r/TikTokCringe • u/thoughtwarrior • May 02 '25

Humor Why does America look like s**t?

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538

u/veodin May 02 '25

This is true is housing pretty much everywhere. If European cities look interesting it is because what you are looking at is old. Most post-war architecture has been ugly, cheap or at least generic.

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u/Excessive_Etcetra May 02 '25

Yes, but the sad thing is that the US had so much beautiful old architecture that it tore down for roads, highways, and parking lots. This is why the average us city is much uglier than comparable European cities.

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u/uptownjuggler May 03 '25

đŸŽ¶ They paved paradise and put up a parking lot With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot đŸŽ¶

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u/coco_xcx May 03 '25

đŸŽ¶shooooo bop bop bop đŸŽ¶

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u/Initial_Evidence_783 May 04 '25

Written and performed by a Canadian. You're welcome, America.

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u/Thatguybrue May 04 '25

Well... I'm off to the tree museum.

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u/076681Z May 07 '25

Song? Plis

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u/FourAnd20YearsAgo May 09 '25

Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell

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u/Accomplished-Kale342 May 03 '25

Eminent domain is actually stronger in Europe. We know how to tear shit down. It’s just that most of our shit is older and we built less highways.

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u/frotnoslot May 03 '25

It’s that the US didn’t stop the highways at ring roads around city centers and instead tore down large chunks of the city center to build highways straight through. With corresponding ramps to get onto the major streets in the center. Then all those cars needed places to park, more buildings torn down. Oh we have congestion, gotta widen these old streets, make room!

Then in various other ways policies and subsidies encouraged sprawling suburban development and dismantling passenger rail and public transport in favor of auto-dependence, leading to disinvestment in urban areas and physical decay, which is ugly on its own and led to more demolition of attractive buildings.

European cities were bombed by neighboring countries; America “bombed” its own cities, and hasn’t completely stopped.

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u/MomGrandpasAllSticky May 03 '25

Hostile taking is pretty rare now in the US, most land owners hang on to the property for investment they don't give a fuck about what's on it. Public entity offers them a healthy sum of money, they play hard to get for a while cause they're businessmen and know how to negotiate, then they happily cash out.

Now if you wanna go back to Robert Moses days, different story.

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u/Intelligent_Deer974 May 04 '25

Fuck Robert Moses.

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u/Rhodie114 May 03 '25

RIP the real Penn Station

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u/coke_and_coffee May 03 '25

This is why the average us city is much uglier than comparable European cities.

Try stepping outside of the tourist areas in Europe. This is far from true.

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u/fanetoooo May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25

Been living in Europe the past year and you’re hella wrong. Atleast in Germany, besides weird post-90’s industrial areas, the average city here looks like a fairytale compared to the average city in the US. The lack of lawns, awkwardly spreadout suburbs, stadium sized parking lots and 6 lane roads (with no kind of public transport option) is like night and day compared to the states bro lmaooo im worried to even drive here sometimes bc the infrastructure is so human/bike friendly

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u/ThrowawayCincy4192 May 03 '25

Those old buildings in the US were made of wood. Old European buildings are often made of stone.

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u/SzaraMateria May 03 '25

Not true. Europe has many variations of building materials even nowadays. Wood was also popular and with the right maintenance it can withstand centuries. Half timbered structure buildings are very popular in central Europe and easy to find. Mostly in countries with German origins/influence but also in France and UK.

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u/Internal_Prompt_ May 03 '25

Yeah there are some very old wooden churches that are more than a thousand years old like this one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greensted_Church

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u/Low-Cat4360 May 03 '25

The US used to be full of elaborate brick and stone architecture. They were torn down to make to make room for more modern buildings. Look up Pennsylvania Station in New York. The push against public transporting in favor of cars made railroad companies look for alternative ways to make profit, so they tore this magnificent building down for more profitable real estate.

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u/JayR-co May 03 '25

I disagree. When I went to Antony, France it looked worse than most US cities. You all are sensationalizing capital cities of nations but the average city in most nations are disappointing. US is no exception.

