You hear about European-esque cities in Canada like Quebec City or in America like Boston.
What’s the closest example of an North American-esque city in Europe?
i.e. whether that be extensive suburbs, rigid block style planning, car centric transportation like Calgary, cultural similarities to CAN or USA broadly, similarly diverse melting pot environment like Toronto or NY, or any combination of these and/or additional attributes of NA cities you can think of.
Alternatively, just whatever city or area reminds you of Canada/the US the most.
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Never been there but simply based on looks I’d say Frankfurt. The skyline looks like any other NA city.
Probably Rotterdam. The city center was almost completely bombed during WW2 so when it got re-built in the ’50s they had a lot of modern architecture, more high rises than most Dutch cities, it’s much more car centric, etc. Also very multicultural.
Otherwise maybe Almere which was created in the ’70s on newly drained land but I’ve never been so idk.
Milton Keynes.
It’s a new town in England, founded in the 60s, consisting of basically a collection of villages/suburbs intersected by a grid system. The centre of the town is a bit soulless and consists of several large shopping centres in a row, as opposed to most old European cities which have an old town centre consisting of small shopping streets. Like American cities it also has quite a low density (I think they have restrictions on building height, so you don’t get any high-rise tower blocks or anything like that) and relatively poor public transport compared with other towns of its size in the UK.
The main difference though is that the road intersections all have roundabouts (and concrete cows).
Bussy Saint-Georges just east of Paris also has quite an American suburban vibe, it was built in the 90s and the architecture feels quite American (it also has a grid system).
On a side note, “diverse melting-pot environments” aren’t exclusive to America, most big cities in Western Europe are very diverse and cosmopolitan.
Well there are european style cities in america cause they were built by europeans.
The only reverse examples in Germany are some US military bases like Ramstein where there are entire settlements where only americans live that look exactly like american towns and also operate under american jurisdiction afaik. It’s more like an american exclave.
I’ve been to Boston and actually found it quite European looking (the old part at least).
Perhaps the new towns in the UK? I don’t know, never been to any so I can’t really say…
It’s hard to say for Belgium.
Bruxelles is quite multicultural but that’s pretty much the only “North American feature”. We have some skyscrapers but it’s literally just one road.
For the rest, Flanders is conceptually only one really big suburbs but it’s bicycle-centric and with plenty of old cities and villages everywhere.
The whole country is also super densely populated so we definitely don’t have the wide North American espaces.
So I don’t really know a place where we could pretend to be in North America.
Don’t really know a good example, but I think one should look at the cities that were heavily bombed in WW2.
Actually, in a way also some soviet-era cities actually are in a way similar: no old town as it’s a new city, many 9-storey apartment blocks, massive suburbs and a central park. They are just way poorer, so it’s complicated to compare. But the extra wide streets etc do match up.
We have quite large suburbs in Finland, since there is just heaps of space and most of our shit is relatively new. There is no 2000 year old villages where Romans rode around in horses and shit like that. Granted, the suburbs aren’t like classic American style urban sprawl, they tend to be more “natural” for a lack of a better word, but still.
I couldn’t pick a specific city, though. I wouldn’t say any of our cities feel stereotypically European, apart from maybe Helsinki, but also none of them feel American either. I think a lot of it is just different zoning laws. No matter what, downtown will always be mixed zoning here, there isn’t like these CBDs with big high rises like you find in NA. That always just creates a different feel.
You’ve asked an interesting question, though.
There are some ‘grid cities’ in Europe. When US grids became the norm some European cities rebuilt their centres (or moved their centre) to become a grid city.
Thessaloniki is by far my favourite but Barcelona is probably the most famous.
But! The whole ‘grid’ idea originated in Scotland. Glasgow, Edinburgh and Perth are all grid cities that predate the US grids. So on that basis I have to nominate Glasgow as the most American feeling city.
I’d argue a lot of northern American cities are based on European cities and not versa to be honest.
We have a miniature version. The western suburb of Helsinki is an endless suburban wasteland with rigid plots and limited recreation, aside from borough centers, which tend to be a bit cheesy.
It’s pretty oppressive unless you know how to tune into it. It’s quite endless in all directions and doesn’t leave much room for privacy. Think “long island” and you’ll get it.
As a city planner I don’t see any resemblance (I studied two MS one in each continent). American cities are car-centric and lack decent public infrastructure. They use Spanish (or Dutch) grids, which were used in the colonies, same as old Roman military colonies, but not in the mainland. American suburbs are an insult to human decency and sustainability of the planet.
I might be biased by my profession but they seem to me galaxies apart. I could find more similarities in Chinese and Japanese old cities than in Europe.
Glasgow is somewhat of a contender here as it’s more of a grid city, there’s been a lot of Hollywood films being filmed here in recent years as the older 18th century buildings in the city look like a North American city apparently.
The city centre was also hollowed out and people were sent to commuter suburb towns, some purpose built like East Kilbride which resembles many North American cities that are more car dependent.
Disclaimer: I haven’t been to North America!
We have two cities/large towns here in Denmark I can think of that are “North-American-like”, namely [Fredericia](https://goo.gl/maps/wmroQGe6FYdGv2nC7) and [Esbjerg](https://goo.gl/maps/duqLY6Ewh925Evny9) , both were founded relatively recently and with at least some sort of inspiration from American cities or city planning I think. If you zoom in on the center the grid system is quite obvious.
