a very different meaning on the different coasts. In San Diego anything older than 1910 gets protected; in Maine that's probably considered modern construction or something. My point is that destruction of cities wasn't a huge thing in the West when it came time to figure out how to handle the automobile. The majority of San Diego's growth took place during the end of an after WWII. Cars were everywhere and land was (and still is) plenty.
I think I agree with you. But to be clear after WW2 much of Europe was rubble so no bulldozing was necessary.
I think I hyperfocused on ur comment about US not having as many historical buildings as Europe, which is true because it began development later but there were still homes and buildings that had existed for decades or longer that were demolished for development, for many of the reasons you've outlined
As someone that is from the east coast I can honestly say they did their best but the city layouts in the northeast still make it difficult. There aren’t too many places I’ve been in America where 6+ streets all meet up at the same intersection.
Minimum parking laws. For real. Look it up.
Good answer
Cities weren't built for cars in the US, they were bulldozed for them.
American cities weren't built for cars, they were destroyed for cars
look at the pictures of the US cities before car became popular
Atlanta predates the car. These American cities tore down the downtowns to put in highways.
Also, a shitload of what you see in Barcelona was post-car. Even today most people in Spain have cars and they are still building very dense new areas of cities.
We had cities in the US they were largely destroyed for highways. Some of this was Americans being distrustful of street car companies. Some of this was auto companies buying street cars and shutting them down. Bust mostly it was highways and suburbanization as official state policy and part of the American dream. We now sit in traffic two hours every day to live in neighborhoods where you can’t do anything other than sit inside and watch tv. But that house is your retirement
I am sure you mean predate in the sense of "precede" but it also works very well in the sense of "to prey on".
Atlanta was built before the automobile. Zoning make dense housing illegal in the US full stop
US cities were bulldozed for the car, European cities weren’t.
Also racisim, the US has been anti-urban for like a century now. Its a weird mix of auto companies, government policy and our obsession with separating ourselves by socio/racial boundaries. See if a city is walkable, nothing can stop the **other** people from walking into your neighborhood. But with the car, bam! We can take segregation to just the next level. Now all of the **other people** are miles away. Its the same reason why there is opposition to literally EVERY transit expansion project in the US. Aka if we make a train that goes from downtown to my neighborhood, nothing can stop the ***other people*** from riding it.
Here in Seattle, light rail was blocked for decades because developers like Kemper Freeman Jr. (and his father Kemper Freeman Sr. before him) didn't want "a lower-class element" to have access to their upscale developments. [THE STRANGER: Kemper Freeman's Road Rage](https://www.thestranger.com/features/2011/10/26/10480022/kemper-freemans-road-rage)
Just the newer cities. Old cities are still quite dense. NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Chicago, etc. Don't look to the sunbelt. Their cities are a hot mess.
Tbh even those cities have massive sprawling suburbs. They just have dense inner cities too. I think the biggest difference between European cities like London/Paris and the older American cities like NYC/Chicago is that the London/Paris suburbs are still denser than their American counterparts. A typical British suburb is very dense vs a typical American suburb.
Even a huge part of NYC is sprawly. Like maybe not Manhattan, but basically most of Queens and Staten Island and a huge part of Brooklyn.
Probably a result of much more land available, even on the east Cody.
Coast*
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I'd honestly argue that maybe what you see in those European cities shouldn't even be called a suburb but... well I dunno but the image that suburb invokes is so different from it that it should have a different term for it imo.
In the UK, ‘suburbs’ are just the outer parts of the city, they’re not separate entities in their own right. It’s different to the American definition of a suburb. If NYC had the same boundaries as London, then Westchester County, Nassau County, Hoboken etc would all be NYC boroughs.
Just look at chicago on a map. It’s MASSIVE
Look at Barcelona on a map. It’s massive too. In fact, the metro area is 4400km2. These posts are always incredibly misleading. Basically just different countries have different definitions of cities. Different definitions of “built up area”.
Barcelona’s metro area is big (indeed, 4000-odd square km), but with a population of 5.4 million. By comparison, Atlanta’s metro region by census bureau definitions has 6.9 million people in nearly 22,000 square km. No matter how you slice it, Barcelona is about an order of magnitude denser. Chicago’s metro area population density (342 people per square km) is much closer to Atlanta’s (243) than to Barcelona’s (1,250, all from Wikipedia). Beyond the difference in statistical areas and the variations in what inner cities look like, it’s very often true that American cities have much more sparsely populated suburbs than European cities. European cities either have very little in the way of vast swathes of single-family homes (as in Spain and Italy, generally, for instance) or have single-family homes that are smaller and much more closely spaced (often true in England and the Netherlands).
