[treflop]

In my opinion, it's largely because American cities are new.

If you are building a new city, you do not start with high density. Individual developers start with the cheapest build out because no one will pay a premium for a multi-level structure until cheap single-level builds are exhausted. Then as centuries pass, because there is no more undeveloped land, the city is forced to redevelop existing plots and increase density.

Many Asian and Western cities are hundreds or thousands of years old.

America's transit woes is because we live in a new country with new cities in previously mostly uninhabited land.

[nunez]

s/uninhabitated/stolen/

[mrkstu]

remind me again where land exists that wasn’t appropriated from someone else by the current occupants?

[0xBDB]

The United States. Well, some of it anyway.

Due to smallpox spread from Mexico, 90 percent of the native population was gone in most areas at least a half-century before Jamestown was settled. A lot of what white people 'stole' was genuinely uninhabited.