[pas]

There's a lot of innovative thinking, for example making healthier cities by getting rid of ugly roads and replacing them with bike lanes and public transit alternatives.

What's missing is investment to increase productivity of costly public services. Sure there are billions of funds spent every year on "economic activity encouragement", but as you mention it just ends up propping up failing businesses.

Basically the healthy nice cities are still in a big ugly messy transitory phase. Trains as still fucking expensive and slow, so people fly and drive a lot. (Integrated ride sharing and overnight train service would be nice, etc.) And of course there's the issue of housing.