It never occurs to them you don’t get European cities without European demographics.
You get Detroit.
One critical component (of many) underpinning the the enchantment and entrancement of Eurocity charm is the walkable density. Which can only happen when les citoyens want to be around each other. Which can only happen when they feel safe, sound and secure.
And that is simply not possible in modern American cities. Most of modern American metrolife now revolves around trying to somehow earn enough money to escape—via economic apartheid—the consequences of the Civil Rights Abomination and attendant unbridled blacque dysfunction (violence, crime, shitty schools, ghettos, murder, drugs, single madrehood, etc etc) that pervades the urban core.
E.g. the entire reason suburbs exist in America like they do is because decent everyday Americans are forced to errect barriers via different means—distance, cars, zoning-board activism, anti-train zealotry, NIMBYism etc. as buffer between themselves and “urban vibrancy”—which libs have obdurately refused to even attempt controlling since the Civil Rights Abomination.
So yes, virtue-sniveling *bildungsphilisters, your quixotic quest to create New Copenhagen in Baltimore begins with a very large mirror.