This is Rotterdam at the end of World War II: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Rotterdam.jpg/1016px-Rotterdam.jpg http://upload.wikimedi

This is Rotterdam at the end of World War II: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Rotterdam.jpg/1016px-Rotterdam.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Rot... Modern Rotterdam was built almost entirely after World War II, the same era that many American Sunbelt cities were built to their current size. In Rotterdam, the mode share is: 5% pedestrian, 14% cycling, 25% transit, 56% automobile. This is very auto-oriented for the Netherlands, but still more than twice the 6% bike mode share of Portland, Oregon, a mid-sized American city famous here for loving bikes. That illustrates quite well that America's near-exclusive automobile use in many cities is a matter of city planning and development policies in this country (wide, high-speed roads optimized for moving the maximum number of cars, minimum parking requirements, minimum lot size requirements and setbacks, strict zoning laws separating residential from commercial uses and single-family homes from apartments) mandating a suburban form that makes non-automobile transportation difficult or impossible. It's not simply a question of the age of a city.