Low-end food courts are extremely common in the US. There's probably one in just about any mall. The problem is that low-end food court in the US mostly translates into fast food chains which are mostly... not very good.
I expect you'd need a culture that was more open to low-cost non-branded ethnic cuisines. You have it to some degree here and there. Food trucks (though those are often a bit higher price point), international food stalls at outdoor events. But hawker centers (which are one of the things I love about Singapore) are probably tough to transport to a lot of other situations--though you do have good street food in a lot of places in Asia.
In many parts of Asia, there's the concept of the "hawker center" [1] where food vendors each occupy a single stall and sell particular types of food (specific dishes) at low prices. Many of these businesses are intergenerational, so the food is refined over decades. The quality of the food is usually very high despite the dishes being inexpensive (vendors rely on volume). There's even a hawker stall in Singapore that's holds a Michelin star.
The late travel host Anthony Bourdain was so enamored with the idea of hawker centers (from his travels to HK and Southeast Asia) that he tried to start one in NYC but the conditions just didn't align for him. [2]
It is happening organically elsewhere however. In Chicago, there's a Chinese restaurant startup incubator in Chinatown where upstart restaurants rent a small space in the basement of a building where they try to build up their business hawking regional Chinese cuisine. Some succeed and eventually move to larger spaces. This is food entrepreneurship at the grassroots level.
However in order for hawker centers to really succeed certain factors need to be present: willingness of vendors to slog for years at a low margin high volume business, low cost of doing business (cheap labor), consumer culture of regularly eating out, relatively mild winters, etc. Not all U.S. cities fulfill these conditions.
Few people know this but many hawkers of popular dishes in Asia tend to end up being financially well-off after paying their dues (early mornings, late nights, kitchen heat, repetitive work, scrimping and saving for years). Your regular soup noodle or chicken rice guy may be humble-looking in terms of dress, but many have Audis and Benzes parked in the back. They're a bit like plumbers in that sense.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawker_centre [2] https://www.thedailymeal.com/anthony-bourdain-market-cancele...