Which North American and South American cities are the most European?

Montreal.

Quebec City.

Buenos Aires

Parts of Argentina including Buenos Aires.

Who cares? If you want European go to Europe.

Also areas of Brazil

Boston

Melbourne!

Montreal

N America - Canada - Montreal. Quebec City is... Canadian N America - US - San Francisco S America - Bueno Aires

But none of these compare to real European cities.

Quebec City, Montreal and Buenos Aires. You get European without (a lot of) europeans, which is a big plus.

Fort-de-France, Point-a-Pitre, and Cayenne are actually in the EU. And the residents of Willemstad and Oranjestad can vote in European elections. So these are the most European cities in the Americas.

Jersey City and Quito

Fresno

Victoria, BC

New Orleans

Most cities in North America have shreds of European influence to varying degrees because they were founded by European immigrants. In the US, you have a lot of Scandinavian influence in the Great Lakes region and the Pacific Northwest; Irish on the East Coast (Massachusetts in particular); French and Spanish in the south (New Orleans, St. Augustine); German in the Midwest. in Canada, there is obviously major French influence on the eastern side of the country, and a British one on the western side (no surprise there) in cities like Surrey and Victoria, BC. I think it also goes without saying that Mexico has a prominent Spanish influence (Mexico City, Juarez, Monterrey—the list goes on.)

I think the "European" feel is mainly pronounced through the architecture though. The people who live there still have a culture that is endemic to the region and its history, so the general disposition of residents will still be very much Canadian, very much American, or very much Mexican, despite what the city may look like.

"Most cities in North America have shreds of European influence to varying degrees because they were founded by European immigrants."

Not just that; but also in large part because the wealthy who built things often took their cues from Europe.

As DL discussed in threads about Vanderbilt and other mansions of wealthy families in NYC the place once was dominated by European inspired homes and other buildings. Sadly many have long since been torn down, but enough remain.

William A. Clark Mansion (father of wealthy recluse Huggette Clark) built a French inspired "monstrosity" that shocked and disgusted many. By time it was finished the style was going if not out of fashion by wealthy, and it was just *too* much. The place stood at 5th avenue and 77th street, and has long since been demolished.

Most residences in Europe, especially in cities, are made of stone or concrete. Except in downtown areas of major American cities, most residences are made of wood (or sometimes brick). The layouts of most US cities are based on grid patterns, which is also not characteristic of European cities. But San Francisco, Savanna, New Orleans and Boston all have some interesting qualities that set them apart from most US cities, which are basically alike in layout, in the strip malls and gas stations and motels and downtowns that generally are not residential in nature and empty out at the end of work days. New York is not at all European-looking, but it might be the most European in terms of the mix of residences with shopping on the street level.

Above being said there is still plenty of European inspired architecture around NYC if you would be look for it.

Sniffen Court

Grove Court in Greenwich Village

None of hte above are the least bit European except Quebec City. I'd add Lima, Peru; San Salvador and Petropolis, Brazil; However, it is important to note that cities in America serve a different function than cities in Europe. Cities in Europe were given sovereignty from the countryside, and privileged against taxes and feudal dues so they could support labor specialization and the state. Their role as markets was seconary and temporally later since early fairs traveled from place to place. In the Americas, labor specialization started in the countryside, which was plugged into global markets from the start, the cities did not possess sovereignty, and therefore their main purposes were as markets and especially slave markets.

frisco baby frisco....

Las Vegas

Carmel

i sucked the mayor's cock there...

New Orleans.

a lot of Europeans think Boston reminds them of Europe since some parts are older

[quote]US - San Francisco

How is SF "European"?

[quote]a lot of Europeans think Boston reminds them of Europe since some parts are older

some parts are incredibly like London

the park in the middle whatever it's called is bases on Hyde Park in London

*based

actually modelled would be a better word

Quebec City in NA.

Leavenworth, Washington.

Yonkers

Detroit

Very European name, R36.

Solvang, CA

St. Louis city; In architecture, but not culture.

Link of Saint Louis pics, forgotten at r39

I thnk that Baltimore is the only US city that ever aspired to beat Europe at their own game, architecturally speaking.

Argentina

[quote]I thnk that Baltimore is the only US city that ever aspired to beat Europe at their own game, architecturally speaking.

What? If you refer to the fact that Baltimore is the first important city of the the post-it evolution republic, yes, but there's nothing very extraordinary about the urban plan not the architecture. Granted, there is fine architecture, buy in fewer examples and not finer than that of Philadelphia or New York or Boston to name the obvious early, large cities. And there is nothing unique about the architectural forms: a penchant for white marble stoops and lintels and later Permastone doesn't exactly push past the models of Europe, or other U.S. cities.

