The choices that made American cities so ugly. By John Carter.

There is absolutely no good reason that North Americans can’t enjoy the same level of beauty and pleasant street life that Europeans take for granted.

Oh, there are reasons.

1. In the early 50s single use zoning laws proliferated across the continent, resulting in the automobile-centric suburban model we know and loathe today.
2. At the same time modernism conquered architecture and made it impossible to design beautiful buildings.
3. And at the same time, civil rights made it illegal to enforce order in the cities, leading to them decaying into chaotic, crime-ridden hell-holes.

But these are not good reasons. All of these were choices. Americans chose to allow blacks to destroy their cities. They chose to build soulless, charmless concrete boxes. They chose to herd the middle class into the suburbs.

Australia is in-between.