Every single one of these “I moved to Europe” articles dances around this topic. Every single one of them was written by someone who voted for and continues to support policies that go easy on the crime and disorder they’ve fled.

The articles are boring and tedious, because the people who write them are incurious about the actual causes of the differences they’re so excited about. I’ve never read a single one of those article articles that said anything interesting or insightful or shocking or new. They

I mean, just imagine writing an article about the quality of life differences between Europe and the United States and never once mentioning that the neighborhood you lived in back home was adjacent to a ghetto with war time levels of homicide. Just imagine doing that and

“It’s the cars!”

What I’m trying to say here is that the average American’s perception of and (lack of) attraction to walkable urban spaces exists in a context. And our built environment has been a reaction to that context.

I know you all were taught that Americans abandoned cities because they are uniquely evil racists who couldn’t stand the thought of living around a person with dark skin, but in fact, crime and disorder exploded in American cities after World War II, accompanied by rapid