Why European Cities are Hard to Build in Minecraft

Today I will explain why European style Minecraft cities are much more difficult to build that American ones.

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#minecraft #architecture #bedrock #minecraftshorts #minecraftbuilding #minecraftskit #build #city #minecraftbuild #minecraftcity #modernarchitecture #moderndesign

[Arkiasis]

It's funny how this also applies to Cities Skylines. Everything is still square based and square zones. So it makes building windy roads you see in European cities difficult since it just destroys how zoning works and you end up with everything having a gap, making it impossible to make a European city since all the buildings are wall to wall.

[bradugar]

One thing European cities have over American styled cities in Minecraft is the Render Distance, you can't drive or walk in a straight line for long before you encounter a building or change in layout. For my current city it's inspired by Cyberpunk design, so Tokyo as an example with grids but hardly ever at 90 degree angles plus lots of curves & tight intersections to compact the space

[CaesarLvcivs]

I really appreciate videos with chill commentary as opposed to those over-the-top, high energy ones. Also the effort to add subtitles. Stellar job, sir.

[nmdreams]

Man you don't have to be that concerned about mentioning anyone as bad or something. You say once or twice it's fine. You don't have to say again and again so you don't "offend" someone. Be chill mate.

[MBT]

Its easy to build american cities, because half of the city is devoted to highways and parking lots 😂

[troublesometoaster]

Lisbon suffered one of the worst earthquakes in 1755 and the PM was appointed by the King to rebuild the city. He used grids and many "modern" techniques long before the car was a thing, so the city center around the Commerce Square is very easy to replicate while retaining an historical feeling. Sadly Portugal being a tiny country means it doesn't get much recognition from these projects.

However... It is also called the City of Seven Hills, and after a really short walk from that area, you'll encounter really steep streets, streets that are just staircases with houses on each side, and plenty of tiny streets that can't fit any cars on, so even if you looked at Lisbon from above and thought "hey, that looks easy", it would immediately turn harsh...

I once tried to replicate my small neighbourhood and completely gave up on its roads (it is somewhat grid-like because only recently it expanded, it stayed a tiny town for hundreds of years, but it's still really difficult), so from now on I try to build European cities on a grid... I know, I know, I'll probably burn in hell for that, but I have no skills to even draw a Minecraft circle 😂

[bungercolumbus]

A good example is the differences from Chicago and Amsterdam.

You can also see the grids in Amsterdam. But the grid pattern is revolving around the city center and further expanding from there. Compared to Chicago which has the same angle for each grid pattern.

[Aaron_Whg]

You could also use germany as a great example for this video with its large railway network and bus network

[xenonlemonade]

relating to the point you brought up on public transportation here in the US, what I have heard is that a lot of the big car manufacturers such as Ford bought up a lot of the railway systems and such and demolished them, so that people would have to buy their cars. not sure if this is 100% true, that's just what I've heard for cities like LA where the public transport is absolutely abysmal

[Electrostar_]

This is so relatable. I'm currently building London in minecraft, and I gotta say for myself, it's quite a challenge 😅. With London, you have to focus on the road layout. Most've the road layouts is curved, therefor it's kind off hard to build buildings. With the American one, it's not as hard since the road layout is just a simple. Curves are very minimum in America, so it's alot easier.

[nmdreams]

Good content, the topic is great. Use further shots of of cities in Minecraft and real cities. Put a bit more info and reach the 10-12 min mark for videos. That's the sweet spot. :)

[jonaw.]

I once tried to recreate my home-town in Minecraft. Man, what a disaster that was. Then I tried to do a small American city. Felt like a breeze.

I don't think it is hyperbolic to say North American cities are the easiest to build, because they've literally been (re)constructed to be easier to build. The Americans have people like Robert Moses to "thank" for that. In the past, loads of American (mainly east coast) cities were far more European in nature, just look at the old town of Québec City for an example of that. Large swaths of those cities have been destroyed in favour of large automobile-oriented infrastructure. Things like American sub-urban sprawl lead to loads of single-family housing that necessitated copy-pasting buildings and street-layouts for quick construction.

All that comes together to form the modern American city.

Make no mistake, many European cities have made similar mistakes in recent years (just look at what has been done to Brussels) but it's nice to see our European cities retain much of their alluring complexity.

[guykrawinkel]

You can have both a grid and walkable city, they not exclusive.

[mtrujillo]

I wish you were a big YouTuber right now, but I think you might be able to get there eventually. Good luck.

[petrkdn]

4:24 not specifically poor design, but intentional design, urban designers were mostly paid by car manufacturers and basically they would get more funding if they made people more reliant on cars, thus driving up their profits crazy high... and entire nation dependent on cars...

[kotiksae]

As a builder of such a city in Minecraft, can say that building an Eastern European/former USSR city is somewhere in between Western European and USA. It still requires curving roads, for big historic cities; public transportation in form of tramways, trolleybuses, etc. But as soon as you complete the city center, you just branch smaller streets from arterial avenues and create so called "microdistricts", which typically have the same buildings in the neighbourhood, some infrastructure (schools, hospitals, malls, etc). And these then can be just copy pasted throughout the city's area.

P.S I live in a European grid city myself. It isn't that old though, it was founded in 1789 and was planned with a grid that changes angles after intersections with certain streets.

[Thexorex]

I've been building a city since late 2015 on ps4 and upgraded to ps5 6 months ago at first I came with an American design but since I watch the youtuber "NotJustBikes" a youtuber mostly comparing Dutch and American urban design and I'm also myself French I started deviating from American design while keeping the aspect of what is already built so I started replacing most of the traffic lights with roundabouts if there is enough space to do so, an extension of a tram line and replacing a four lane road to just a two lane sperated by the tramline, adding a bunch of speedbumps and replacing a lot of stop signs by yield signs. Its not a very big city especially being 9yo old but it became a hybrid European-American styled city with American styled skyscrapers on one spot and older European syled buildings on an other. Keep in mind that the city exists on a normal generated world with minimal terraforming apart from the skyscrapers district which I decided to make a land extensions towards the sea.

[liammacdonald]

Just because grids look repetitive, doesn't mean people get lost all the time. I could say the same for cities with random street patterns. Cities with grids are just as tedious to drive in as any other city. Once you get familiar with a grid city, they're very easy to navigate. Even if you're unfamiliar of the city, you can still pick a road and be certain of the direction that it's heading.

Your assumption that most public transport users use the subway is wrong. Only the largest cities have subways and they often don't extend very far. Cities do have suburban bus routes, they're just unreliable and underfunded. There's a mentality here that people only use the bus when they can't afford a car. I'd say so few people use public transport over here is because it's perceived as for poor people and the service is unreliable and has poor coverage.

An advantage of grids that you probably didn't know about is that the addresses are synced with each other. For example, in my city all buildings on a North-South road have an address from 500 to 4000. All buildings on an East-West road have an address from 5000 to 7500. This means that just by having an address, you know the direction of the road it's on and how far along the road it is.

You could always build a European style city with a grid pattern. Barcelona, Glasgow and Turin already have grids.

[CrowsaltYT]

Woah this is a super well made video! Ive looked on your channel and you have inspired me to start building minecraft cities (Or at least try) Thank you so much!

[zambia_jack]

this video had been in my recommended for a week now! just now watched it, and am chuffed that i did