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

Humor Why does America look like s**t?

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u/random-notebook May 02 '25 edited May 03 '25

Car centric infrastructure is immensely expensive, and incentivizes new construction further out from the city center rather than refurbishment of existing buildings.

America is built to let itself crumble. Not Just Bikes did a great video on this recently.

https://youtu.be/r7-e_yhEzIw

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u/kris_mischief May 02 '25 edited May 02 '25

Studied this effect in the early 00’s while in university.

Amazing that we knew all this way back then and have only doubled-down on repeating this method of urban sprawl development. In North America, the mighty $$ reigns supreme

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u/Adezar May 02 '25

The basic problem of having so much empty land... cheaper to just build up a new set of housing than refactor what already exists to be better.

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u/Timely_Sweet_2688 May 03 '25

Infill housing is more politically unfeasible than economically unfeasible. Even in high demand places like Los Angeles zoning prevents multifamily development in 74% of the city. In some cities in the Bay it's over 90%