American Cities are UGLY: Why We Don’t Build Nice Places Anymore

Humans are meant to walk everywhere. It's free and healthy. I wish we went back to the glory days of people-oriented cities of walking and bikes. Even my friends agree.

This is one of the reasons why in my opinion, the US is so boring. It's sameness everywhere. All people do is work, go home, turn on the TV or go on the internet, and that's really about it.

I agree America needs more walkable and scenic places for people to gather. This has a psychological effect on people.

Spot on. Car-centric infrastructure is not what make cities attractive to tourists, neither local visitors.

Houston IMO is the worst city I've ever been to. Landed, went to my hotel, made the mistake of trying to walk 2 blocks to get lunch. Literally the only people walking were me and the homeless. I had to sprint across a 6 lane road and god forbid you try to walk down one of their "sidwalks" that go past the parking lots for strip malls, you also have to sprint and be ready to jump over a car exiting or entering, because no one will even consider that someone would be stupid enough to walk.

Americans have some strange thoughts about urban planning. The big box stores at the edge of towns/cities killed the small shops on main streets. That’s the reason why these are prohibited in my country, permits to build these are scarce, I know of a few in the whole country. We have small supermarkets in town/city centers and no big supermarkets in the suburbs, so everyone can shop walking or cycling. The only big box stores outside town/city centers are furniture, home decor and DYI stores with big volume items you want to transport with a car or truck.

I appreciate this type of content but I feel like I'll be long dead before America is an urbanist paradise.

We build cities for cars.. not people

Gosh I'm obsessing over your videos right now, there's so much important info here. When people say "Americans have no culture" this is why! Our cities are so flicking soulless! America DOES have culture but it's all been erased by our laws and corporations. Ugh, it makes me so mad.

A few months ago I started a new job and took public transport. I was walking roughly a mile a day all together, previously I was walking 1/4 mile at best. I have already lost 8 pounds and have gained increase mobility in my hips, and alleviated some back pain. I forgot how healthy walking is for the human body.

It will never change as long as the vehicle companies and 2-day shipping companies lobby Congress to believe this is more important than habitable centers of humanity.

This is what happens when corporations design a country. The number one importance is money, then it's people. I think Asian and European countries do a good job of balancing walkable cities, cars, bike paths, public transportation, etc. While US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc decided to go with car dependency way. Over the years, here in the US we've gotten use to it, so we think this is the best way to live. It's until they travel overseas they realize there are better ways of doing things.

Thank you for including South American examples, even if it was just Brazil 🙏 I am not from North America and I grew up thinking that cities in the US and Canada were like New York becuase that's what media sells, but when I learned through my boyfriend from Georgia, US that's not the reality I was hugely disappointed.

We are not progressing at all.... In fact we are going backwards... even our architecture is way more inferior than the times when we had no power tools and the only transportation was horse and buggy.

80% of my town doesn’t even have sidewalks. once i got screamed at by an officer for riding my bike on the street. there was nowhere else i could ride! it’s ridiculous

I’ve lived in Annapolis, Maryland for decades. It is a tourist destination because much of the Colonial-era flavor that encompasses downtown and the State House remains. Moving away from the city core, we have some beautiful, established neighborhoods, but those are largely high-income, waterfront communities. The rest of the area is no different than most of the rest of America, with many swaths of the city being as ugly as the downtown is beautiful.

The best time of my adult life was the 13 years I lived in a large U.S. city with an extensive train and bus network. Not needing to own/park a car was FREEDOM! My former neighborhood has sensible narrow streets, not stroads, and the nearby retail/dining district (8 minute walk for me) features independently-owned businesses (hardly any national chains). It is heaven! People who ONLY know the car-centric, sprawl, cookie-cutter house lifestyle don't know what they have missed out on.

I live in Montréal. It has its problems, but the measures they're taking to repair the destruction car dependency wreaked on this city have really improved the quality of my family's life. Our street went from scary, dirty, and noisy, to way safer, cleaner, and more livable, due to increased priority for pedestrians and cyclists. They turned our street from a 2 lane nightmare to a 1 lane quiet residential street. We live a 15 minute walk from the local summer-pedestrianized street and can get there through ruelles vertes - green alleys that the neighborhood decided to ban cars from and turned into a safe place for families to play and walk. On holidays, the alleys are decorated, and when school isn't in session, all the neighborhood kids are out playing unsupervised, forming a sense of community, playing free like I used to in the 90s with my siblings and friends. In the summer when the main street is closed, the air quality is so much better, people go down to the street just to hang out and enjoy the vibes, and there's music, comfy places to sit, and lots of space for shops and restaurants to spill out onto the sidewalks. I really love my city and it gets better every year.

I was in a small city in the USA for a while and I couldn't go anywhere because in most places there weren't even sidewalks. You had to either walk on the road or step on the grass. Just horrible. Also, all that parking reflects heat and the production of all that cement contaminates a lot.

I'm so sick of cars I can't even see straight anymore.