They are very poorly designed in pretty much every way possible. While Europe evolved all kinds of public transport, America kept their ways and continued building cities around the automobile.
Take my hometown of Helsinki for example. With only 50€/month I get unlimited access to all public transport, which includes the bus, tram, inner-city trains and the subway, not only in Helsinki, but in the whole capital area. Public transport is quick, convenient and well designed which makes travelling with it faster than with a car, especially in downtown Helsinki.
What makes the situation even worse over there, is the fact that the road layouts are messy and not optimized for the traffic at all. In large cities you do nothing but sit in traffic for hours on end. Another mistake that was made in America is suburbanization, which created millions of monotonous detached houses in the middle of nowhere. American cities are also very ugly because the architecture is all some form of modernism, making them completely lack the beautiful old buildings we have in Europe.
Europe has done phenomenal work when it comes to city planning, I suggest you do the same.
Elijah Stewart
how i can immediately recognize houston's downtown without ever having been there is beyond me
Connor Ortiz
european cities look like shitholes and are very much clusterfucks too with the mix of ancient/old/new infrastructure, incoherent street/walking path layouts (mostly cuz everything is so packed in), and often filthy.
Canadian cities are the best; not too packed, far better planned, beautiful nature backdrop, modern LEED architecture, lots of green space, clean as fuck, superior infrastructure.
Toronto or Vancouver is nicer than any american city.
Sebastian Cruz
1. Mostly designed around the automobile, especially the further west. 2. Giant super highways jammed right through them. 3. Tore old shit down because progress and capitalism.
Jose Parker
car and oil companies bought up all the rail and shut them down. white flight car suburb culture. but its the only way to keep the niggers away so we accept it.
Noah Robinson
This too. If you took all the wealth of surrounding suburbs and condensed it into the cities they'd be the best cities in the world.
Adam Edwards
Americans gradually lost faith in public spaces once we couldn't keep blacks away from them.
This will happen in Europe too once the surging tide of African migrants takes off.
Jose Robinson
that's an incredibly old pic, those lots are now skyscapers, mixed retail/entertainment complexes, a basketball arena, and a baseball field, and there is light rail going in all directions
Liam Bennett
>Toronto or Vancouver >nice
Grayson Williams
>public transport is faster than a car in helsinki Thats because its shit for cars, not because your publix transport is good. All things being equal cars are about 2x faster, unless youre in the 3rd world like the us where its 10x faster
Aaron Nguyen
get out of ur little den and travel and you'll come to realize they're world-class
Leo Anderson
They weren't designed "around" the automobile, the government, who according to liberals are the only thing stopping corrupt corporations, was bought out to build freeways by GM and major cities like Detroit ended up getting gutted. It was the "futurama" thing at what I believe was the 1934 worlds fair, somewhere around that time at least.
Gabriel Baker
also there is a badass underground air conditioned tunnel system full of shops and restaurants and a mall underneath there.
and the biggest factor of all is Houston is the largest city in America with no zoning laws. Second largest is Pasadena, which is next to Houston. Third largest is Baytown, which is next to Pasadena. Sprawl = FREEDOM you faggots
James Powell
No shut the fuck up. European cities are nicer on average because of the modernization imp.
Sebastian Wood
Basically this.
Kevin Wood
Tell Montreal to fucking get some parking garages and to finish the damn construction, went up this weekend to drink with my friends and it was shit. An hour to travel 12 blocks, another hour to find parking.
Other than that the city was pretty good. Not as good as NY or Boston, but nice.
Brody Davis
It costs you a lot more than 50 cuckbucks. You pay for it in income tax, property tax (rates), and vehicle tax and licencing fees.
When the market is allowed to chose, they overwhelmingly choose private motor vehicles in order to avoid poor people and undesirables.
Land of the free wins again, Genghis.
Camden Perry
Oh have you been to every US city??? Probably not. So keep living in your shit country
Aaron Lopez
No, the public transportation system is entirely funded by people buying tickets.
Fuck off, you sheep shagger Muricafanboy
Ryan Morales
Gonna leave this here
Liam Sullivan
>give well thought-out argument about subject x >"HAVE YOU PERSONALLY SEEN X??? I DON'T KNOW IF YOU HAVE, BUT I'M GOING TO IMMEDIATELY ASSUME YOU HAVEN'T!!! EVEN IF YOU READ A MILLION ARTICLES ONLINE ABOUT IT IT MEANS NOTHING BECAUSE YOU HAVEN'T ACTUALLY SEEN IT PERSONALLY!!! SO KEEP LIVING IN YOUR SHIT COUNTRY THAT BASICALLY RANKS BETTER IN ANY MEASURABLE WAY BUT IT'S STILL SHIT"
Please, you're an embarrasement for other Americans
Isaiah Robinson
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Ryder Parker
American cities all look the same. They lack character compared to European cities
Christopher Mitchell
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Adrian Ward
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Austin Long
(OP) >very poorly designed L0L they were not "designed" at all, they were built by "developers" who paid-off the city council, then threw together (cheap) the housing and commecial properites, sold them to the credulous, then left town with the money. Roads, sewers, schools, water? NOBODY GAVE A SHIT Now it's a massive clusterfuck in every major US city (and a lot of minor cities) and the developers have disbanded, left the State, or declared bankruptcy, so there's no one with any pockets to blame. A MASSIVE TRIUMPH OF CORPORATISM OVER SOCIETY, thank you very much, you freemarket antiregulatory assholes.
Landon Brooks
>Take my hometown of Helsinki for example
Helsinki (largest city in Finland) = around 600,000 people
New York (largest city in USA) = about 8.1 million
Isaiah Wright
>which includes the bus, tram, inner-city trains and the subway, not only in Helsinki, but in the whole capital area. Well first off in my city, and whole state, and neighboring states, we don't have any of that shit besides the bus. Second, buses are for poor people. Third, there is no way they bus companies would honor a card for a competitors bus. Fourth, as you mentioned its for the whole city area, we often have to travel out of state for simple things. We often have to travel to the next state a few hours away just to see a doctor that is somewhat of a specialist. its not unusual to have to drive several hours one way to get stuff. Some people even drive an hour or two just to get to work, and thats with our highways.
I do agree suburbs were a horrible idea with ugly stamped out houses, glad we don't have those in my area (yet). Something else that is bad is large cities like to use the highway as part of their infrastructure, they direct rush hour traffic into the highway so they can ease the problems created by their over population. When you're on a highway flying through the country and then you suddenly get stuck in bumper to bumper traffic ON the highway only to realize you came up to a huge cluster city is the most annoying thing.