Why your city is SO UGLY: The Death of the American Dream 

That era had its share of perils too, like dying of tuberculosis in over-crowded tenement buildings.

My city looks like a blown poophole

@@Zalis116That's not the point of his comment though. Yes, when comparing societal health from today to the 1920s, today clearly has it better. In terms of civil engineering/urban planning, though, the 1920s is the winner.

but the low riders though

@@Zalis116 how come Europe is not dying from tuberculosis now but still saved old architecture and vibrant cities? :)

@@user-ni1dm2oc5v You tripping bro my grandma's neighborhood in Beijing is awesome

@@kagakai7729 When I mean traditional I mean walkeable and things to do.

sigh this is a fact and I wish it wasn’t.

The UK minimum wage is £11.40, which at current exchange rates is $14.19. Denmark doesn't have a minimum wage law but it has strong unions and as such the current hourly pay rate for McDonald's workers in Denmark has an exchange rate value of $23.10.

@@maxisussex Denmark is also a tiny little anglo-country that DOESN'T have 1,500 illegal immigrants entering it's borders every single day.

@@charlesbrown4483 I'm not sure what Anglo is referring to. Denmark is not Anglo in anyway. But overall numbers aren't relevant, it is the per capita numbers that count. Denmark is popular with illegals, or was, they are learning.

People that keep wanting to raise the minimum wage is the problem. It's no wonder those states that raised the minimum wage are having mass lay off and fewer workers. The problem is the FED and inflation. We have to get rid of the fed and get rid of paper currency that is inflationary for gold backed

but but that's a liberal agenda that takes away from my freedum… I need a parking space in front of my house becuz my 2 car garage is full of crap I bought and never used! why would I want a corner store within walking distance when I can waste gas and not get exercise to get my food?! besides we don't want that riff raff (everyday people who aren't white) hanging around!!

Sorry chief, I don't want to live next door to a shopping mall and an Applebee's. I don't want to live next door to anything or anyone. And oh yeah it's the little tiny car engines destroying the environment, not general overpopulation, ocean liners and airplanes. Incredible.

@@charlesbrown4483 Sorry chief, there's 8 billion people in the world and they're not going anywhere, so we can't design society around your desire for seclusion. Besides, ocean liners and airplanes may be bad for the environment, doesn't mean the billions of cars aren't tho.

@@LeSpeederus 8 billion people hardly cover a fraction of Earth’s landmass. So too bad for you, I’ll stay on my nice secluded property. Your desire to force me into a city to act as a socialist worker ant will never come to fruition. Ban the cars, ban private property, ban everything. I’ve still got horses and guns and I can survive without you. You’ll just have to kill me, I won’t be a part of your regime.

​@@charlesbrown4483no one is asking for ugly big box stores to be next to houses. The stores and businesses would have to compact, with low parking and in the format of downtown

The car centric infrastructure is the problem not the car itself

@@railroadforest30 yeah that plus capitalism

@@railroadforest30 This. Cars should be viewed as an widely accessible luxury and not a necessity.

@@yourunclejohn984 exactly

Cars reduce misery and connect people.

I live in the suburbs in the USA. I'm too tired from working to walk around and enjoy life. I go home, sit in my she-cave for several hours, then go to bed. Get up the next morning for work, and repeat. After dealing with people at work, I don't want to deal with people after work. I want to rest well away from other people.

American suburbs have people out and about all the time

We like privacy. We’re not any colony drone-people like Europeans. I don’t live in the middle of fucking no where so I can have a department store built next to my house and have idiots trampling over my property 24/7. I live in the middle of nowhere so I can avoid people.

Ok cool story Nazi. But did you know America isn't just suburbs? Guess you're not as cultured as you thought you were.

​@@laurie7689That's antisocial behavior, dealing with people outside of work is different. It's laid back and more chill. Also not walking leads to obese unhealthy people and unhealthy people leads to not being able to handle people or having a sour mood that leaves with poor relationships

It is hard to have those sorts of aminenties without first dealing with the homelessness issue

⁠@@LucasDimoveoYup Chicago is being stretched thin right now because republicans think it's funny to send influxes of migrants that we would never get if the incoming migrants were dispersed more evenly throughout the country like they should have been. Also many parks and public spaces in Chicago go neglected, especially on the south and west sides. I'd much rather see those parks get some treatment, but we absolutely need more bathrooms everywhere

@@carstarsarstenstesenn I'm not a Republican, but I agree with what they have been doing in this instance. The illegal immigrants/asylum seekers weren't being dispersed evenly throughout the country. The Feds were dumping them off in the States that they entered which are all located on the border. The resources meant for citizens in those States were being depleted and this had been going on for years now. The other States weren't doing their fair share in taking in and caring for the immigrants. Bussing them elsewhere has brought our pathetic border policy the attention it has been needing for a long time. Now citizens NOT in the border States have a better understanding of the trouble that our Federal immigration policy has wrought. It has brought communities together to stave off the influx of immigrants. People are more aware of the resources and of the amenities, such as parks, that serve their communities. The saying: "You don't know what you have until it's gone" applies.