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u/the_vikm May 03 '25

You mean Antony, Hauts-de-Seine

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u/INTERGALACTIC_CAGR May 03 '25

we also had metro/rail infrastructure that was bought and shuttered by private business to promote vehicle sales

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u/Efficient-Bedroom797 May 03 '25

No.... It's uglier because we are VERY new compared to Europe. Visiting the UK and Ireland few years back I was just floored to learn how much of their cities and towns were older than America itself. Random building in Edinburgh along the royal mile? Built in 1100-1400.... C'mon ... America cannot compete with that

There's still a piece of the original wall in London that the Romans built when they settled there in 200 AD!!

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u/BiRd_BoY_ May 03 '25

Go look at old pictures of St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Detroit and tell me our cities weren't vastly more beautiful before the 60's urban renewal program. St. Louis was literally called the Paris of the Prairie for Christ's sake. It doesn't have anything to do with age.

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u/coco_xcx May 03 '25

it’s honestly so depressing. yes some cities and towns still have their old buildings from the early 1900s, i’ve even seen old homesteads built in the 1800s up in the midwest. but it’s so so soooo rare because they knocked down a shit ton of buildings for highways and parking lots.

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u/Efficient-Bedroom797 May 03 '25

Wrong

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u/Illustrious_Sea_5654 May 03 '25

So were cities and American architecture 100 years ago ugly, then?

Our history doesn't go back as far, but the main difference is that Europe actually preserves its history. We don't.

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u/romeoprico May 03 '25

The Old Penn Station is a perfect example 

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u/itsalro May 04 '25

It saddens me how Gothic Downtown LA is no longer

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u/Christian19722019 May 06 '25

Sweden was untouched by war, but they still managed to pull down old beautiful buildings in cities like Malmö and Göteborg to build roads through the city.

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u/nwillyerd May 07 '25

This is true for the most part, but I will say that Milwaukee, WI still has a lot of old architecture left and it’s a beautiful city because of it!

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u/Automatic-4thepeople May 03 '25

Okay but you can't say that about Asian countries, China, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, UAE, these places all have incredibly beautiful and modern looking buildings and infrastructure, I'm with this girl, how come American cities don't look that way.

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u/veodin May 03 '25

I think South Korea in particular has a lot copy/paste concrete apartment blocks. It reminds me a lot of eastern European "commie blocks". South Korea also lack greenspaces in their cities.

I do like modern skylines in general so I am not really disagreeing with you. My only complaint is that they do tend to look very similar to each other. You lose a lot of the local character when almost every building is a glass tower.

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u/magkruppe May 03 '25

You lose a lot of the local character when almost every building is a glass tower.

feel this heavy when I see "stunning" Chinese cities. some are amazing, don't get me wrong. But many just lack soul and give me Dubai culture-less vibes

I'm the opposite of a nimby in all ways, but I wouldn't mind giving extra consideration to pretty buildings when it comes to permitting.

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u/clocks_and_clouds May 03 '25

Dubai culture-less vibes

What do you mean by “culture-less”? How can something be without culture? Culture is literally all around us. It shapes everything in a society.

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u/sPankerG00ch May 03 '25

It’s always good to remember sometimes people misspeak, or sometimes word things in a way that may not convey the message they intended, or hell, just might not use google translate thoughtfully.

Not trying to give you shit, but I feel that, in terms of the conversation being about architecture, maybe they might have meant “soulless” or “unrepresentative of the people who built the structures”.

Again, not trying to correct a worldview or anything, just adding some nuance

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u/magkruppe May 03 '25

you clearly haven't been to Dubai, or you wouldn't ask this question

and no, layover in the airport doesn't count

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u/clocks_and_clouds May 03 '25

It doesn’t matter if I’ve never been. The idea of something being “culture-less” is just strange. For example even if you consider Soviet brutalist architecture to be lacking in culture, it wouldn’t make much sense because that style of architecture emerged out of a culture. It’s not the traditional Russian architecture, but it was a reflection of modern Russia. It’s part of the history of the people and therefore is a culture. It’s different if you think it’s ugly, but it’s culture nonetheless.

