Several US cities have been criticized for their urban planning practices, each with its own unique set of challenges and shortcomings.
A netizen recently asked, “What US city has the worst urban planning?”. Below are the top responses.
Houston
“Houston is just a hellish parking lot with some buildings slashed in, I literally have no idea what the attractive part of living in Houston is.”
Atlanta
“Atlanta, easily. They developed a pretty good rapid rail system in the late 80’s, but the metro area was too short-sighted to continue expanding it. So every rush hour is a complete nightmare, basically lasting from 6-9 and 3-7.
I’ve driven in every large city in America, including places such as DC and LA. There’s nothing like Atlanta for one pointless logjam after another. Wouldn’t live there on a bet.”
Boston
“Boston was laid out by cow paths and not in some nice grid system (like NYC or Philly).
Don’t know if it’s the worst…but I knew I was screwed when I arrived there for the first time at my university, got lost, and came to the corner of Tremont and Tremont.”
Kansas City
“The ABSOLUTE worst? Kansas City. Kansas City has the most miles of controlled access highway *per capita* of any city in the US.
Far from enabling people to get everywhere, they make it impossible to get anywhere. The footprint of KC is almost as big as Dallas for less than a quarter of the people.
Two major interstates hit it, 70 and 35, and neither of them had a good route through. You can either take a 40-mile detour around the whole city or try to fight your way through and probably get stuck waiting on an accident.”
Missoula
“Many folks would not consider it a city, but it’s one of the bigger ones in Montana. Missoula, MT grew from two different towns, designed by two different designers, with two completely different ideas for layouts.
The area around Malfunction Junction is entertaining to figure out, but I haven’t spent any time in the other cities mentioned, so I can’t compare.”
Madison
“For a smaller city, Madison is pretty bad. Downtown is absolutely gorgeous, but everything outside of it is sprawl on top of sprawl.
Years ago I took my girlfriend at the time to a concert there and got us a hotel that couldn’t have been much more than a couple miles from downtown. We had to cross a six-lane highway just to get to the mall across the street.”
Morgantown
“Morgantown, West Virginia. Two two-lane roads connect 60,000 people when school is in session. Awful planning. There’s traffic here 24/7.”
Indianapolis
“After driving through almost every US city. Out of all of them, Indianapolis gave me the biggest headache trying to drive through. There’s the most inconvenient place to stop lights. traffic doesn’t ‘flow’. There is the worst construction in the worst places. it was exhausting.
I live in Texas and I don’t know how people think it’s Texas. Sure, Texas has crazy drivers but they don’t have bad roads. No potholes. frontage roads, these ramps and spaghetti highways keep traffic flowing. Even when there’s traffic you can find a way out.”
Nashville
“Nashville. They had absolutely no idea what the hell they were doing when they designed the interstates downtown. Chattanooga is also really bad, it’s a small city with the traffic problems of Atlanta.”
Seattle
“Seattle is a total nonsense. There is on real route through the city I-5 and it will take hours to get through. Seattle is set up for 100-200k, not 1 million.”
Los Angeles
“Los Angeles. I’m from there. Be prepared to drive a lot. Driving certain places is legit complicated and/or stressful. Bonus points if you don’t get in a car accident.”
Tampa
“Tampa doesn’t even seem like it has urban planning. Following the Los Angeles path of development.”, said one.
“I can’t believe that I have scrolled this far to find Tampa. We are supposed to be a medium city, but the population skyrocketed during Covid and the city wasn’t prepared for it.”, another added.
Cincinnati
“Of the cities I’ve been to personally, Cincinnati is the biggest challenge. There are some freeway on-ramps so short that it literally takes a Tesla Model S Plaid to get up to speed on them. It just always feels cramped when I am there, odd layouts, steep hills, and getting across the river can be tough.
The best is Phoenix. Everything is laid out in a grid. Central runs north/south. If it’s a street, it’s east of central, an avenue is west of central. The traffic lights are timed to the speed limit.
The only exceptions are downtown Scottsdale and right around Grand Avenue because it cuts diagonally across the grid.”
Hartford
“Hartford, we have a highway instead of a proper waterfront on the river.”
Jacksonville, FL
“Jacksonville, FL. It’s too big to support itself. Public transit is impossible. The city is bisected by a handful of bridges that get shut down every time we have a big hurricane.
I live 0.2 miles from a grocery store that I cannot walk to without crossing a 6-lane road with broken crosswalks.”
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This article was originally published on Mrs. Daaku Studio.