What is Wrong With City Design in America?

-- By PierceHeard - 19 Feb 2024

Overview

American city design is flawed in a number of ways. These issues have large impacts on the lives of citizens within these communities and it is often over-looked and not discussed enough. Poor city design can lead to feelings of unfulfillment, lack of connection to one's community, and a destruction of interaction with fellow neighbors. These flaws also greatly contribute to global warming as American cities are often designed to require the use of automobiles that emit greenhouse gasses. Of course, not all cities in America are designed horribly and some cities are worse than others. New York City seems to be a diamond in the rough when it comes to city design in America. Unfortunately, the price of living in the city is extremely high; this could be due to the reason that so many people are drawn to live here because the city is designed so well. Since New York City is at least above it's peers in the states, this essay is more targeted towards other cities, particularly in the South, that weren't designed in the same way as NYC and our fellow countries overseas that seem to have gotten city planning down much better than we have. The most pressing issues as I see it are that American cities are too car-dependent, they lack dependable and reliable Public Transit, and they lack a so called "Third Place". These issues are of course (like most everything else in America) much worse in communities that have less money and are often communities of minorities.

American Cities are Too Car-Dependent

The most glaring issue that American cities face is that they were designed for cars, not for people. The majority of American cities look like this: a huge suburb of homes separated by miles of roads or highways to get "to town" which usually just consists of a strip mall, office space, a grocery store, and perhaps public schools. This is obviously not ideal. To get anywhere or do anything to be active in society in most of America, one must own a car. This comes with a whole slew of issues. As discussed briefly above, this contributes greatly to our global warming crisis. Cars burn fossil fuels and increase our expenditure of Carbon Dioxide. The construction of roads is also a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Without a car, a citizen is essentially alienated in most of the cities in our nation. This essentially forces a person to make a huge purchase just to do every day activities. The use of the word huge is appropriate - on average, the second most expensive thing Americans purchase after their house is a car. This basic requirement of owning a car has also given vast amounts of wealth and power to car manufacturing companies which then go on to lobby to ensure that cities will continue to be more and more car dependent by funding programs to block the development of public transit and instead direct that money to new highways.

American Cities Lack Dependable Public Transit

Most American cities either entirely lack public transit or provide services that are simply unreliable and insufficient. In my hometown in Texas there was absolutely no public transit whatsoever, but the cities that do have some infrastructure are simply inadequate. Most cities don't have a bus or train system to allow its citizens to get from one place to another. The majority of the cities that do have such infrastructure are often still unreliable because the systems don't run frequently enough, or cover enough ground, or both. With a huge sprawl and lack of public transit, everyone is forced to purchase a car. This inevitably leads to too many people on the roads which causes hours long commutes to work and school and all but guarantees traffic. Not to mention of course car accidents, which are a leading cause of death in America, being stuck in a car for hours on end each day just to get to and from work plays a large role in Americans feeling unsatisfied with their lives.

American Cities Lack a "Third Place"

Another major design flaw in America is the disappearance of the so called "third place". The idea of the Third Place is that a thriving community has a place where fellow neighbors can come together and interact outside of work and their homes. The first and second places are home and the workplace - where people spend the majority of their time. The third place is places such as churches, local parks, community centers, and libraries. They are essentially forums where people can go spend time alone or with their families and meet and mingle with their community members for free. Human beings are extremely tribal and social by nature, without a place where people from the area can all come to congregate leaves Americans feeling isolated and leads to greater division amongst citizens because people fail to connect with one another.

These Design Flaws are Magnified in Communities of Lower Socioeconomic Status

Of course, these issues are much worse in poorer communities and communities of color. The infrastructure in these communities are even worse, with even less parks and less walkability. The only potential third place in these communities is often liquor and gun stores. These communities make their members feel even more isolated and trapped and just leads to the communities degrading over time.

Conclusion

American cities face a lot of challenges as it stands. The lack of walkability, public transit, and third places leads to a very isolated and sad community. There are, of course, some steps we can take now to try to fix these issues. We can implement more sidewalks and bike lanes so people don't have to rely solely on cars. We can push for government funds to be redirected to public transit instead of more highways. And we can begin to shop local and get active in our local politics to promote more community centers and public spaces.

The most important route to improvement is to connect the essay to the some other peoples' thinking. Writing 1,000 words about urban affairs without quoting, citing, or even mentioning anyone who has ever written anything about cities makes you sound like the last living boy in New York. The essay should represent the outcome of learning, not noodling. Pick a central idea, read up on it, respond to the literature, draw a conclusion.

Because I can't foresee where your learning will take you, it might be better to concentrate on substance when we get to the next draft. But a couple of points may be worth carrying into that process. The word "design" is doing too much work here. The implication is that cities are the result of a top-down process mimicking some form of divine creation, or that "scale" or "complexity" by their nature determine political and social structures. As my late friend David Graeber and his co-author David Wengrow show in their history of humanity, The Dawn of Everything, that's not really what the archaeological evidence shows about us since the Ice Age. Perhaps a couple of days with Robert Caro's The Power Broker would help to explore both the ways in which that form of dirigeist vision of how cities are made is both valuable and misleading. Jane Jacobs seems to have much affected your thinking, like spooky action at a distance. Perhaps it is time you really read her.

Another aspect of the idea of "design" is its implicit teleology. One could be forgiven for not realizing from your current draft that we destroyed more urban transit systems in the latter 20th century than we built, dismantling street traction and light rail systems as part of the "what's good for General Motors is good for America" system of restructuring capitalism that resulted in "car dependency" in the first place. Perhaps a visit to Mike Davis' City of Quartz or the essays of Joan Didion would be valuable.

It might be helpful to define "city." It might be helpful to undefine "America" as "the continental US" and to think of "America" as containing also Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Vancouver. Or to inquire whether Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, or Baku might have lessons to offer. Breathing the air of New Delhi and that of Reykjavik within 36 hours (as I have done) is perhaps another way to bring multiplicity of perspectives, including the biological, to bear.

What we learn to do here is to bring more than one voice, more than one way of thinking, more than one modality of art, to the task of lawyering—that is, to making things happen in society using words. The city, real as it is in Ken Jackson's astonishing Encyclopedia of New York City or Wallace's Gotham; or imaginary as it is in Italo Calvino, is the essence of human multiplicity. Yours is a great subject. I look forward to reading the next draft, which I'm sure will be worthy of it.

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