Architect and urban & computational designer Abhinav Bhardwaj made this great set of slides comparing urban design in the US and Europe, peppered with pithy observations like:
European space is shaped on purpose: American open space is what’s left over.
Small blocks make more corners, more routes, more street life.
A fine grid offers hundreds of routes; the tree offers one way out.
Not here to defend North American urban planning, but these diagrams make absolutely no sense. Also, both Europe and the Americas are highly diverse and cannot be generalized so easily.