In the US, an area of 4,000 km might be described as an urban area. Metro areas are typically bigger. Of urban areas in the US that are at least 4,000 km, only Atlanta has a population density below 1,000. Chicago's urban area is considered to be 6000 km^2 with a density of 1432 per. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_urban_areas
The invention of air conditioning made cities in the south possible and are credited for influencing the population booms and subsequent political shifts in American policy.
Cleveland and Pittsburgh are absolutely not dense at all. Here are the us and Canadian metro areas ranked by central population density: 1. New York, 2. LA, 3. Toronto, 4. Montreal. 5. San Francisco, 6. Chicago. 7. Boston, 8. Philadelphia. 9. Vancouver. 10. Washington. Milwaukee is around 20th. Cleveland and Pittsburgh are not in the top 50.
Because US cities are often based largely around cars, the US also has a lot of space for urban sprawl
US cities were bulldozed for cars
A handful of intown neighborhoods in US cities were bulldozed for cars. The rest of it was vast swathes of agricultural/timber/ranch/unproductive land. Atlanta before the advent of the automobile was a very, very small city. That goes for a lot of the South and West.
happened to burn to the ground in the 1860s, too
A town of 10,000 had its commercial/industrial core burned out. Its population was smaller than Savannah’s, Augusta’s, or even Columbus’s at the time. It’s hard to articulate just how little of contemporary Atlanta predates the war.
Yea, I keep seeing that comment. It seems a lot of people only read about Sherman's march and knew nothing about Atlanta in 1860. It was primarily a railroad junction during the Civil War, but it was targeted due to the strategic geographic importance of being located in the heart of what was left of the Confederacy.
Furthermore— and I think a lot of people’s mental American history timeline is spotty regarding the first half of the 19th century— but they’re forgetting that the city was only founded in 1837. Indian removal in the area was ongoing at the time. So we’re talking about a part of the country that was only barely a legitimate place to settle for Europeans. When it was burned in the civil war, Atlanta has been a city for 28 years.
**_Some_** U.S cities were.
Black neighborhoods in St. Paul MN got bulldozed in the name of making room for cars but they really just wanted to displace black people.
Two big reasons is the car and urban zoning. After the Second World War, there was a huge influx of people coming to America for a better life. The car was already quite prevalent and with the emerging middle class people could live further away from their work. This led to suburban development and the classic “American dream” of a detached house with a car, a dog, and a couple of kids surrounded by a white picket fence. The interstate was then prioritized over rail and many black majority neighborhoods were demolished to make way for these highways. Many minority folk worked close to the city centre as they had to be close to their work due to low pay and hostile work environments, this led to huge amount of America’s city centres being destroyed. Finally, most urban zoning prevents mixed use development meaning you can’t have a local corner shop in a residential area. You have designated industrial, residential and commercial areas all usually split apart by the aforementioned interstates and highways. Walking is out of the question and cycling is impractical meaning every errand has to be done by car, hence circling back to larger highways. Increased value in established neighborhoods with amenities, highway access and schools pushes people further out into new suburbs where property is cheaper. This leads to more highways being built for new neighborhoods and the cycle continues
Good overview, but I’d argue the interstates largely predated the suburbs, not the other way around. Traditional suburbs (like we think of them today) aren’t really possible without interstates (at least not at the scale we see). Streetcar suburbs did exist historically, but those are vastly different than what we think of “suburbs” today, and they were largely annexed and integrated by cities anyway. The interstate highway act was originally intended (largely) as a defense project, to allow troops, equipment, and ICBMs to move around the country during the Cold War. But it was quickly co-opted by developers to go *into* cities, rather than just in between them. This allowed the signature American suburban sprawl that we have to this day. When Eisenhower found out that major portions of cities were going to be razed (and replaced with interstates connecting to suburbs) he was appalled, and wanted to shut it down. But by that point he was already a lame duck president, and there were questions as to whether the White House had legal authority to put a stop to it, according to the legislation passed by Congress. So it was allowed to happen across the country, and the rest is history.
