5 ms·
Doesn't it also have something to do with the fact that the US has so much more land compared to the amount of people who live there (population density) in com
by Svip 7y ago
Doesn't it also have something to do with the fact that the US has so much more land compared to the amount of people who live there (population density) in comparison to Europe? Basically, we don't have a lot of land in Europe. And given ancient rights, not a lot of land was readily available to simply sprawl suburbia onto.
Not that your factors don't matter, but I think there are additional factors for why it never took off in Europe. Lest we forget, Europeans were also very excited about the car in the 1950s/60s/70s. Several bigger cities in Europe tore down central parts to make way for cars. Stockholm comes to mind. Which is a damn shame.
- dalbasal 7y agoIt does, for sure... especially in the Netherlands. Part of the way these practicalities played a role was/is via design philosophies. I just think we should keep in mind that in large part, the US-like suburb system works as it was designed to. It was intentionally designed to enable a certain, the car-centric lifestyle enables spaciousness/sprawl. It's not an unintended consequence. Tastes have shifted (especially among architects and such) and it is now seen as "sprawl necessitates cars" rather than "cars enable spaciousness." Walkability is seen as a value and sprawl is seen as a barrier to it. When these designs were made, spaciousness was seen as a value and cars were seen as an enabler of it. A lot of the issues we see now are (a) problems of scale. What happens when a city already has 1m suburban homes. (b) changing values/tastes.