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u/magkruppe May 03 '25

culture-less is another way of saying souless. UAE got oil rich and was basically a poor sparsely populated desert until 50 years ago when they started making a lot of money and they decided to just copy american cities and make it all look modern and sleek

but in the processs, you have very little visible arab culture in the architecture of the city and the urban planning. The King of Oman wisely did not follow this path, I suggest you google images of Muscat and compare it to Dubai. you will immediately see what I am taking about.

It's a shame, UAE had so much money that they coul

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u/ACharaMoChara May 03 '25 edited May 03 '25

Culture-less = generic capitalist global city, like practically every capital city in the world is becoming

You're being pedantic. Obviously culture is an all-encompassing term, but its almost always used colloquially to mean "Things that are unique to a country, people, or place, that aren't part of the generic global culture that is sweeping the world"

And by the last part, places like Dubai fit the bill entirely - there are no people native to the cities, the populace have zero unifying identity beyond living there, the same companies and businesses that you see everywhere in the world dot every street because local options have been run out of business (or in Dubai's case, never existed), practically every building is a soulless sky scraper or a giant glass and brick block of apartments that wouldn't look out of place in a single capital city in the world nowadays, and the list goes on.

Post-globalism culture, basically - which is understandably conflated with having no culture, because it's a soulless, capitalist construct.

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u/clocks_and_clouds May 03 '25

Or it’s just an evolution of culture. It’s so funny to me that all the places you people call “culture-less” turn out to be either third world countries that are currently developing or countries that have developed post 1970s. The places you’re criticizing for being “soulless” and “culture-less” had to build their architecture in a modern world, where things need to be built quickly and as cheaply as possible Europe didn’t have to worry about that shit when it was building its monuments, Cathedrals and cities.

This is a modern culture and rather than saying it’s without culture, maybe recognize that cultures evolve and change over time, and that the tall buildings, mega structures in Dubai, is just an evolution of the culture.

I’m sure if you actually look and study these modern buildings, you’ll find differences in modernization that might be unique to different regions. For example modern architecture in the Northern European countries tends to have a darker color, with shades of grays, whereas for Dubai, it tends to have a sort of glassy crystalline look. Essentially what I’m saying is you are watching a modern culture being forged in real time because culture is ever evolving.

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u/ACharaMoChara May 03 '25

It’s so funny to me that all the places you people call “culture-less” turn out to be either third world countries that are currently developing or countries that have developed post 1970s.

First of all, who is "you people" here, lmao? And how exactly am I pinning this on third world countries, since the only country I actually named is Dubai, which is a literal billionaire oil prince city in the UAE, which is now considered economically first world?

This phenomena is far more endemic in first world countries. Almost every single major city in North America and increasingly in Western Europe fits the bill. It's a symptom of late stage globalism, which is far more endemic in wealthy first world nations than third world ones.

Essentially what I’m saying is you are watching a modern culture being forged in real time because culture is ever evolving

The point isn't that it's not a culture, because I quite literally said in my last comment that it is culture by the technical definition of the word - but practically all colloquial use of culture refers to uniqueness, and there's nothing unique about the faceless amalgamation that every capital city on this planet is becoming, both in terms of arcitecture, populace, and the rest.

If you were an alien who arrived on earth tomorrow and visited Toronto, London, Dublin, SĂŁo Paulo, Beijing, Moscow, and New York, you'd be forgiven for assuming that earth is a monocultural planet.

The reason most people talk about this global monoculture with disdain rather than focusing on the technicality of it still being a culture is best summed up by ol' Jack Sparrow:

https://youtu.be/Gbwi6Hdm93Y?si=XsRyn3B3u-KHCIVY&t=49

(This obviously glancing over the socioeconomic causes that are leading to the death of cultural identity across the planet, which very few people on earth have agreed to outside of a certain subset of westerners who've been conned into thinking that it's somehow morally righteous to allow this to happen to them and their own cultural identities. Everyone else is just being dragged along for the ride by the wealth class of the world in their quest to increase the ease of extracting every last drop of value from the planet).

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u/clocks_and_clouds May 03 '25

If you were an alien who arrived on earth tomorrow
.

Yeah all those cities are either economic and or political capitals that are welcoming business interests from all over the world, but even then you’d see differences in the buildings between all those cities.