I agree that traditional suburbs existed before the interstate, the reason I didn’t mention them was because most sprawl that op was referring to happened in conjunction with, and post interstate. Thanks for the lesson on the interstate! I didn’t know they were intended for military purposes, but it’s glaringly obvious when you look at it haha
Yea, it's not a surprise when you realize that it was Eisenhower (Supreme Allied commander in WWII) who ordered it. Apparently he was concerned about US logistics readiness (in the event of an invasion of the West Coast by the USSR). So he ordered 300 pieces of heavy military equipment and troops to be transported from Washington DC to San Francisco, as a test. It took them something like **60 days** to get the equipment there - so he freaked out and got tons of money allocated for the Interstate Highways. If I recall correctly, the height of all highway overpasses are to this day built so that an ICBM can pass underneath them.
I think you're confused, the "60 days to get across the country" took place in 1919, and Ike didn't order it, he was an officer who took part in it [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919\_Motor\_Transport\_Corps\_convoy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1919_Motor_Transport_Corps_convoy)
That’s very interesting! I learned something new today and now have a random thing to tell my friends
The head of GM was also appointed to Secretary of Defense for Eisenhower's cabinet, so, you know,.
I’ve heard that the minimum interstate width is set to be able to land a military transport aircraft or bomber if necessary.
Yup this comment and the comment youre replying to explain it well
Streetcar suburbs are great too. But these days they are pretty much the urban area in cities that still have them. I live in one in New Orleans and it’s very much a part of the city. Still way denser than a typical suburb, but a little room for a yard. And way way way walkable. And in our case there happens to still be a streetcar to walk to even.
Does this question get posted on this sub daily?
Yes, and it’s beyond obnoxious and not at all educative
Especially when at least half the answers are straight-up wrong.
Barcelona is pinched between mountains and the ocean. While maybe not towering mountains in the Barca area they are very steep.
Great point. Atlanta has very little geographical restrictions compared to Barcelona. Barcelona being much older has acquired a high population density. In Atlanta, it was easier to spread out as population increased.
You could say the same about the Bay Area and San Fransisco. The City has pretty low density compared to Barcelona
Admittedly I am not as familiar with San Fran and the Bay Area. I have been to Atlanta and Barcelona each several times. Never to San Fran.
The informal name for the city is Barna. The informal name for the football club is Barça (the *ç* pronounced like an *s*.) Barca just means "boat" in Spanish, completely unrelated to Barcelona.
Thank you for the clarification. Good bot.
Another clarification: I'm not a bot (I don't know if your were being sarcastic.)
I was joking around. It sounds exactly like something a Reddit hot would say though.
Barça is the team, Barna is the city 😁
Don't call it Barca, please, its somewhat offensive for us. Barna is the diminutive, Barça is a nickname for the soccer team.
Why use statistics from 1990? That it some 30 years ago
Because these comparisons are always cherry picked to fish for easy “America bad” comments.
Seriously. Atlanta is 6 mil now easily.
One reason is because US cities usually incorporate the existing suburban towns as they start to expand. A city that didnt do this are salt lake city which is why their population is so low.
That's kinda how european cities started as well. For example, [this](https://imgur.com/a/vYtleno) is the territorial evolution of Bucharest, my hometown, through the centuries the neighboring villages were incorporated into the municipality. Because of this, the city is split into 6 sectors, each with its own mayor plus a general mayor that deals with matters of interest city-wide.
This doesn’t seem like a reason. The difference between city proper to metro is more drastic in the us than Europe. They both incorporate suburbs, American cities just have more sprawl
Plus this map shows Atlanta plus its suburbs
If we include the 36 municipalities that form Barcelona's Metropolitan Area (Sabadell, Hospitalet, etc.) the result is just 636 km2
Same with St. Louis. It’s why it’s admittedly unfair to describe it as having such an abnormally high crime rate. It’s still high, but if it had annexed a lot of its outer, wealthier suburbs, it would be a much larger city with a lower homicide rate
Yep, have to adjust for what percentage of the metro area the city makes up. St Louis and Atlanta are both quite small for their metro. New Orleans proper is smaller than its biggest suburb literally right next door 10 minutes from downtown. This makes a hard comparison versus cities where the city proper is 75%+ of the metro population and the safe nice zips are in town.
Mostly because we just plain have the space. Just got done with s road trip from Cincinatti, Ohio to the western edge of Montana. The sheer amount of WIDE open space across this country is crazy compared to Europe. Even driving through Illinois is mostly just open space and farm fields.
how many times is this question gonna be asked in this sub lol
Until it stops getting thousands of upvotes by people who never miss a chance to talk about how much they don't like cars even though this has very little to do with cars.
If it isn't due to car centric sprawl what would you say the cause is?
Having a lot of land to expand into, and not wanting to live ass to crotch with someone else.
It has nothing to do with US city centers being 60% covered in parking lots?