@@laurie7689 They're still no being "dispersed" evenly, they're disproportionately being sent to NY and Chicago which are both known for their freezing winters when they could be sent more evenly to other dem areas, especially areas that don't go below freezing

@@carstarsarstenstesenn Those two areas have more pull from the current White House than some of the other areas. If we want things to change, we need the folks in those places making their complaints heard. The Feds turned a deaf ear to the Border States long ago.

Maybe you grew up in a crap suburb. I grew up on Long Island. Manhattan was 52 minutes by train, Jones Beach was 15 minutes and the Hamptons an hour and skiing an hour and a half. I'm sorry you grew up in a crap suburb of a crap city, you're pretty damn ignorant if you think all suburbs are the same!

Everything is built around cars. If you don’t have a car, you’re basically dead. Can’t have a job, can’t go really anywhere or do anything. When an American gets their license, for the first time in 2 decades they have the “freedom” to leave their home. This false freedom tricks the average non-critical thinking American that cars are cool and good because they allow us to go literally anywhere that isn’t our suburban neighborhood. I personally have friends who say they “enjoy driving” but appear constantly frustrated or their eyes are glazed over when they drive. My theory is that no one actually enjoys driving they just “enjoy” this false freedom

They just need them to get around since it’s a big country. What makes a neighborhood feel real?

@@RU-vid_Tags_Suck High speed Rail? Some are being built but they tend to be money pits.

@@RU-vid_Tags_Suck I didn’t know that but it does not surprise me

Because "U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!"

Yet people chose to patronize Wal-Mart when they moved into small towns that had pre-existing local/main-street businesses -- those weren't killed off by parking and setback requirements. Turns out people like going to one store that's likely to have everything they need, instead of spending more time and money at 5 different stores. A landscape dominated by corporate monopolies isn't ideal, but I am skeptical that merely changing the regulations and building mixed-use developments would spawn new small businesses, especially when people don't have money sitting around to start them. Not to mention the challenges of securing health coverage.

@@Zalis116 of course they were killed by parking requirements, zoning, car centric infrastructure. As the town developed over the years, people were zoned further away from Main Street. Roads were built to accommodate car centric travel. Newer people lived further away from Main Street and therefore had to drive there. Housing close to Main Street were redlined. They weren’t allowed to build taller building on or close to main street which would have provided housing for workers and customers. The town was prohibited from growing vertically and densifying. A shopping mall or a Walmart is pretty much equivalent to a Main Street one must drive to. Don’t forget that these Walmarts and shopping malls are feed by freeways which are massively subsidized by the Federal Government. Not only this, parking requirements force many Main Street from expansion (in the same layout). Main Street ends when regulation abiding businesses with lots of parking start so those places are quaint little islands of walkability one must drive to. Cities also force parking requirements on Main Street which forces business to destroy existing buildings to abide by the regulation. This kills the appeal of Main Street even more. If you look at old pictures of American cities, there were more buildings in downtowns and not nearly as much parking lots and parking structures. Prospective business that do no have the funds to do this don’t get to start. Many Main Street store fronts simply remain vacant for lack of off-street parking to satisfy the requirements. Walmart doesn’t do nearly as well in Europe and Asia. Walmart is great only if you have a car. The local grocery store might be a little more expensive but if it’s walking distance, then you save by not having a car. Of course, you won’t have a car for work and other things either which only is feasible in a sufficiently walkable town.