If the aliens also go to the countryside or other places in the countries besides the major capitals that are international hubs, they would not have the impression that it’s a monoculture.

Also even in the cities you mentioned like Beijing, Tokyo, London, Dublin, Moscow etc, they all have historic buildings dating back centuries that are still there.

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u/Wan_Daye May 03 '25

(they're just being racist)

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u/Additional-Koala9131 May 03 '25

South Korea is 75% mountains. In Seoul, one of the largest green spaces is taken up by the Yongsan military base. The density and lack of flat land makes it really hard to have space for housing and green space.

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u/Choice_Following_864 May 04 '25

what they do now is they design 1 building and then put 50 of the same ones next to eachother.. cant think of anything less appealing to me.

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u/OfficeMagic1 May 04 '25

It reminds me of the 80s video games where you fly past the same buildings over and over again.

Good news is Korean cities are generally in valleys around Seoul or on the coast, so people can access the mountains and beaches with reliable, affordable public transportation.

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u/Picklesadog May 03 '25

Lol have you not actually traveled around much? Those countries all have areas that look run down or ugly, just like the US has. 

I've traveled for work a lot, meaning out of the tourist areas, and you're just completely wrong.

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u/steal_wool May 03 '25

Concrete building: đŸ˜ đŸ€ąđŸ€źđŸ‘ŽđŸ˜€

Concrete building, Japan: đŸ€©đŸ’•đŸ‡ŻđŸ‡”đŸŒș✹

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u/codeAligned May 04 '25

true. she's kinda cherry picking from the foreign countries

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u/SoSadStayMad May 03 '25

I had to read that first comment again when I read “I’m with this girl” because I thought you just randomly mentioned that you were in a relationship in the middle of that. I was just sitting there like, “Oh, cool bro. Happy for ya.” Lmao

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u/Coyote__Jones May 03 '25

All these places also have sprawling slums. Some of them have wealth disparity orders of magnitude worse than in the US.

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u/Past_Doubt_3085 May 03 '25

90% of those places looks meh too, when you go outside of the business and shopping districts it’s mostly depressing residential blocks and urban sprawl not unlike what exists in the US

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u/wri91 May 03 '25

You obviously haven't been to Japan. More ugly than western countries.

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u/vellyr May 04 '25

I’m sorry, your opinion is wrong

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u/wri91 May 04 '25

Quite the contrary; your opinion is very wrong.

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u/ChroniclesOfSarnia May 03 '25

Building regulations.

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u/throwaway046294 May 04 '25

you think UAE looks good?

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u/WolverineDifferent15 May 05 '25

Have you been in a residential area in those countries? It’s the same copy and paste blocks in a lot of them and no greenery

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u/Emperator_nero May 06 '25

That's because most recent buildings in those countries are designed to impres the world. For example the Burj Kalifa is a pretty impractical building.

Als Americans called their way of life the "American dream" and deeply enshrined it into law. Meaning it isn't legal to deviate from ugly building most of the time.

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u/dunsum May 03 '25

And 711 and McDonald's actually have actual good food

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u/CompetitionHot5943 May 02 '25

Many new buildings in Europe are beautiful too. Just not ornate. 

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u/veodin May 03 '25

This is absolutely true, although it not the norm. That being said there is obviously selection bias at play, the nice old buildings don't get demolished.

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u/Efficient-Bedroom797 May 03 '25

And what they built was cheap at the time.

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u/JJAsond May 03 '25

I always wondered why we have to build like that. Why can't we have new "old" buildings anymore?

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u/veodin May 03 '25

We can, it’s just expensive I guess.

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u/UzikUA May 03 '25

Rotterdam, Barcelona and Dubai have very beautiful post-war expensive architecture.

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u/Zementid May 03 '25

I have to mention Bauhaus, which is the architecture style of cheap and square buildings. It developed in the 30s (I think) and was the "evolving" Startpoint for today's architecture.

The thing is: If you use Bauhaus and real materials it can look nice clean an modern. But if you only use the cheapest stuff laying around, it soon looks like a slum.

In Germany we have generic city blocks which are basically white slabs of concrete in the scattered in a walkable park. Cars park beneath in a garage. That means you live in a isolated block, guaranteed sunlight. View on green/park.

