[rhino369]

It's not really even cultural. It is a socio-economic and technological issue. Every rich country that settled new territory or experienced massive growth after the invention of the car has cities that are spread out.

Europe was already developed pre-car. Asia had huge population growth when their people generally couldn't afford cars.

This is why US cities that were big before the Model T have a dense core with decent public transit. And cities that exploded after the Model T are basically suburbs of themselves, LA, Houston, Jacksonville. It's always why newly formed European suburbs often are just as car reliant as US suburbs. Though it's worth noting that some European suburbs existed before cars and at the time were just outlying cities that now got subsumed into the metro area.

If Japan had a new city naturally develop in an open area, it would a lot more like LA than Tokyo.

[Retric]

DC in the US is a solid counter example as low density city older than the car. Density is based on a huge range of factors with for example geography playing a significant role. Another huge factor is they type of industry. Garment factory's for example have historically had very high density's where Iron Works are much lower density.

[rhino369]

DC is a pretty good counter example. As you say the type of work matters, and DC has never an industrial town. It was also a planned city. It was intended to not be dense from the start. Something like 40% of DC is federal government land.

DC also is doing a decent job at using mass transit to re-densify areas. The orange line corridor is making suburbs become dense. That is pretty unique in America.

[antisthenes]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...

For a city that was "intended to not be dense from the start", it sure is up there as far as density and would be #16 on the list if it counted as a part of a state.

DC is incredibly dense by American standards and is actually one of the very few places in the US that you can get by without a car (which is, of course, priced into exorbitant rents and property prices)

I guess what I meant to say is that the grandparent comment is blatantly false. DC _is_ a high density city and is much more like a European city in that it combines decent public transport and medium-rise developments.

[Retric]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris

  DC has 158.1 km2 with 681,170 people or 4,308 people per km ^2.

  Paris has 105.4 km2 with 2,265,886 people or 250,065 people per km2

In other words DC has less than 2% of Paris's population density. Note, Paris is a turist destination so many shot's look like DC, but this is the real city: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/04/15/17/278DF7CF0000057...

[LordKano]

DC would have a much greater population density if developers were permitted to build upwards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_of_Buildings_Act_of_191...

[querulous]

toronto and vancouver are both post-car cities that have great (by north american standards) transit

[rhino369]

Toronto was a fairly big city already in 1900. LA started growing massive in 1890-1910, but really exploded after.

Vancouver went grew 250% from 1900 til 1911, which was right around when cars started being affordable for the common person. Vancouver also is somewhat restrained by being on a peninsula.

LA started growing massive in 1890-1910, but really exploded after. LA added 3.7 million people since 1910, but Vancouver only 500k.