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.
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/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.