[turtledove]

I mean, sure. Some places have become urban centers recently and that's fair. But coast to coast, our biggest population centers were all established and built up before car centric planning.

I live in Seattle, for instance, which used to have a network of rails. They've all been torn out and we're just now putting them back.

[kansface]

Seattle is geographically constrained. Most/all of the old cities (and metros) have sprawled to ungodly degrees like atlanta or la. How do you undo 70 years of development (ie, tens or hundreds of billions of dollars) spent on sprawling?

[adgjlsfhk1]

It's hard, and will take decades. That said, there are a few things you can do relatively easily to make a start.

1. get rid of zoning laws that prevent building multi-family units.

2. invest heavily in public transit. Buses are great if they are widespread and arrive frequently.

3. in areas that have significant traffic, use trams/subways instead of buses. They carry way more people and don't sit in traffic.

4. make city centers dramatically more walkable. A 4 lane street is much harder to cross than a 2 lane street (or 2 one way 2 lane streets).

5. don't build new roads/highway exits that will encourage further sprawl.