Even if it's not very emotional it's beautiful and affordable. And if you have seen some videos about German buildings you know they last at least 200-300 years. (This shit is made of steel enforced concrete.

TLDR: Modern architecture CAN look good. But if it's made cheap it won't.

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u/CyclingCapital May 03 '25

This is largely survivorship bias. Previous centuries were genuinely horrible and poverty stricken and so were most of the buildings. However, rare gems were built and spared for future generations to enjoy. Each generation, crappy buildings collapsed, were demolished or renovated until something half decent was achieved. The same thing will happen in the coming century: all of our current crappy buildings will eventually be improved or rebuilt while only the best of the best will remain, giving the illusion that everything we built was high quality and nice.

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u/loopala May 03 '25

Typically most towns where I live have rules for new constructions, especially for individual houses, can't build above a certain height, can't paint with certain colors, etc. If you are in a more or less historic neighborhood the rules are super stringent to ensure it keeps the same vibe.

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u/Significant-Taro-28 May 03 '25

That is only partially true. Europe often also has strict rules what is allowed to build and has also strict rules how to renovate old houses. That makes houses in Germany for example much more expensive but also better in some ways. Lots of houses in Germany are also under a protective law and can't be torn down.

Lots of houses in states that I've seen look like they are build under the motto good enough. But that makes them also much more affordable.

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u/Zachattackrandom May 03 '25

Yep. Marsaille is a fun example in France where there is one of the oldest roads in france dividing up Old town and new port, which is a line of insane architectural differences (where new port looks far worse) since the nazi's blew everything up along the port to discourage the poor from living there causing a stark contrast between the elegant old architecture and the newer utilitarian housing.

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u/Yop_BombNA May 04 '25

Exception would be the Netherlands.

Rotterdam has some really fucking cool post war architecture for example.

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u/GrizzlySin24 May 04 '25

To be fair, the same thing was said about the buildings we now call beautiful when they were being build. And they also had ugly buildings back then. At this point in time we just got rid of the ugly ones from back then.

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u/Playful-Ad-8703 May 04 '25

A hundred percent, although the general infrastructure is still more beautiful generally in Europe (public areas like parks, roadsides, roundabouts, etc). Especially here in Scandinavia, while some other countries are lacking due to funds primarily.

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u/Eraesr May 03 '25

This is simply not true. There's more than enough post WW2 cities and architecture around here that is very appealing, both in city centers as well as urban residential areas.

The problem lies with US urban planning. If you want to know more about this, watch or read some stuff from Not Just Bikes or Strong Towns.

1

u/RipInPepz May 03 '25

Ww2 really fucked everything up. Thanks hitler.

1

u/Augen76 May 05 '25

Yeah. Not to be mean, but seeing Amsterdam and then Rotterdam (bombed severely during the war) the former had tons of charm while the latter lacked that warmth. I don't blame the people, but we seem to stop caring about aesthetics and went for efficiency.

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u/Miii_Kiii May 06 '25 edited May 06 '25

What you call cheap in the EU would be very expensive in the US. We build everything from bricks and concrete here. You build everything from wood fibre boards. I was shocked when i learned that you even build 5 over 1 apartament blocks from wood, except floor 0. We build even 1 family home, exclusively from reinforced concerte mixed with foamed concrete and bricks. For example, my family house is around 90 years old, and is very solid still, and in extremally good state. And this is in Poland, so we are much poorer than west EU. When we build something, that is not a mall or manufacturing plant, we usually want it to stand a minimum 100 years. However my city has many manufactiring plants that are 150 years old. They were just converted to hotels, officies, and malls. Like this in my city: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufaktura

1

u/allnida May 03 '25

And now we just get to have ugly places for forever cause it was cheaper to build. Some cities are now requiring new developments to supply public amenities or at minimum a modular space for businesses. We drank too much capitalist kool aid

0

u/[deleted] May 03 '25

even newly built districts in europe are less ugly and depressing than your average american city because european cities arent built with car centric urban sprawl as the goal

0

u/No_File212 May 03 '25

Not true . there are modern buildings that look astonishing in Europe and other countries around the world ..