Kansas City VS. Stockholm

[TheLastGentleman]

Discovered relatively recently that Stockholm Sweden has roughly the same metropolitan population as Kansas City, around 2.2 million. Interesting how radically different the urban fabric they're able to maintain is compared to KC with the same population.

Here's 3 miles in KC vs 3 miles in Stockholm.

[Anthony_Hugo98]

Discovered relatively recently that Stockholm Sweden has roughly the same metropolitan population as Kansas City, around 2.2 million. Interesting how radically different the urban fabric they're able to maintain is compared to KC with the same population.

Here's 3 miles in KC vs 3 miles in Stockholm.

The city of Stockholm was also founded in 1252, so their development was significantly more organic and walkable by necessity

[TheLastGentleman]

The city of Stockholm was also founded in 1252, so their development was significantly more organic and walkable by necessity

Nearly 90% of Stockholm's present population came from the 19th century onward. While the core city is ancient, most of the greater city isn't much older than the urban fabric of American cities. There are also plenty of cities in Europe and elsewhere that were wiped clean during WWII and still rebuilt densely and traditionally.

[moderne]

Also most suburbs in Europe are dense and walkable and have multi-use residential atop shopping, etc. Also often separated from main center by green belts and forest preserves.

[dukuboy1]

Space in Europe is a premium. There are 44 countries in Europe, at least a dozen languages, and total land mass around 1.6 million square miles to the US and our 3.8million square miles. Point is each country has had to maximize space throughout their history. Cities were built to population density as they had to. The US has more room and could supports cars better. Most of our older major cities had mass transit as a means but some of the newer cities were sprawled out and built around cars. Also prosperity in the US allowed for us to buy cars. We had the money and infrastructure to support it. We fought in world wars but our country was not destroyed by them and 1000's of years fighting before. So I get why cities in Europe are they way they are as why the US is its way as well.

[Highlander]

So I get why cities in Europe are they way they are as why the US is its way as well.

The diverging paths Europe and the US took on building their superhighway systems contributed to that difference as well. The interstate system may have been inspired by the German Autobahn but we took it a step further by putting the freeways through the heart of our cities. In Germany (and most European countries), they never destroyed wide swaths of cities to build the motorways, autostradas and autobahns. Those highways either go around cities, or die out into boulevards as they approach cities and, in some cases, under cities but they destroyed very little of their urban landscapes to build highways. Construction of I-70 destroyed a wide corridor through the center of KC including a portion of downtown and along with I-35 and I-29 and subsequent highways and loops, they acted as agents of sprawl and white flight. We would ultimately have been better off had we not pushed the interstate system through cities; that was an extremely consequential decision.

[Eon Blue]

In Germany (and most European countries), they never destroyed wide swaths of cities to build the motorways, autostradas and autobahns.

Even when the city was *already destroyed* they chose not to build out highways through the cities to the degree that we did.

[dukuboy1]

In Germany (and most European countries), they never destroyed wide swaths of cities to build the motorways, autostradas and autobahns.

Even when the city was *already destroyed* they chose not to build out highways through the cities to the degree that we did.

I understand this and it has a lot to do with geographic space, socioeconomics, consumerism, etc. The USA took a different path to take advantage of what they had going. Europe did the same.

[phuqueue]

The built environments of America and Europe -- of KC and of Stockholm -- are the result of intentional policy decisions, not the natural consequences of innate circumstances. The size comparison is both misleading (1.6m sq mi is the EU, not the entire European continent; the non-EU parts of Europe are only half as dense as the EU but still don't contain American-style sprawl) and irrelevant (the vast open spaces of the West and Alaska add a great deal of land area to the US but have no real impact on cities hundreds or thousands of miles away sprawling into cul-de-sacs and strip malls). California, America's original mecca of car culture, is approximately as densely populated as the EU (and significantly denser than the entire European continent). Norway, less than half as densely populated as America (and only about 1/7 as dense as California), has compact, walkable cities with efficient, effective mass transit (Oslo has even banned non-resident cars from the city center). There is just not a connection between the size of a country/jurisdiction and the density of the cities it contains. Urban density is a policy choice. American cities sprawl because in the postwar period our policymakers poured many billions of dollars into dispersing the population and facilitating racial segregation. We didn't simply "have" the infrastructure to facilitate car culture, we decided to build it. European policymakers could have made the same choices, but they didn't.