When Elizabeth Ruane and her family spent a semester in Lüneburg, Germany, her life revolved around Marktplatz, one of the main squares in the northern German town.
“In Marktplatz, there was this massive community market and anything you could want was there. It was a place everyone went to. You’d say, ‘Let’s meet at the market.’ There were so many ‘coming together moments’ that you don’t see very often in the United States.”
It’s a long way from “Insta-carting your groceries for the week,” added Ruane, a mother of two who lives in Olympia, Washington.
Jessica Ketcham fell in love with Place Bellecour in Lyon, France.
“You could look up and see this gorgeous cathedral up on a hill,” said Ketcham, a writing professor who taught in a semester abroad program there last year. “It was something geographically awe-inspiring, even though you were in the middle of the city.”
And there’s always something interesting going on in the place — from fire juggling to literature readings, she said.
Europe is packed with these urban oases, and along with a taste for lattes and tapas, Americans are increasingly hungry for Italian piazzas, Spanish plazas, French places, and similar squares around the globe.
But the joy of experiencing life in these public squares leaves some American travelers disappointed when they return to the States.
Lily Bennett studied with Ketcham in Lyon in 2024. She, too, swooned over the town’s main square. And when she returned to America, she found the adjustment quite jarring.
“The reverse culture shock was way more intense than the initial shock of arriving in Lyon,” said Bennett, 18. “I was excited to see my family and my dog, but after the reunion, I was struck by the isolation of cities here.”
While in Lyon, she would stop to have breakfast on her way to school, seeing dozens of people along the route.
That blissful, social morning routine is a distant memory now.
“I don’t see anyone because I get in my car and go and drive somewhere,” the University of Washington student said. “I felt pretty isolated when I came back.”
As travel abroad has become common for a wider cross-section of Americans, more people have seen what life is like with a large, walkable communal point in towns and cities around the world.
But while some American cities have European roots, most don’t have central pedestrian zones where people can gather to stroll, talk and shop.
As a 2024 Economist article ranking walkable cities noted rather acidly, anyone who prizes walkability and wants to ditch his or her car “might want to avoid North America.” The ranking was part of a study looking at global mobility, and it found that cities in the US and Canada were at the bottom for walkability because “cars are king and less than 4% of people walk to work.”
All of the cities in the top 20 were in Europe, Africa or Asia, including top-ranked Quelimane, a small seaport in Mozambique; Peja, Kosovo, which ranked second; and Utrecht in Holland, which ranked third.
Many American cities are crisscrossed by freeways, in deference to car traffic, and public transit is often starved for funding.
European-style squares, by contrast, are expanses people can walk not just to, but also through and around.
“It’s also a fact that all of these places were designed around people, rather than cars,” says architect Daniel Parolek whose firm, Opticos Design, designs walkable residential communities.
And in addition to individual piazzas, these spaces were designed with streets that link one square to another.
“Any historic city you go to in Europe – in Italy, Spain, Germany – you have a network of intimate streets that are people-sized,” he said.
And walkability, says Parolek, increasingly appeals to Americans even if the landscape doesn’t reflect this. While over half of the households in the US want to live in walkable places, Parolek said, less than 8 percent of the built environment is walkable, according to Smart Growth America.
Exceptions and ‘blah-zas’
There are, of course, American cities with public squares. In many cases, they are among the country’s oldest cities such as Savannah, Georgia.
Since its founding in 1733, the Georgia city has maintained nearly two dozen squares that are walkable and connected by pedestrian-friendly streets.
Nearby Charleston, South Carolina, also has squares.
Santa Fe, New Mexico, and St. Augustine in Florida are two other American cities with town squares, and they are notable exceptions that reflect the history of the land that would become America: the Spanish colonizers insisted that cities be laid out with a central rectangular tract reserved for a communal space, says Ellen Dunham-Jones, director of the Urban Design Program at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
You’ll also find squares in cities such as New York, where Union Square is home to a bustling produce market, and in Philadelphia, which boasts beautiful Rittenhouse Square, and which, like Savannah, was a planned city laid out by English colonists, said Dunham-Jones.
