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by omgwtfbyobbq 2344 days ago
The idea of a free market is a bit of a fantasy, but the market does influence policy significantly, which is why there's a lot of car-centric planning around. There are also car-unfriendly places are the world that also have extremely high property values, so it's not due to policy alone.
2 comments

The car-centric planning came first, though; widespread development of suburbs would not have been possible without major highways being developed, for they would've choked on their own traffic pretty quickly.
The development of some suburbs was enabled by mass transit prior to widespread adoption of cars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb

Cars enable more suburban development, but their throughput on highways sucks compared to mass transit, which also minimizes their spread in some cases.

There definitely are, but all of the ones I can think of off the top of my head were created before cars and zoning came about.