It sticks out to me how much more homogenous streets and roads are in the US compared to Europe. All streets have at least two lanes and the speed limits in pra

It sticks out to me how much more homogenous streets and roads are in the US compared to Europe. All streets have at least two lanes and the speed limits in practice fall within a fairly narrow range. Even in residential neighborhoods the speed limit is usually 25 or 35. On the other hand it doesn't go up much till you are on a freeway. Even streets with a lot of business will still have lots of through traffic. The suburb I live in has its historic downtown cut up by multiple high traffic roads (strongtowns calls them "stroads"). It sucks for cars and it sucks for pedestrians. As the article calls out, many European cities do a better job at separating humans and cars. This only works because there is more diversity in roads and streets. My commute in Germany included an area that literally had a speed limit of "walking speed" a main road that had 70km/h and of course the Autobahn worth 160km/h. These streets and roads were much more clearly differentiated and made a clear trade off between prioritizing pedestrians, playing children and cars. I think some European cities got this inadvertantly, since streets and roads suited for cars had to be fitted on Street the fact. US cities with their grid layout inherently treat the city and its traffic more like a homogenous blob.