[ttfkam]

Okay, so where you live is classified incorrectly. That's fine. Mass transit doesn't work without the "mass" part, which you clearly don't have. I have no problem at all with your vehicle ownership or your choice of place to live.

[ghaff]

Well, the census has a binary definition and, for different purposes, it makes various degrees of sense although I can fairly easily go into one one of the largest US cities for a day or evening. I'm not in the boonies but I'm also clearly not in a location where car-less public transit can remotely work. And I'm not sure there is a reasonable mid-definition because at that point you're judging what degree of inconvenience is acceptable--which is pretty much the case with the regional transit system around where I live.

[frumper]

Houston and Phoenix are 2/5 top 10 cities in America and both have a lower population density than the small farming city I live in of 50k people. America is just huge.

[ttfkam]

Yes, car-centric land use is horribly inefficient and the core of the problem. You can either throw good money after bad as a matter of public policy, or you can start strategically increasing density.

But it's a choice. There are a lot of folks out there in the "good money after bad" camp who focus too much on what is and what was rather than what could be.