@@Zalis116 each regulation imposes a financial penalty on a business. Some of these are justifiable like building codes, health codes, fire, and other safety concerns. If people don’t have a lot of money to begin with, then imposing more costly regulations not helpful. And the more costly the regulation, the more infeasible a business venture becomes. Parking requirements forces businesses to shoulder the cost to providing parking. It’s not so much the cost of construction but rather the opportunity cost of the space itself. In a car dependent area, this regulation is redundant as providing sufficient parking makes sense on its own. Businesses will die without parking for customers. In walkable neighborhood, this regulation is punishing. That parking space could have been more restaurant or retail space that could be used to service more customers and generate more revenue. Small businesses are more profit sensitive so capping revenues is bad. Big businesses have more resources where they can lose money on some locations for a longer time. In a regime of excessive regulation, entrenched business with expertise and resources will be the only ones left while most new aspirants without substantial starting capital are aborted from the start. If you go to any walkable neighborhood, you’ll see way more diversity of businesses and not so many chains. If you go to a car dependent area, it’s almost all chain businesses.

@@Zalis116 Yes, I prefer stores that offer more variety which small stores can't. I want one-stop shopping that I can quickly get what I want and get the heck out. I don't want to shop around. I want to get back to my home and away from other people. Some of us don't want to be around other people after we are done with our work.

@@Basta11 Most of my ancestors here in the USA were farmers. We live in suburbs now. We've never lived in walking distance of anything, ever. Going downtown has always meant driving whether it be automobile or horse and wagon. Being around people is tiring and not something we like. We don't want to live in walking distance of shops, people, etc. We just don't have a choice anymore because all the frigging city people moved out of the cities into our turf. The suburbs are as close to the city as we're willing to move and THAT is too many people for us, too.

HAHA AMERICA BAD EUROPE GOOD

Nearly half of America lives in rural places, like myself. I don't care what you do in your cities. Ban cars outright in the city for all I care. The problem is that the laws you vote for in effort to do XYZ to your city also effect people who live outside your city. So for example, the massive voting power of Cincinnati and Cleveland will dominate rural Ohio. If the urbanites vote to halt all new road construction, reduce the size of roads, and increase taxes on personal vehicles, that might be great for Cincinnati and Cleveland. But it does nothing other than hurt everyone living in rural Ohio whose conditions are nothing whatsoever like that of those major cities. But it's not really about improving the cities and we all know that, it's about control. Removing personal transportation to make the masses dependent on state operated transportation.

@@charlesbrown4483 we don't want to ban cars, we want multiple modes of transportation to ease congestion and make our community spaces more vibrant. That is freedom, having to use the car as our only choice is not. As for rural, of course the car is the ideal transport

@@richardalvarez2390 Uh huh whatever you say. I don’t care what you want or what you do. You can live in Hong Kong cages for all I care. Ban cars, demolish all the roads, go the full 9 yards. I still won’t take part in your urban micro-lifestyle like some party loyalist worker ant. I have 80 acres, natural gas reserves, my own central power pumpjacks, horses, river access, stocked ponds… I can live perfectly fine without the modern world.

"Everything I don't like is sterile, stupid and pointless. Be like me or else."

@@charlesbrown4483 Shouldn't you be on the clock at Walmart, right now?

@@kagakai7729 Making fun of retail workers huh? That’s interesting. You ultra-left wing people are always going on and on about the working class, but that’s what you really think of them lol.

Where in California is this?

You realize there are drains on the roads, yeah?

And some other brainrot

.....oh! it's back! WAIT! now it's gone again? 😥

​@@Titoroski187LMAO I FEEL YOUUUU 😭😭😭😭😭

Top tier urbanism? The majority of the city doesn’t even have proper bike lanes and SEPTA is a joke(for now).

Philadelphia is a historical city. Your lucky it has kept some of its old urban fabric. Can't say the same is true for more sprawling or newer cities. San Francisco and LA literally paving paradise with highways and sprawl in what is one of the best climates to live and do farming.

San Francisco is not sprawl. It’s dense and walkable. I live here and I know.

@@Amir-jn5moSF is hardly sprawling. It’s one of the most walkable cities outside the northeast/Chicago and has suburbs that are generally walkable, and the mountains/water have made LA-style sprawl pretty much impossible

Very close to 1k

The RU-vid algorithm

these videos make me so depressed, confirming everything I already knew, despite having no way to change it

American cities are interesting but a lot of them are decaying. Almost every big city in the USA has poor/dangerous side of town that looks like a ghost town from the 1970s.

Please name something interesting about our cities that yours don't have. I'm genuinely curious.

@@kagakai7729 Taller Downtown buildings/more skyscrapers/more impressive skylines. Grid street plan (for me its much easier to navigate where I am or should go on that way) either walking or by car. Less dirty old non-maintained buildings with bad smell and crumbling facades.

