Sprawl is the answer. Here is the question:

Other developed nations have everything we do in the way of consumer toys, industrial development, and technological advancements. They have the violent movies, television shows, and video games. They have pornography, drug users, prostitution, poverty, and racial disharmony. They have working parents and latch-key kids, as well as supermarkets, shopping centers, cell phones, computers, the Internet, and every other luxury we do. If you go down a checklist and compare reasons "experts" have given for the breakdown in US society and the increase in violence, you will find that the same issues exist in Europe. however, these societies have not fallen apart as ours has.

Is there something else entirely at the root of what is happening in America? Something that exists only here and not in other developed nations?

- Douglas E. Morris, It's a Sprawl World After All