> How is it that America can still be traumatised from the world wars architecturally but europe is not?
Europe is too, it's just that a lot of the older things survived. You can see brutalist and similar architecture that sprang up in the Soviet bloc. I don't think Europeans are that much more "sophisticated" than Americans or anyone else. It's more of an inheritance by happenstance.
Europe (in general) didn't have the wealth to build car-only infrastructure so it never really suburbanized and mass-manufactured homes like America did.
The factors influencing aren't quite the same. Amsterdam is a popular case [1]
I generally agree with your post, though. The caveat is that it's less about capitalism and more about lack of ability to make choices in the market (lack of capitalism and markets). You can't anywhere in America choose a new home that's built in a walkable neighborhood. It's simply not for sale (new). You can only buy existing homes in neighborhoods that survived demolition after the 1920s, and of course those are the most expensive homes by median in the country because of a lack of additional supply.
> Europe (in general) didn't have the wealth to build car-only infrastructure so it never really suburbanized and mass-manufactured homes like America did.
Western Europe had the wealth to, it just refused, sometimes with mass protests. A good example is Amsterdam Jokinen Plan.
And Western Europe had that guy called Le Corbusier with his ideas about ideal cities where utilitarian and ugliness was the entire strategy - just because. As ridiculous it might sound, just go to Zurich and you'll see his hideous legacy everywhere: no new building is anything else than a gray rectangle, even the brand new building of the art museum. It might be garbage but it's our garbage (Swiss motto)
Europe is too, it's just that a lot of the older things survived. You can see brutalist and similar architecture that sprang up in the Soviet bloc. I don't think Europeans are that much more "sophisticated" than Americans or anyone else. It's more of an inheritance by happenstance.
Europe (in general) didn't have the wealth to build car-only infrastructure so it never really suburbanized and mass-manufactured homes like America did.
The factors influencing aren't quite the same. Amsterdam is a popular case [1]
I generally agree with your post, though. The caveat is that it's less about capitalism and more about lack of ability to make choices in the market (lack of capitalism and markets). You can't anywhere in America choose a new home that's built in a walkable neighborhood. It's simply not for sale (new). You can only buy existing homes in neighborhoods that survived demolition after the 1920s, and of course those are the most expensive homes by median in the country because of a lack of additional supply.
[1]https://exploring-and-observing-cities.org/2016/01/11/amster...