American Cities Decline

Users debate the failures, poor governance, and unlivable conditions of American cities, often comparing them to global counterparts and arguing against generalizations or cherry-picking examples.

📉 Falling 0.3x Politics & Society
3,251
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#5944
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
2
2008
17
2009
41
2010
40
2011
74
2012
59
2013
158
2014
137
2015
136
2016
179
2017
216
2018
226
2019
276
2020
263
2021
263
2022
318
2023
388
2024
231
2025
214
2026
13

Keywords

NYC USA SF NASA cities city detroit sf murders worst outrageous governance infrastructure american

Sample Comments

tomohawk Mar 29, 2022 View on HN

Cities have really bad failure modes.

grillvogel Apr 13, 2016 View on HN

hurry there are cities that haven't been completely turned to shit yet!

baq Apr 8, 2022 View on HN

Not all cities are… things like that don’t happen in my city

zachguo Dec 19, 2018 View on HN

Reading the news it sounds like it's the city being a dick.

msie Nov 19, 2019 View on HN

Compared to what cities? Other cities seem to have the same problem.

Gigachad Apr 11, 2023 View on HN

Problem is American cities are not nice to live in.

sorokod Oct 16, 2019 View on HN

Sounds like the bar for model city is set too low.

genman Aug 27, 2023 View on HN

Maybe those cities are not desirable for a reason?

profunctor Jun 2, 2020 View on HN

Cities aren't being burned down

amalag Sep 11, 2015 View on HN

Cherry-picking a few cities is not helpful