Have you been to a European city, somewhere built before cars? Open space is good but you don't need the width of American streets, and it's important to get the pedestrian density up high enough that people feel like there's something going on.

Yes, and I find it claustrophobic.

Pedestrian density should be targeted using a "pedestrians per block" metric, not a "pedestrians per square meter" metric. 100 people on a wide pedestrian path is preferable to 100 people on a narrow pedestrian path of the same length. I don't think that constantly getting in the way of other people, getting stuck behind other people, and constantly bumping into other people helps anyone.

Then again, I also avoid concerts because crowd density, so maybe I'm just the odd one out here.

Well, it depends where you go. Amsterdam is certainly dense and claustrophobic, so are a lot of smaller towns built around markets. Then you have cities like Edinburgh or Paris that are built around the notion of wide boulevards. Most likely you'd find some fractal pattern in the distribution of wide vs narrow streets in most older cities.

> Have you been to a European city, somewhere built before cars?

Ahh, Paris. Well-known for its cramped boulevards.

Central Paris is kind of a special case since the original center was all but demolished and rebuilt in a sweeping top down reform to get rid of all the cramped streets. And solving traffic congestion was one of the reasons for putting in those wide boulevards. The 'original' Paris, before Hausmann rebuilt it from the ground up, was full of narrow streets.

Well, it was known for its cramped streets until, to p make it easier to respond effectively with massed fire to the kind of anti-government action seen in the revolution, they were widened.

That change does predate cars by a little bit, though.

visit old Europe. The tiny little avenues between buildings are quite cozy and beautiful