Mt. Vernon Place

T U L S A !

A S L U T!

Buenos Aires, again. It differs in one significant sense, though.

With the exception of damage (and civilian deaths) caused by Argie AF and Navy planes strafing the Casa Rosada in 1955 during an attempted coup against then President Juan Peron, BA's never been bombed.

Unlike most European cities.

[quote] BA's never been bombed

No reason to cry for it.

None of them, thank God.

Outside of a relative handful of places - pre=war Paris and Vienna, fragments of Budapest, Prague, the historic Italian centers, some of the smaller university cities - European cities are mostly smog-choked and incoherent, jammed with cinderblock eyesores. Even the great historic centers are ringed with suburbs far grimmer and dirtier than their American counterparts (which usually are tree-covered). Milan, Madrid, Frankfurt, Moscow, pretty much every English city - ugh.

The superiority of the European built environment is one of the great tourism-driven fairy tales of the 20th century.

Guanajuato, Mexico

Buenos Aires and Madrid have, particularly in the defining monumental early 20thC architecture,, scale, urban parks and spaces, and urban vistas, even the interiors can have a very similar feel.

You can find articles on “Madrid, ¿la Buenos Aires europea?" and vice versa.

Copenhagen and Oslo

Leavenworth, Washington

Phoenix often reminds me of Vienna.

In the US, Savannah, with all the lovely Georgian squares.

I feel like a doge walking around Venice, California.

[quote] I feel like a doge walking around Venice, California.

I feel like a coin licking your slot.

San Francisco is not European.

Europeans don't live in junkie infested shitholes where people run amok to do whatever they want went they want. The rich take defense from all the crime they've invited with their "live and let live attitude" - writing notes on their cars not to break the windows because there's nothing to steal, walking up their front steps covered in trash with maybe a bum lighting up on it, catering to populist politicians who are idiots with an agenda that can convince supposedly smart citizens they know how to save the world.

San Francisco is more like Colombo or Sao Paolo. Even Moscow is better run.

Argentina and Chile are probably the most European nations in South America, while in North America Quebec is the most European region.

None of them. They are all American.

Las Vegas

[quote]European cities are mostly smog-choked and incoherent, jammed with cinderblock eyesores. Even the great historic centers are ringed with suburbs far grimmer and dirtier than their American counterparts (which usually are tree-covered). Milan,, Madrid, Frankfurt, Moscow, pretty much every English city - ugh.

I can't speak to Moscow, but the rest, no. Frankfurt is so much a modern city in its architecture and overwhelming character that, indeed, you might mistake one block of buildings in that city with another in Birmingham or Bristol, but that holds true for most any block long stretch of financial center of modern office and civic buildings in a city of a certain size anywhere. Frankfurt does have some distinctive landmarks, even a skyline could be a city of England or a city in North Carolina but for the river and its cathedral. Madrid has a very distinctive look and scale and an almost confectionary level of architectural ornament along its central avenues. It bears similarities to Buenos Aires, but not to anything in England or the U.S. for the sense of character of its core. Milan, likewise; not mistakable for Manchester or Sheffield or Liverpool or London.

Where are these cities in the U.S. where the historic centers brush shoulders seamlessly with leafy suburbs? No doubt the outskirts beyond a lot of European historic city centers leave much to be desired, but so do whole swaths of large American cities which look like Walker Evans landscapes, only much more rundown, without the engaging graphics, with the Victorian working class buildings not just a little down at the heels but destroyed, and with grimmer looking people. On both continents, there's a real problem with the hard shoulders that rub against historic core and working class housing and industrial districts turned slums. North Philadelphia is at least as grim in its own was as the rough parts of Paris, but I will say that the one thing that favors Europe is that city centers are livable, even in small cities, whereas in the U.S., they are not good or easy places to live except in some very large cities, and even then they lack the integration of goods and services that make life easy. European cities and European zoning contain ugliness so that most cities have actual edges: city on one side of the street, countryside on the other. The enormous blur of land uses that stretches endlessly in the U.S. with no real edge to anything, just strip malls and housing developments, a professional office complex, more strip malls, an enormous cloverleaf of big box stand alone stores, on and on with no end.

Absolutely, every part of every famous destination city in Europe is far from equally worthy of tourist exploration or entry in civic beauty contests, but what Western city holds up to that standard?

I am in Buenos Aires right now and it is absolutely European in every sense except geographically.

R58 you’ve clearly never been to Zurich, Amsterdam or Paris.

r64 I have and I live in San Francisco.

Is it Detroit or is it Kharkiv?

r49 lives in a parallel reality, fifty years in the past.

[quote]Argentina and Chile are probably the most European nations in South America

I'd add Uruguay to that list as well. The most well-adjusted nation on that entire continent.

