Which U.S. city feels the least ‘American’ to you?

38 comments

1. New Orleans.

2. New Orleans, Louisiana

3. I haven’t travelled a lot, but Miami out of my list. It wasn’t in a bad way and I loved it (and want to go back), but it was a jarring experience to say the least.

4. El paso

5. Honolulu.

6. New Orleans feels more Caribbean. 

7. Miami

8. New Orleans

9. San Juan

10. Miami and New Orleans

11. San Juan, PR.

12. El Paso because I had to speak Spanish every day when I lived there (which I thought was great! My Spanish improved so much.)

13. The beauty of this country is it’s a melting pot. Every area is different. We all belong here, all cultures, even if some bigots don’t believe that

14. San Francisco? Just the geography of it is so wild, and its culture feels pretty unique, too.

15. San Juan, Puerto Rico

16. NYC because of the actually good public transportation 😂 (for reference I live in Arizona)

17. Dearborn MI

18. Santa Fe, New Mexico and Española, New Mexico.

19. Kind of objectively the answer is San Juan, but Puerto Rico and a more autonomous territory with a different history makes it kind of not count.

    San Francisco & Boston are pretty common answers to this.

    Both are especially urban / walkable / public transit centric (unusual for the U.S.). Boston looks a lot like Dublin & the UK architecturally, whereas San Francisco looks a bit like Lisbon. They’re in contrast to Chicago / NY / Philly – which are just as dense / urban – but whose are and architectural styles that feel more American.

    Parts of New Orleans and Miami can make the list, but that’s really specific parts of the city and not the city overall.

    If we can cheat a little bit here and include Canadian cities, Montreal is way up there too.

20. Hamtramck, MI

21. Charlotte Amalie

22. Miami, New Orleans, and Honolulu.

23. Everyone is saying New Orleans, and I guess they are right, but to me it feels uniquely American. It might be because it’s really the first city I went to as a kid since there weren’t a lot of large cities near NW Florida. I’ve been to other cities as an adult and a lot of them just feel stale.

24. New Orleans.

    Honolulu.

    San Juan.

    Miami.

25. Los Angeles and some of the surrounding cities, feels like Mexico with how many Mexican there is and all the Spanish billboards

26. Charlotte Amalie in the US Virgin Islands

    It’s the only place in the US that drives on the left hand side of the road. Not much feels American except they have the typical US road signs. Makes sense as they were a former Danish colony

27. Calexico

28. Miami

29. San Francisco

30. Went to the UP in Michigan last summer and the moment we crossed the bridge it was just so different than I expected. So many people with Canadian accents we may as well have been in Canada and it felt very remote, even when we were around populated areas.

31. I haven’t been there myself, but I imagine those French-speaking villages in way northern Maine are pretty unique

32. Maybe Carmel by the Sea just south of San Francisco.

33. New York City is simultaneously the most and least American city.

34. Nyc is it’s own pocket Universe

35. Boston. It’s more like a walkable European city.

36. Solvang, CA

    Settled by Danish immigrants, it was literally developed to resemble a Danish village

37. Little Saigon in Westminster, California. Even the street signs are in Vietnamese

38. “America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland.”