[fooblitzky]

It's not all historical accident. The US also bought into a vision of an auto-centric future that featured multi-lane highways right through downtown neighborhoods. This vision was pushed by specific people, notably Robert Moses[1], who advocated strongly for highway systems over public transport, and who succeeded in having a number of dense urban neighborhoods demolished to make way for highways.

There was also the General Motors street car conspiracy[2], which saw car companies buy up privatized public transit only to run it into the ground.

The fight against this future being imposed is also fascinating reading, particularly the work of Jane Jacobs[3]. She correctly saw past the hyperbole to the unfortunate consequences, fought against the vision but lost.

The reason not much infrastructure is being built these days is simply that cities are running out of money and credit. Every road built comes with a price tag for building it, and an ongoing price tag for maintaining it. The building price was so often done on credit (bonds), but the maintenance price is usually not considered. Given that roads bring in basically zero income for a city, every road built comes with an obligation for the city but no way to pay for it. In the past credit was issued on the assumption that future growth would somehow provide some payback, but after 50 years cities have hit the growth limits and still not seen any payback. Strong Towns[4] is an excellent book on the subject.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moses [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp... [3] https://shelterforce.org/2016/05/10/jane-jacobs-defender-of-... [4] https://www.strongtowns.org/book

[ghaff]

Jane Jacobs is an interesting case in that many of today's urbanists read in her what they want to read.

She was indeed against highways going through the middle of cities and in favor of walkability and mixed use.

At the same time, she also opposed rationalist urban planning like Le Corbusier's clusters of towering skyscrapers. She would likely not have favored the mass building of vertical housing that many of the same people who oppose cars want in order to reduce housing prices.

[fooblitzky]

Le Corbusier's clusters of towering skyscrapers aren't really a good solutuion either. They were implemented in Glasgow with disastrous results[1].

My (limited) opinion, is that auto-centric opponents want dense, walkable, cyclable cities. That doesn't imply towering skyscrapers, six stories of apartments with mixed retail, office, and light industry are sufficient. That should provide enough density to make public transit a viable option, if road space is reclaimed from cars.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/16/urban-living-...

[ghaff]

One of the challenges is that you have an existing city that isn't that. The towering skyscrapers at least are something you can implement in a relatively limited area a la classic urban renewal. (Which mostly doesn't work well.)

(But you'll find no shortage of people arguing for basically bulldozing the Mission and building a bunch of high-rises.)

The other has to be more organic but takes a lot of time and tends to generate a lot of resistance if 2-story zoning is turned into 6-story zoning.