I went to Montevideo, got a job singing in a nightclub, and met a man.

Why Kansas City, of course. It Paris of the Plains!

Wasilla might as well be Moscow. In fact, it's name is the anglicized version of "Vasilij."

[quote]Why Kansas City, of course. It Paris of the Plains!

Kansas City is a sister city to Sevilla. The former has a 1923 shopping center with a poor man's scaled-down version of Sevilla's12th Century Giralda tower; Sevilla has a very forgettable Avenida de Kansas City with some car rental agencies and cheap modern hotels where flight crews layover.

Such are the deep cultural ties between sister cities.

Seville is a stunningly beautiful historical city, with Andalusian influences galore. I stayed with a local host via Misterbnb for $40/night. Emilio greeted me shirtless every morning.

I shudder to think what fat Trumper would greet me in Kansas City and what we'd talk about. Probably the Chiefs. Gag me.

I often hear New Orleans is, at least historically. It's seedy, but I'm sure some European cities are pretty seedy also. I'd be curious if any Europeans go to New Orleans and feel more at home than in other American cities. I kind of doubt it, but I'm not sure.

R58 is a hick from a red state who doesn't know anything about San Francisco. San Francisco doesn't have a high crime rate compared to most American cities. You're just spewing GOP propaganda. The states with the highest % of homicides are mostly red states. And most places in Western Europe are a hell of a lot more liberal than San Francisco

Paramus, NJ

R75 Gotta love the delusion on Datalounge.

San Francisco just recalled its DA due to rising unchecked crime that even its ridiculously crime-tolerant citizens got sick of. There's more to crime than homicides, but glad yoy have your dinner party anti-Republican talking points memorized.

And what does homicide rates in North Dakota or Alabama have to do with whether San Francisco is a European city? Or amount of liberals?

[quote]I'd be curious if any Europeans go to New Orleans and feel more at home than in other American cities. I kind of doubt it, but I'm not sure.

R74, I think it's Americans who think that, and much less the European reaction. Aside from a patina of decayed grandeur and ironwork and stucco and palms that recall Southern Europe, there's not much beneath that. On the surface there are some physical similarities of architecture, but it doesn't feel European, it doesn't feel like home. The Europeans I know who have visited all say that in the end it's feels 8ntebseky American, just in a different package and with different trappings than the rest of the country. The try-too-hard to please and appear pleased quality of Americans shines very bright there, and the American contrasts seen elsewhere are magnified there.

*that in the end it feels intensely American

ba the Chicago of South America. Not European at all.

San Francisco's grid runs up and down hills like they aren't there. That's American.

That said Amsterdam is a good retort to the moron at R58

Hot Springs Arkansas is just like Vichy, including politically.

Atlantic City is quite like Monte Carlo.

Albany on the Hudson is quite like Mainz on the Rhine River.

R85, I know you joke, but if any city in the US could be said to be European - good and bad - Albany would be my vote.

It suggests an 1890s Belle Époque science-fiction version of an Eastern European capitol.

Paris, France thankfully wasn't bombed during WWII, but sadly many other areas of country did suffer.

I'd say Mobile

Branson

Bemidji

Oh god, R11, you say that as is you believe people would rather deal with Canadians than Europeans!

Chalets in Chile's southern lake region.

Cap-Haïtien, Haïti

Cœur d’Alene

[quote] Chalets in Chile's southern lake region.

That looks just like the Finger Lakes Region! Doesn't it, Bob?

[quote]Outside of a relative handful of places - pre=war Paris and Vienna, fragments of Budapest, Prague, the historic Italian centers, some of the smaller university cities - European cities are mostly smog-choked and incoherent, jammed with cinderblock eyesores. Even the great historic centers are ringed with suburbs far grimmer and dirtier than their American counterparts (which usually are tree-covered). Milan...

Are you writing from 1972?

Buenos Aires. The large degree of German blood explains why Argentinians are better looking than Brazilians, but emotionally cooler.

L'Anse, Michigan

[quote] Cœur d’Alene

I'm going CdA!

R97 Emotionally cooler? German blood? You must have met other tourists in Argentina, as opposed to real Argentinians.

[italic]Today, over 30 million people in Argentina claim some kind of Italian heritage. This makes up nearly two-thirds of the total population, which makes people with Italian backgrounds the majority in Argentina.[/italic]

Italian makes up largest background of Argentines. Even Pope Francis has Italian blood.

I would rather deal with Canadians, R91.

R1 R2 Montreal and Quebec city are NOT American cities!!! Canada is not your colonized province you know

R24 Las Vegas??? Are you sick?? Nothing looks like Europe there

[quote] Montreal and Quebec city are NOT American cities!!!

