The simple answer is that the US is in decline.
It’s a slow decline, barely perceptible, but historians centuries from now will point to the country’s crumbling infrastructure, lawlessness, and profound social division at this time as emblematic of its inevitable downward spiral.
The 90s were a great time
Basically downhill since then. Just shows that nothing is static, everything changes. Maybe when we're all old farts the US will be on top again, or maybe not. That's why I value being mobile.
I love the convenience of the US where everything is open 24 hrs
Lolwut
You answered your own question. Obviously the US peaked first. It doesn’t look like it changed since the 90s because it hasn’t.
I've lived in Eastern Europe my whole life and I've been to multiple cities and towns in the US. There is NO COMPARISON between the 2, you're being ridiculous. Eastern europe is centuries behind the US...
Darling, 90s is brand new by US standards. You probably drove on a century-old bridge on your way back home, and it was not made to last that long, or carry so many cars.
It’s because our Constitution is so old and government doesn’t serve the people anymore.
Commercial landlords pocket the 10% yearly maintenance portion of payments so they can get new tits for the girlfriend and a third home in Aspen. All those commercial buildings have been melting into the earth for decades. Also, the USA can't build nice things anymore.
US builds shit to last only 30 years. Concrete vs stone. Solid wood vs plastic. Etc. Prob is 30 years later you can def see it.
Not really what you were getting at, but actually yes the US did peak in the 90s. It was the height of our global power and influence before 9/11 and the forever wars. We had high quality of life, and a political climate that was far less polarized.
That's not surprising considering the US government seems to care more about funding proxy wars than taking care of it's own people. Imagine what the over $150 billion that has been spent trying to make Ukraine "win" could have done for US infrastructure? But nah, they wanna send another $60 billion to help Ukraine "win" instead, despite the prior $150 billion not having come even close to that, and it won't by they way, but believe whatever you want. It was funny hearing Jenet Yellen saying the US can fund both the Israeli and Ukraine wars at the same time, and take care of the US. Hahaha, yeah, sure ma'am.
In the 90s they were designing buildings for low maintenance - older buildings need to get a lick of paint every few years but newer buildings get left for much longer - eventually someone has to decide whether to spend a large amount of money to refurbish a building that ain’t that pretty…
Generally: our cities are in bad shape and are in decline. Most expanded too big too fast due to subsidies and an abundance of land + wealth, and generations later can’t afford to maintain basic infrastructure. And if you’re in a part of town where you can visibly tell your government isn’t making the reinvestments to maintain basic stuff, you wouldn't be incentivized to fork up lots of capital to maintain your own property/business.
Because CEOs are paid for cutting costs. They pocket their bonuses rather than spend money to leave the company strong and growing. As for updated public infrastructure, many Americans think that sort of stuff is too socialist.
You are seeing what you chose to see… as a fellow avid traveler, the majority of the world arguably looks more dated than the U.S. Especially many parts of Central & S. America and Asia.
The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.
Not a fair comparison. Are you referring to the US as a whole and comparing to another city?? Yea I agree with others you haven’t traveled much.
Too many tax cuts are coming home to roost.
Fund the government so it can fund infrastructure to benefit all.
Lol, lmao
Stuff is new in Asia because they have only recently built everything from scratch. In Victorian England everything was new and it's all still here.
I think this depends entirely on where you are. I'm from the Phoenix metro area, which has more than doubled in population since the 90s with millions of new inhabitants. From my experience, stuff looks nicer every time I go back. The area around my old university looks MUCH shinier and newer than it did when I was a student (completely unrecognizable in some areas), downtown areas in several metro-area cities have been revitalized, etc. I find Arizona to be more developed every time I go back. I found it felt newer and more modern than most of where I went to in Europe (though old looking Europe is part of the charm).
My friend from Ohio has the opposite experience. Every time he returns to Cleveland, it's older and worse than it was before. I think this experience very much depends on where you're from.
Let's put it this way, chiang mai, even Bangkok, danang, look way better than my home city of Birmingham back in England. Way way way better.
Its because the US is not a first world country by any means, thats the reason plain and simple.
Why would we invest in public infrastructure when our taxes could be used for better things?
Like bailing out banks, murdering foreigners, and lining the pockets of the 1%???
Indeed!
Where specifically are you talking about? Because my home area of North Carolina is going through rapid development and looks far too shiny and new for my tastes.
Because we build fast and expand, it's cheap, we have lots of space and land generally. In contrast places I've seen in Europe build slow and compact, probably to last. I've seen abandoned commercial/shopping malls in the US, like entire malls with a maybe a few businesses taking up residence but mostly empty. They just are incentivized to build newer near upcoming areas as we are car driven and the radius of neighborhoods within a certain area make a difference in who will come.
bruh
Sometime after WWII the USA decided that beauty had no value. If something still works but looks bad why would you replace it? That will cost money and all things should be in the service of maximum profit. Unless you literally stop going somewhere because it looks so bad, there is no incentive to improve it.
It's more than superficial too. At some times it seems like convenience and even safety get tossed in to the list of expenses considered superfluous. The damage done by this thinking is immeasurable.
Part of it is just that it is...old.
The US got to a lot of technological touch stones significantly before much of the world, when the technologies were newer.
Many places didn't do major infrastructure projects like an actually good international airport until much later, when there was better technologies.