But the majority of American towns and smaller cities today either don’t have central outdoor communal spaces for socializing or have spaces that are underutilized and neglected. In some cases, these spaces are used primarily by the unhoused.
And even some of the most famous squares in America don’t afford the same freedom to stroll across great expanses. Although Times Square has increased pedestrian-only space, it remains a crossroads packed with vehicles (outside of New Year’s Eve).
Dunham-Jones said in cities like New York and Atlanta, developers of skyscrapers in the 1960s were forced by municipal officials to include plazas in front of the buildings. It was a nod to the importance of communal civic space. These spaces, however, failed to become meeting places except for workers on lunch breaks who have no other place to sit.
“They don’t serve that purpose of really being community spaces,” she said.
Urban planners even have a nickname for them: blah-zas.
For a city like New York, the loss may be negligible because it has density and such a vibrant street life. But it’s a huge loss elsewhere.
In towns where Main Street remains a retail hub, people will frequent these spaces, which is positive, but they may not linger in the same way as they do in other countries.
“It’s a linear experience,” says Parolek, the architect.
It also often revolves more around a commercial transaction, with visitors gravitating to spots such as bars, restaurants or cafes. Visiting a bustling public square in Europe or Asia, by contrast, requires no money.
When Ketcham was in Lyon, she considered the main square one of her “third places,” but one in which she didn’t have to buy anything.
Parks, of course, provide free communal space in American cities. One of the best squares for outdoor communal life in New York is nominally a park: Bryant Park. But they typically don’t offer the same wide, pedestrian expanses that bring people together like piazzas.
Many cities in America made the dubious decision during the 20th century of erecting freeways that bisect cities, further reducing space designed for pedestrians.
By contrast, the majority of European cities were not only built long before the automobile but additionally, their central business districts didn’t change as much – or at all – to accommodate freeways.
In Europe, gasoline prices are much higher because, unlike in the United States, many countries there don’t subsidize fuel. Hence transit remains an attractive option, with rail stations and trams situated in central business districts and linked to public squares.
The primacy of a central meeting space can be traced to the Greek Empire with the agora, among other forerunners. That concept endured, and during the Roman Empire, for example, officials required that the military lay out a new town or city around a central rectangular space, Dunham-Jones said.
“Italy and Spain really reflect that history of the Roman Empire,” Dunham-Jones said.
And it’s why Santa Fe and St. Augustine – two cities in states not known for walkable urbanism – retain focal public squares. They were built by Europeans – the Spanish colonizers.
But it’s not all ancient history that explains the piazza discrepancy. After World War II, America set out to chart its own future, without relying on Europe as the example, and be a beacon for modern life. The future didn’t look like old, cramped industrial cities. Indeed, a signature look emerged amid postwar prosperity.
“Having a yard and a car became the epitome of the good life, of modern living,” Dunham-Jones said.
In the postwar period, the United States spent billions of dollars on roads while other countries spent billions on high-speed rail to link big cities. Even though Amtrak’s high-speed line Acela recently introduced a new train with a maximum speed of 160 mph, the outdated rail infrastructure in the US means those speeds will rarely be reached, as CNN reported recently. High-speed rail in Asia and Europe can average up to 197 mph and 169 mph, respectively.
What followed World War II was a long slide toward suburban sprawl. Municipal requirements emerged in many places that forced developers to incorporate parking into all new projects.
American cities are full of parking lots and garages, which Atlanta web developer Darin Givens calls “dead space.” Four years ago, he visited Brussels where the Grand Place made a huge impression. Givens said he didn’t know “just how magical it was going to feel” to be there in person, surrounded by other pedestrians.
“We walked into it in the evening, and it felt like Christmas even though it wasn’t – just how beautiful the lighting was” from the illuminated buildings and outdoor tables spilling into the square, said Givens.
Givens lives in the city of Atlanta, which affords him a taste of the urban bustle he found in Brussels. But it’s also a city bisected by highways and streets designed mainly for car traffic.
“There’s nothing like the Grand Place anywhere within walking distance of where I live,” he said. “We live on a pretty busy road and people drive very fast.”
Americans’ increased exposure to the joys of piazzas and plazas through travel comes at a time when many of them are seeking community amid the loneliness epidemic of digital, post-pandemic America.