OP asked for North American and South American. Both Montreal and Quebec are in North America.

R39 Well, Saint Louis was a French king.

The town was founded in 1764, just south of the confluence of Missouri and Mississippi, by French-Louisiana merchant René-Auguste Chouteau and French settlers Gilbert-Antoine de Saint Maxent (originally from Lorraine, France) and Pierre Laclède (originally from Béarn, France). It is named after the King of France Louis IX, known as Saint Louis. Known in English as the “Gateway to the West” for its role in the western expansion of the United States, Saint-Louis has been home to a building in Gateway Arch National Park since 1965. the Gateway Arch, an arch covered in stainless steel, became the emblem of the city. (Wikipedia).

So culturally, before France dropped its American colonies, it was all French.

R78 Hmmm not exactly. New Orleans (Nouvelle Orléans, named after Orléans in France), was built by France. The city centre is completely French. We can see right away that it is not at all American architecture, but French. Moreover, the streets still bear the names of French nobles and the French Monarchy, it is even written in French, as rue de Bourbon. Any French or francophone immediately recognizes the French style.

I’m talking about the picture I put bellow. What the Americans built after when Napoleon sold Louisiana, it’s true that it has nothing to do with the French architectural style.

In this thread: DLers who haven't left the US in decadea, if ever.

OP you're better off asking people who actually travel.

I see the frog cunt has arrived.

The architecture of New Orleans is creole, not French.

It's Spanish not Creole. New Orleans' French quarter burned in 1788 and again in 1794 when the Spanish were in charge. ITs closest style relative is Granada, Nicaragua

Honorable mentions:

Santa Barbara

Puebla, Mexico

Mexico has some charming colonial towns, yes.

Even Roma Norte in Mexico Cit has a Parisian feel, as it was designed to mimic France.

The most Euro feeling in the USA is NYC.

Campeche, Mexico. Walled city center. ❤

Boston

Many Europeans have told me that they felt San Francisco is more "European" than other US cities because it has densely populated, walkable neighborhoods with a variety of non-chain shops, cafes, and restaurants, few strip malls and parking lots. Also, they say that people in SF are more likely to be aware of other countries and cultures outside of their own, and are more likely to have traveled.

Only Europeans who haven't traveled anywhere R116

For the snarksters in here, OK, what's YOUR answer to OPs question?

R118, your mom! 🖕🖕

R111 I can also vouch for Puebla, Mexico because it's where I live. It looks like Toledo, Spain here.

Not a city, but the Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are very reminiscent of Ireland and Scotland, especially the smaller towns and rural parts.

Celebration, Florida

St. Pierre and Miquelon...just like France, the motherland! ❤

[quote] I can also vouch for Puebla, Mexico because it's where I live. It looks like Toledo, Spain here.

Except the center of Puebla is on flat ground unlike Toledo's center.

R116 SF is not that densely populated, not that dense, filled with nothing Boba shops and other Asian money laundering fronts, and its people are provincial and parochial.

Europeans just say that because LA or Miami doesn't fit the European mold.

NYC, even DC do.

Guarantee R116 is a self-proclaimed "Native" in San Francisco. Their delusions of grandeur are second to none.

If you're coming from a European capital ( i.e. Paris, Milan, London, Rome, Berlin etc.) New York City is the ONLY US city that will feel closer to home.

La Crosse.

Eau Claire.

Prairie du Chien.

Fond du Lac.

R126 But San Francisco has a subway line that takes you up and down 5 or so main thoroughfares! We're SOOO EUROPEAN!

And no Chick Fil A's here! Actually no nothing here as all the storefronts are boarded up, when they don't have smashed windows from our European-like junkie-zombies or Boudin-encouraged criminals.

No parking lots either, but the streets are jammed with cars and Ubers and Lyfts and Doordash and GrubHub drivers! Hell, even in Latin America the delivery people are more European and ride bikes.

Don't get me started on the people.. they like pontificating about how aware and open they are, but heaven forbid they actually interact with another human being. They'd just as much prefer to stare at the trash blowing through their streets. Even that insularity is not-European. Europeans are aloof out of respect for personal space, San Franciscans are aloof because they are antisocial.

San Francisco’s European feel is best captured by the Legion of Honor, SF City Hall, the Palace of Fine Arts and Golden Gate Park.

When you inspect the missing foreskins of most of San Francisco's male population, you will be aware that you are not in Europe.

La Grange, IL

R41 Everyone knows it's prettier than Paris

At the Copa...

What exactley do you mean by European.

Dogshit in the streets, cars parked in the stairwell and no Jews, R134.

Charleston

Leavenworth, WA

San Francisco. That's why we live here!

Thank you.

Bimp!

A Proper Bostonian from Back Bay