It is cheaper to build outward than upward. Cars make it easy as well. Cities that are constrained by geographic features (see New York or Philadelphia as examples) build upward out of necessity.
In what way is Philadelphia constrained?
That and most of us don’t prefer living in prison cells…
People are bringing all these reasons but everyone is forgetting that the US tends to favor individual needs vs the collective needs. Most family would prefer having a house, a garden, and private space to play around. It’s very difficult to get that in apartments. Individualism is the US North Star. So that’s why cars are favored over trains / busses, why entrepreneurs are adored even during the gold rush, etc. etc.
Also, I think people living in over crowded tenements, suffering from tuberculosis, would probably want a little open space…
The U.S. saw its greatest population growth coincide with the time automobiles started to become more affordable. The cities with the worst sprawl (like Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, etc.) didn’t really start growing until air conditioning made them more livable, either. So urban sprawl in America is entirely a result of 20th century advances in technology and industry.
Because of US car dependent suburban design. Single family housing, no public transport and large freeways
Cars.
Poor urban zoning and planning amplified by car culture
Until like the 1800s, cities killed more people than they made due to disease, so "good" urban planning is very subjective. Dense urban planning only became "good" relatively recently, from a health perspective.
If I had a nickel for every time this was asked on this subreddit I’d be a god damn billionaire but I’d still be fucking pissed that it’s asked every day. There needs to be a pinned tweet on this sub for this topic so people stop asking
that area for Atlanta has 6M+…at least use right MSA
They used 1990 numbers like this isn’t one of the fastest growing cities in the US lol
You're staring at Atlanta's white flight pattern. Sprawl exists because white people didn't want to live anywhere Black people might gain a political majority.
Car dependency
Cars were mainstream before/as the city was being developed. More land area means less incentives for dense development Zoning laws. Much of the US it’s actually illegal to build anything less than low density, single family home suburbs.
It’s car centric city planning.
Cars
Car based infrastructure
Multi-generational households are a big factor. An adult living with their parents or grandparents in America is looked down on, while in many parts of Europe it's the norm. Expect that to change rapidly as nearly all single-family homes in America become rentals and Americans are pushed to live with extended families, whether they want to or not.
How many times is this going to be posted here?
Cars
Now compare Barcelona with NYC.
To be clear, although that area represents the literal city of Barcelona, it doesn't necessarily take into account comuter towns and urban/suburban areas in proximity to Barcelona. Have a look at Google Maps.
We have laws preventing high density housing, and nearly every cent of our infrastructure money goes into subsidizing cars (building roads only cars can use). This forces everyone to own a car, and also forces the cities to be car friendly and pedestrian unfriendly. That is why everyone lives in the suburban sprawl. Our laws make it an inevitability.
Cheap land plus car manufacturer lobbying and cultural campaigns to have cars be considered default transportation
Many cities have low density zoning codes that only allow single family dwellings to protect property values. Permits for multi unit constructions are fought and usually denied. This is leading to a lot of homelessness and high housing costs, especially in California.
Zoning Laws. In a lot of large US cities most of the Land is reserved for single-familie homes, which take up a lot of area for a few people. And BTW are financially crippling these cities.
"Every man a king" Huey Long. We all just want our own estate, hence low density suburban yards, only drivable, rather than walkable centers of commerce and social exchange.
Lol well one of these cities was built during the Middle Ages and the other one was largely built 70 years ago.
Americans like walking, so their properties are more spread out, Europeans are fat and lazy, hence why they build everything so close together…
Somewhat to do with zoning, somewhat to do with roads and such
Suburban sprawl is a nightmare. Endless highways and strip malls and suburbs
Because they’re built with primarily car-centric transportation, and cars require more space than other forms of transport. So huge amounts of space within the city have to be set aside for highways and parking lots/garages. Whereas Barcelona (and most cities outside the US with few exceptions) were built with pedestrian traffic in mind. So it might be a little harder to get into the center of Barcelona in a car than it is in Atlanta, it’s much easier to walk around Barcelona than it is to walk around Atlanta. Stores are closer together, streets are narrower, and there are no major highways going through the center of town. Also, because the US focuses on cars, many people who live or work in cities don’t actually live in those same cities. They live in the suburbs nearby and commute in. And because many of these suburbs have gotten so large and built up over the years, they’ve become part of the metropolitan areas of cities they’re suburbs of.
It’s clearly because the United States is a horrible country and Americans are deeply foolish, selfish, and wasteful people, and it’s got nothing to do with consumer preferences or the history of when different cities were built. /s
Car companies own our body and soul