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This isn't really true. Europe dabbled in sprawl and highway building in the early years and is still in the process of building out a highway network akin to the US interstate system. But since most of Europe was just wrecked in a war that kind of spending in 1950 was deemed non-essential.
What I said would only be "not true" if I said Europe didn't "dabble in sprawl and highway building in the early years." Where did I say that? I said that Europe was much denser than America in 1950 and that this density should be one factor to be considered when talking about the different development patterns in the U.S. and Europe after WWII.
Even when many European cities built their first suburbs after the War, they were still denser and more walkable than most U.S. inner ring suburbs.
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
There's also the fact that the US population has doubled since then (the same isn't true for the eurozone) and most of that growth was shaped in an era when people were eager to embrace modernity and reject the past
That I would agree with.
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Originally Posted by drive carephilly
California settlements were historically compact because of limited access to year-round water supplies.
The Hoover Dam was completed in 1936. I'm talking about growth after the Second World War. And land constraints are an issue L.A. and SF have to deal with that most cities East of the Mississippi River don't have to worry about.
The Atlanta MSA is 8,376 sq. miles. The Houston MSA is 10,062 sq. miles. Those two MSAs combined would eat up a whopping 20 percent of the entire United Kingdom.
MSAs are based on county boundaries which include lots of rural land. Use urban areas if you wish to see land use per capita or total developed land.
MSAs are based on county boundaries which include lots of rural land. Use urban areas if you wish to see land use per capita or total developed land.
And England doesn't include rural land?
There's no need for all of the data manipulation here because these MSAs already have a huge built-in advantage: they're small. Not only is England larger than these metros (obviously), but it's much, much denser too.
And again, where can you find 53 million people in the U.S. within a 50,000 sq. mile area? The entire Northeastern United States has 55 million people. That's obviously way larger than 50,000 sq. miles. Just New York/New Jersey alone would be larger than that (but yield only about half of England's population).
What I said would only be "not true" if I said Europe didn't "dabble in sprawl and highway building in the early years." Where did I say that? I said that Europe was much denser than America in 1950 and that this density should be one factor to be considered when talking about the different development patterns in the U.S. and Europe after WWII.
Even when many European cities built their first suburbs after the War, they were still denser and more walkable than most U.S. inner ring suburbs.
An important hint is that many US cities were already lower in density than European ones in the pre-automobile era. Compare older American towns (say, under 20,000 people) with European ones. The European are usually much more compact. Pre-automobile, there was a large inconvenience cost of being spread out, but still land consumption wasn't that high even for American cities back then. So it must have been more cultural (or economic) than just available space. Some of the larger American cities (mainly Northeastern, but also Chicago and San Francisco, possibly a rust belt city but doubt it) would have fit with European cities density-wise, but on the lower range of the densities for larger European cities. New York City would have been among the high end of density (and crowding) compared to European cities of the era.
America has a rigid class system
We don't live with the poor or ride the bus with them so then we can claim we don't have class structure
A car and the ability to pay high rents enable you to dodge the poor
Oil has a lot to do with it. Europe never had much of an oil industry and had to import most of it. Since imports were taxed at the time, gas was expensive. Not only was mass transit preferred but European cars were smaller and lighter to get more kilometers per liter. In the US, so much oil was being produced that the price of gasoline plummeted. People had no inkling that cheap gas wouldn't be available. I know these days it seems ludicrous for someone to buy a house in a development far from mass transit and commute to an office park with no mass transit, 50 miles away, and make the trip in a vehicle that gets only 10 mpg. But years ago that seemed pretty normal.
You know, I was a kid in the 60s, became a young adult by the end of that decade, and I don't know anyone, not one person, who lived like that.
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Originally Posted by Huckleberry3911948
America has a rigid class system
We don't live with the poor or ride the bus with them so then we can claim we don't have class structure
A car and the ability to pay high rents enable you to dodge the poor
An important hint is that many US cities were already lower in density than European ones in the pre-automobile era. Compare older American towns (say, under 20,000 people) with European ones. The European are usually much more compact. Pre-automobile, there was a large inconvenience cost of being spread out, but still land consumption wasn't that high even for American cities back then. So it must have been more cultural (or economic) than just available space. Some of the larger American cities (mainly Northeastern, but also Chicago and San Francisco, possibly a rust belt city but doubt it) would have fit with European cities density-wise, but on the lower range of the densities for larger European cities. New York City would have been among the high end of density (and crowding) compared to European cities of the era.
Public transit with the invention of the street car helped 19th century cities to be more spread out and our cities in the 19th centaury were still growing. Before people who lived in cities were forced to live within walking distance of where they worked(and often lived in the same building) and cities themselves could only be about big enough to walk across in 30 min.
What I said would only be "not true" if I said Europe didn't "dabble in sprawl and highway building in the early years." Where did I say that?
You didn't - and you didn't need to.
You said:
Quote:
Compared to Europe, there was endless land to chew up for development, so why would they? Without population pressure and land constraints to check development, we have a lot of low density suburban sprawl as a result.
The idea that Europe didn't have farmland to sprawl out into is simply not true. Not only did they have the farmland to sprawl out onto - they used it. A quick drive through the suburbs of Paris makes that clear enough.
The idea that Europe didn't have farmland to sprawl out into is simply not true. Not only did they have the farmland to sprawl out onto - they used it. A quick drive through the suburbs of Paris makes that clear enough.
It sounds like you've never been to the American midwest, let alone the Great Plains. There's empty land and there's empty land! PA and NY have lots of both farmland and open woodland as well. NY is more mountainous (than PA).
The idea that Europe didn't have farmland to sprawl out into is simply not true. Not only did they have the farmland to sprawl out onto - they used it. A quick drive through the suburbs of Paris makes that clear enough.
This is about as low density as Parisan suburbs (probably a few lower ones) get:
maybe some California ones are that dense, but that's rather dense for most American suburban standards. And here its "railroad suburb" commerical center:
Again, more crowded than most similar American ones.
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