Copenhagen also has it’s share of long straight lines, but it is a mix of new and old, so it’s not as obvious down on a street-level.
In Turkey ,I don’t if you ll accept it because it in Asia but it s part of the “old world”: Antalya.
It s like a middle east florida coastal city. Straight boulevard 6 lanes,square blocks,tasteless architecture,cheap tourists,amazing backcountry and coast.
I found that Frankfurt was pretty indistinguishable from any mid-sized American or Canadian city.
I’ve heard Lakselv being described as being very similar to a typical American small town.
However I’d nominate Alta, which is rather small, but at least it’s a city by Norwegian standards. High car dependency, no real inner city in the European sense. Instead it has this block-style downtown that’s just a sea of parking lots, shopping malls, generic office building and generic chain retailers. The city is spread over a very large area with plenty of suburbs, if you can call them that. I’ve only been there once myself, so I’m really not the most qualified to answer but that’s at least the impression I’ve got.
I offer you [Tampere, Finland](https://www.123rf.com/photo_132225713_panoramic-view-of-tammerkoski-river-and-old-town-tampere-the-industrial-city-of-finland-europe.html) which in my mind bears a striking resemblance to [Manchester, New Hampshire](https://images.app.goo.gl/mNmTgGwN8AfCTui98).
Not big cities, but I would like to mention [Lésigny](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9signy%2C_Seine-et-Marne) and [Mennecy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mennecy), which were both built/extended by [William Levitt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Levitt?wprov=sfla1), the father of the American suburb.
Brest in France is particularly gridded so it’s one of the cities that comes to my mind. Otherwise I would say eastern europe for the grid + large road infrastructure, but I don’t have a specific city in mind and the look of the buildings are very typical
It’s hard to say, most of the french cities I went had some typical architecture that doesn’t look at all like American cities. Skyscrapers are very few in France for example because it’s not a cultural thing and we have a law forbidding new ones because they are “a visual pollution”.
La Défense near Paris is the only thing coming to my mind but that’s not really a city. Cologne/Koln maybe, I went there years ago and in my memories it was very big and different
It’s more US cities who looked like ours
The [Rust Belt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rust_Belt) is a total copycat of [Charleroi](https://www.charleroi-metropole.be/fr/2019/01/18/exploration-urbaine-de-charleroi/) (the real OG, not the colony in Pennsylvania)
In my country, Nova Gorica I guess. It was built from scratch in 1947, so at least the main streets form city blocks. Despite having a population of only 13.000, the tallest building is 62m tall, and there are several others with more than 10 floors (or 50m). As soon as you go outside the city centre however, you find yourself mostly among small 1 or 2 floor houses.
And yes, the transport is car-centric. The whole Northern Littoral region (where Nova Gorica is located) has the most cars per capita in whole of Slovenia.
Here is a street view of Nova Gorica if you want to look around: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Delpinova+ulica+15,+5000+Nova+Gorica/@45.957221,13.6461307,18z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x477b011d344c3387:0x1324946935e8d63d
Warsaw.
Very car centric city with wide roads and many skyscrapers (mostly due to war destruction).
[pic1](https://www.skyscrapercity.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.skyscrapercity.com/attachments/screenshot_20211219-122152_linkedin-jpg.2521364/)
[pic2](https://www.skyscrapercity.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.skyscrapercity.com/attachments/warsaw-2021-like-a-phoenix-from-the-ashes-mavic-3-cine-prores-lowlight-test-00_00_18_18-st-jpg.2483779/)
[pic3](https://www.skyscrapercity.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.skyscrapercity.com/attachments/img_20211012_161433-jpg.2206188/)
[pic4](https://www.skyscrapercity.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.skyscrapercity.com/attachments/1636220114017-png.2318413/)
[pic5](https://www.skyscrapercity.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror=redirect,width=1920,height=1920,fit=scale-down/https://www.skyscrapercity.com/attachments/1637596011747-png.2396488/)
If you do a google search for “[fill inn american city] of Europe” you’ll find a lot of things.. For a period it was a thing to be (or not be) the detroit of europe.. indeed whole a whole country ([slovakia](https://www.business-live.co.uk/economic-development/how-slovakia-became-detroit-europe-3973248)) could become Detroit of europe. Many european cities also have their versions of other european cities . In my own country.. Tromsø is called “the Paris of the north”.. and Swedens Stockholm is “Venice of the north” etc.. Berlin being New York of europe.. or Lisbon being San Fracisco of europe etc.+++
And for many in my country Spain/Costa del Sol is europes miami/florida.. Just like the old people move down from new york etc. to florida when getting old.. older norwegians do the same to spain..
There are a lot of “gridded” cities in Europe, as this was a fashion in the 18th century. Often, it’s a polar grid rather than a cartesian one, with the old town in the center.
What you won’t find are those giant suburbs of single-family homes without any amenities for the people that live there. That because the neighboring villages are at that place already, and they spread around their very own cores until the settlements touch each other. Often, those villages grow faster than the major city because ground is much cheaper there.
What you could find however are giant commercial zones along the radial highways.