I'd guess the vast majority of cities Netherlands predate cars by centuries. They were already "designed" without cars in mind. That is not true in the US, and doubly so for the post war, suburban construction boon.

The US absolutely tore up cities to make them more car friendly. Redlining and slum clearing were used as justifications to knock down entire neighborhoods to put more roads in. Most old American cities started as port towns with streetcar suburbs, and then they tore the trains out.

We don't have medieval cities, but saying cities were designed around the car is patently false.

Yes, the fifties and sixties caused huge redesigns, but we can undo those.

> We don't have medieval cities, but saying cities were designed around the car is patently false.

It's not. Cities have literally been created from nothing in the last few decades. Just because NYC, Atlanta, DC, etc. are old are have a history of redlining does not mean that every city does. Case in point: the cities around where I grew up were built in the last 3 decades. Those cities didn't have a choice but to have zoning laws and miles of road.

I mean, sure. Some places have become urban centers recently and that's fair. But coast to coast, our biggest population centers were all established and built up before car centric planning.

I live in Seattle, for instance, which used to have a network of rails. They've all been torn out and we're just now putting them back.

Seattle is geographically constrained. Most/all of the old cities (and metros) have sprawled to ungodly degrees like atlanta or la. How do you undo 70 years of development (ie, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars) spent on sprawling?

It's hard, and will take decades. That said, there are a few things you can do relatively easily to make a start.

1. get rid of zoning laws that prevent building multi-family units.

2. invest heavily in public transit. Buses are great if they are widespread and arrive frequently.

3. in areas that have significant traffic, use trams/subways instead of buses. They carry way more people and don't sit in traffic.

4. make city centers dramatically more walkable. A 4 lane street is much harder to cross than a 2 lane street (or 2 one way 2 lane streets).

5. don't build new roads/highway exits that will encourage further sprawl.

Reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Netherlands#..., the population of the Netherlands about doubled since 1945, so the vast majority of its cities may predate cars, but the vast majority of its neighborhoods won’t.

I expect average household size to have decreased significantly, so it wouldn’t surprise me if at least 75% of inhabitants lived in post-war houses.

Because of that, I don’t see suburban construction as a major difference between the USA and the Netherlands.

A major difference likely is that the USA has room for sprawl, while the Netherlands doesn’t. Dutch suburbs likely are more dense than ones in the USA.

Well luckily for us that in the US, the new construction was not built to last.

It was built to be replaced. We should try that!

Don't get me wrong; I wish we were less car-dependent too, but it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. Cars are too deeply ingrained in American culture, and Europeans bragging about their cities isn't going to change that. Not to mention how massive the US is! We have states (California and Texas) that are larger than over half of the European countries.

>but it isn't going to happen in our lifetimes.

Based on the track record of most of the demographics I see pushing for improvement I fear we'll wind up with some hellscape that combines the worst of both.

I don't see why states are especially relevant. Europe on a whole is really big, but still has way better public transit than the US.

Not sure why you are being downvoted systematically on this thread. I think your point is very valid.

long distance travel is even better suited to mass transit, as it's more laminar.