“I found so many more people open to chatting,” Ketcham said of squares in France.
It’s harder to connect in a country with rising numbers of one and two-person households residing in single-family houses. According to the US census, nearly one-third of American households have a single occupant. In 1974, only 19 percent of households were home to one person.
Some newer developers are emerging to tap into pent-up demand for walkable residential complexes built around communal squares and plazas.
One such development is Culdesac Tempe in Arizona, which was designed by Parolek’s firm. The developers say it is the first car-free community built from scratch in the US. It’s located adjacent to a station for the Valley Metro Light Rail, which serves Phoenix.
The development is notable for a few reasons. It’s home to about two dozen businesses, including eateries, a barbershop and a Korean grocery store. And some of these businesses are located on the complex’s 50 square-like spaces the developers call courtyards. These communal spaces, beyond hosting businesses, are home to ping pong tables and open-air markets.
In designing the 16-acre community that opened in 2023, Parolek was inspired by cities in Italy, including Pienza and Lucca in Tuscany, and Castro Marina in Puglia.
Several factors make it difficult to duplicate Culdesac on a massive scale anytime soon. For starters, it has the benefit of a nearby light rail line, a costly amenity not available in many places in the US. And because there are no cars allowed on-site, residents rely heavily on Waymo, which is Google’s self-driving car concept.
“The idea of car-free living is still niche except in dense cities like Manhattan, which is such an exception,” said Dunham-Jones at Georgia Tech.
But Ryan Johnson, the CEO of Culdesac, is confident other developers will cash in on this trend.
“Every generation would now pay a premium to live in a walkable area,” he said. “It’s a demographic tidal wave.”
To be sure, many cities and developers have been responding to this desire for walkability for quite some time. But until now, many projects have focused on converting rails to trails or improving streetscapes.
In Atlanta, the Beltline is a major development on a former rail line that has revitalized neighborhoods by linking them. In Manhattan, the High Line is an elevated park salvaged from an abandoned rail line.
The heart of the Beltline is a multi-use trail; the High Line bills itself as a park but is also oriented around a multi-use path. Both are wildly popular as venues for recreation; they also both boast new residential units on the trails or nearby.
But while the Beltline includes ample park space and is a phenomenon that has brought back to life certain neighborhoods, it doesn’t exactly have central piazzas.
Givens, the Atlanta web developer, notes that you have to be careful if you stop for a moment on or near the Beltline, which is narrow, with two-way pedestrian, bicycle, stroller and scooter traffic.
“You’re always moving on the Beltline,” he said. “You don’t stand and linger – you’ll get the side eye if you linger.”
A land of piazzas?
So is America really ever going to become a land of piazzas? Not anytime soon.
There is demand for more walkable communities but to carve out that kind of space would require herculean effort, involving the purchase of land, the demolition of buildings and approval to convert precious real estate into pedestrian zones.
And it’s not just a matter of building a single piazza. In other countries, one piazza leads to another, and the whole city is connected to other places by public transit.
But for some of the Americans who fell in love with squares abroad, there’s no going back to the broader isolation of life in the US. And it’s inspired them to make changes so that a piece of the walkable, sociable lifestyle that piazzas support remains with them.
For Ketcham, that means commuting on foot.
After navigating public space while she taught in Lyon, she vowed to walk home from her teaching job in the Seattle area – every day. And it’s a vow, one year later, that she’s kept, walking the whole seven miles stretching from the college to her house.
“It has been transformative,” she said.
For others who are still figuring out what life holds for them, living a car-centric life holds little appeal. Bennett, Ketcham’s one-time student, says her time in Europe dramatically altered her perspective on what makes a town or city inviting.
“Every place I visited in Europe, I would find a public square and journal,” she said. “In order to feel fulfilled, I need this kind of community space to exist in.”
Will the need for community and the greater freedom to travel lead to changes in how cities develop in America?
Parolek, the architect, is hopeful. “I feel like travel is the best education.”
He admits that America doesn’t “have a culture of the passeggiata that’s part of the daily cycle of life in Italy.”
“But when the opportunity is provided, Americans do adapt to it.”
