It is not illegal to build in a European style in most of the country; we have entire areas built in a similar style. Zoning is also not a fixed thing in the US; it is very common for zoning rules to change as the area grows. Most of the country is not the San Francisco Bay Area. Contrary to popular online belief, only 19% of Americans want to live in dense cities, so our cities actually mostly match people's preferences. Zoning and land use rules make it illegal to build American style cities in much of Europe as well, so far all you know, most Europeans would like American-style living they were allowed to have it. Here's a ridiculous example of some of your continent's NIMBYs not allowing a rural landowner to open a small restaurant [1]; the same sort of people are also opposed to building any form of suburban housing.
Re:22-year-old builds chips in his parents’ garage
by quantumwannabe on Monday January 24, 2022 @09:14PM
(#30067035)
Household income is always compared including all households; you can't exclude people who don't work as they are people in your country and how they live is important. No matter what income statistic you pick, on average, Americans earn significantly more than Europeans, even after taking benefits into account.
So I used the numbers for a full-time employee, and I believe they are both correct. [1] if you prefer a government source, £611 × 52 = around $43k (increase presumably due to this being 4 years later).
Your British number is for all households, including those where one or both adults doesn't work. However, they are comparable.
On urbanism, you've completely missed my point. Americans are forbidden from living like Europeans by their state and local governments [2], and I consider this completely unreasonable.
[1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-family_zoning