yeah, they probably had really poorly designed cities early on as well. America is the most powerful country in the world but it’s also a very young nation.
most non-US culture’s cities were repeatedly burned down, pillaged, suffered natural catastrophes like volcanos, tidal waves, earthquakes, and/or had their populations systematically zeroed out by waves of plague/disease/war. they’ve had hundreds, if not thousands of years to figure out a good city plan without modern construction material science.