A high-density, walkable European city like Paris, Berlin, or Barcelona is an entirely different phenomenological thing from an American “city” like San Francisco, Los Angeles, or Atlanta. We should use a different word for the places we build in the US. They’re not cities.
Great insight and 100% true. Most "cities" in the United States are just large areas of interconnected suburbs. Exceptions: NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, and a few others mostly concentrated in the Northeast.