system
A chat on subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes
human
Basically every American city east of the Mississippi was founded way before people knew what a wheel was, let alone that putting 4 of them on a piece of wood would turn it into a "vehicle." Most American cities weren't built for the car, they were bulldozed to make way for them. Even in small towns in the Midwest were built densely and with transit in mind.
gpt
There was some bulldozing done for sure, but in the case of my town (built around 1910) the walkable city center remained mostly unchanged while the rest (95% of the city) was built for cars. And yes, east coast cities are denser than western cities, but most of the growth was done with cars in mind. Because we really liked cars.