It's not fully worth building a NEW airport instead of upgrading the existing one, and there are limits to what you can do.
It's not like other countries that were front runners in the industrial revolution looks sparkly and new.
SIN airport in Singapore is 41 years old.
LAX is 95.
A lot can be done with upkeep, but much of what makes SIN so nice compared to LAX was better planning, which they had a LOT more knowledge about city planning and and airport design to work with.
Things are comparatively new in emerging countries. Many of the countries you are coming from were essentially in the dark ages- meaning they were agrarian and rural without much economic development- until the 1990s or later. Now Panama is quite modern but all that development happened in the last 25 years, whereas the US has buildings 150 years old that still have a century or more of useful life left. Much of Europe was built in the 1500s or earlier and that infrastructure continues to be in service.
I don't think so, but it can be because of the weather and the sunlight.
There are many reasons.
First, infrastructure budget. What was built decades ago when the US was at its peak vs other countries building it now. It's a cycle, more or less, but you can't keep it all up and shiny to infinity.
When comes about Airports, US is not much of a transit point for foreign pax compared with any other major airport. US airports were designed only to get you in, fly to you destination and get you out as soon as possible. They're the ugliest airports on this planet. Changi, Doha, Dubai, Munich, Frankfurt, London, Kuala Lumpur and so on are designed to get you into the airport from somewhere else, make you wait in transit and then fly you out.
Different mindset: where infrastructure is not an issue, cost efficiency is. This is something Japan has too, hence the outdated infrastructure in some systems (banking, local trains). If it works, no need for upgrades. This is where commercial buildings comes in. In Japan, the local trains are very efficient and very old and stations focus more on functionality than on being pretty. NYC subway was like this too until some time, but now it's ugly, dark, old and efficiency is rock bottom lol. Still the best in the US, but very far away from any other major transit system in Europe or Asia.
Also, keep in mind that the commercial sector in the US is suffering and thus reducing physical presence (either some places disappearing entirely, or some places are removing stuff). For example, in Manhattan at my local 7-11, they don't sell food/ sandwiches anymore from the shelve, you need to ask for it. That's because of theft.
Because American infrastructure is crumbling to the ground, authorities are just deflecting waiting for their turn to funel public funds into their pockets through foreign invasions/"cultural" programs.
Because paying the government for maintenance is socialism /s
From a Romanian American…..come to romania and you’ll see how old and unchanged things can REALLY look lmao
The US has become a corporate oligarchy. That's why tax dollars are less & less spent on infrastructure and why many businesses do the minimum up keep.
And most businesses literally do the minimum. I moved from an affluent part of Houston where people expect things to be nice to a small sad little town known for having a meth problem. The first thing I noticed was how sad the fast food places, pharmacies & grocery stores are. The Kroger is never clean inside, Burger King, Jack in Box, KFC and Wendy's are disgusting inside & out and CVS & Walgreen's don't maintain their buildings. The only places that do are McDonald's Chick Fil A and Taco Bell and they happen to be on the interstate.
America is in decline.
You’re comparing the best places in those countries to the not best places in America. Go to a boomtown like Denver (which I can speak for), or I would assume Austin, Miami, etc. and there are new stores, high rises, apartments, you name it.
That's what happens when you give tax cuts to billionaires and corporations, instead of updating infrastructure.
The US is re-learning now what the UK and Western Europe learned in the 1870s. The US learned it in the 1930s and 1940s (New Deal and Social Security), but unlearned it under years of GOP fiscal mismanagement since Reagan: while "small government" and low or no taxes sounds great, it doesn't build or maintain critical infrastructure, doesn't keep citizens safe and healthy, and doesn't ensure a functioning public education system that produces the workforce that devises and executes it all.
"Small government", "low taxes", and "thoughts and prayers" for thousands of gun violence victims each year are ideology, not sound policy. Countries running on ideology (i.e., on fumes) turn to authoritarianism (communism, fascism, Peronism, Mullahs) when their citizens don't see through that ruse.
You're comparing the US to countries which in many cases were in complete shambles (or outright civil war) in the 1990s, and have since improved their situations and begun building brand new infrastructure in only the last 10-20 years. So of course it is going to be newer, shinier and more modern, with a lot more flexibility in areas where there was no previous construction, and an extra emphasis, often, on the "wow" factor to emphasize to the world that they are no longer "third-world."
Every country goes through a growth spurt period like that and their architecture tends to freeze in that style for quite a long time. As things get built up it becomes harder and harder to tear down large sections for grand architectural projects, so a type of stasis forms. It's much, much easier to design and develop a grand, modern city when you're building in a place where basically nothing was built before.
There is a simple answer. Asian countries other than Japan didn't develop until the past few decades, so their infrastructure is newer.
Read that as “everyone looks so old”. Was just thinking, geez thanks… 😂
Because of tax cuts
Modernisation requires a growing economy, in some places the economy isn't really growing. You see new buildings in major cities but not in the small towns.
The US hasn't been big on infrastructure in a really long time...there was some kind of quick growth stuff happening in the 90s when all the strip malls became a thing? But after that...not so much.
At least that's my opinion. But go to some place like Seattle with lots of redevelopment and you can't count the cranes (or couldn't when I was last there) there were so many.
yeah, I've noticed that too. It's like the US is stuck in a time warp. It's surprising to see how much newer things look in other countries. Maybe it's time for some serious infrastructure upgrades in the US.