@@doriancroatia2054 Huh. I think your experiences might be limited to newer developments like central Austin and Seaport, Boston- if you hung around the older parts of our cities you'd see a lot of the same stuff. We just have less of them because we regularly demolish the old town to build another 8 story parking labyrinth. For what it's worth, I've been in the banking areas of London and Paris, and they've been as impressive as any American city.

@@kagakai7729 I agree about the parking lots fact - there are more of them in your part of the world and they are larger. I think it is the big factor. For the information, so far I've only visited Montreal and Calgary regarding North America, therefore my opinion should be taken accordingly.

And totally my vibe.

@@laurie7689 We know.

Ironically suburbs do the opposite of that. They are so resource inefficient that they are a major drain on the coffers of a lot of cities.

@@allergy5634 Your right, I should have said initially they are built for tax generating purposes, after that they end up costing the city too much to maintain.

@@petebusch9069that is true

@@allergy5634 Yep, the politicians get elected, put up huge developments, get paid under the table, generate a lot of tax income initially, call it a huge win, then the next politician gets to take care of the mess they made and only make things worse. Its a downward spiral that ends up 3rd world like were living in right now.

American cities are awfull. One of the main reasons I refuse to ever move in north America is that it is so hard to find a pleasant place to live. And the few lefts are just too expensive. It's really that hard to ask for a place where you want to take an ice cream outdoors under a few trees? I mean, f*ck, a basic village in Europe allows for this.

First time I’ve ever heard of high crime in Lewisville. I been to Flowermount once and it looked cool and also expensive.

@@bluecyclone7077 depends where in lewisville

Yeah the “left” leaning cities are now too expensive for average Joes. That’s why Texas and North Carolina have grown so much.

@@notapaypal I doubt that. I stay in oak Cliff

We didn't ask you to move here

Than why are mixed use neighbourhoods the most expensive place to live in?

@@jalifritz8033 Because there are two types of people in the World: those who seek out socialization and those who don't. I avoid socialization. I prefer suburbs and rural living. I would never live in a mixed use neighborhood. It isn't my thing. I don't want to run into people and be expected to chat with them. That isn't me. Those who seek out socialization are the people who desire mixed use neighborhoods. More people are social than are not, so there is more demand for them. They are more willing to pay premium prices for amenities, too. Those folks, like myself, who avoid social interaction don't have as much use for amenities.

Bro how long is he going to hold that computer for

@gardenstatePR Oh great, nothing sounds more appealing than living in a walmart.

Technically, yes. But even with deadly diversity, cities could still be prettier. There are ways to prevent the different races from mingling without making the entire city car-centric and hideous.

HURR HURR AMERICA BAD EUROPE GOOD

@@charlesbrown4483 You clearly failed reading in school. I said cities in America are terrible. That's why most people prefer suburbs or rural areas.

@gardenstatePR I come from a long line of farmers, until the turn of this century. We now live in the suburbs. Unlike other folks who moved from the cities to the suburbs, we went the opposite direction - from the farms to the suburbs. STOIC is the word that people always use to describe my family. Other words people use to describe us are: anti-social, loners, robotic, automatons, etc. We don't socialize. We never did. We always self-isolate. We prefer it that way.

I don’t get your comment because where is this man saying that everyone needs to go to these third places? You’ll always have your home to have solitude. As for the critique of suburbs - he’s talking about the usual “American suburb”. There’s other designs of them that make much more sense, and actually are much closer to small towns, and a key characteristic is that they aren’t stretching miles and miles. Small towns are where it’s at anyway - they aren’t too busy, single-family homes with nice yards is common, and they have essential stores and services, and manage to sustain a few Mom n’ Pop stores and restaurants. Things are quite close together so walks are nice, it’s not just houses and parking lots. Much better in functionality and design, and perfect for socially anxious people who still want some convenience. I lived in a small town for a time - it was a 30 minute commute to work from the city, but I didn’t have to drive there for anything else.

@@reckonerwheel5336 Unless you stack people on top of each other, not everybody is going to have a grocer, a pharmacy, a barber, a restaurant, a school within walking distance.

@@laurie7689 Funny that so many other countries make it work. Seems like americans are just too weak to live next to others.

I don’t blame you one bit. I drive a delivery truck route in the Atlanta area and the more time I spend out in public, the less I want to be there. It’s so nice to come home and not have to be around traffic and weirdos for the rest of the day. A lot of times my wife goes shopping alone on the weekends because I just don’t have any more patience for stupidity after being out in public all week. I’ll be glad to retire just for the quiet personal time. I cant afford to live in a gated community, but I can certainly see why a lot of retirees like them.