[Schroedingersat]

Sweden and switzerland disprove all of your rhetoric about insufficient density or any argument about cold weather or hills.

Sweden has a lower population density than the USA, but has a quarter modeshare in each of transit and cycling. There are cities with population densities as low as some places in texas that still have good non-car infrastructure. Re. building transit and density in a couple of decades, that's how long it took to steamroll urban areas and replace them with highways. It can be undone in less time. And again toronto and istanbul did it, so san francisco and new york with orders of magnitude more money can do it too.

It's not an idealogical pipedream when many places have done it successfully. Just because you currently choose to restrict the designs that produce good living areas with infrastructure that is far cheaper to maintain and run to rich people, doesn't make them expensive or unattainable.

Sustainable transport and zoning are good for the budget, they're good for the environment, they're good for car drivers, they're good for residents, and they're good for the poor. Your gaslighting about calling people smug not being an attack does not change that.

The pipedream that hasn't happened is one where self driving cars work properly and don't render any high density area completely uninhabitable by humans.