[Spivak]

Is it okay if in this imagined town you can safely and comfortably walk and bike everywhere but there is no public transportation at all, the town is sprawling and so very little is within walking distance to any given person, little to no mixed use zoning, and everyone owns a car? I think that distills the argument down to its essence. Totally car dependent town but the sidewalks and bike lanes are top notch.

[bkettle]

No, that isn't "okay". A key part of walking- and biking-friendly infrastructure is ensuring that there are places to go (in many places it is flat out illegal to build places to go near housing!). This definitely means changing zoning and land use regulations to make distributed commerce legal, but likely means adjusting development incentives to incorporate the external costs of, e.g., people driving to a big-box store vs visiting a neighborhood grocery store.

[Spivak]

This is, broadly, the point I was getting at—you need the "other stuff" for all those bike lanes and sidewalks to be worthwhile. There is a tendency among proponents of walkable cities to downplay the comprehensiveness of the changes needed, and how firm the government's hand needs to be to get to the desired result. Your last point especially as "pricing in external costs" is a polite way of justifying a sin tax on behavior you don't want to see. It's necessary to tip the market forces in your favor and start the 'flywheel' so to speak but you can see how this might rub people the wrong way, making their current way of living more expensive to nudge them into a lifestyle they don't necessarily want. Nobody likes being told to eat their vegetables but especially no one likes being told to eat their vegetables by someone they see as a condescending adversary who presumes to know what's best for them.

All this is to say that I believe the discussion of this initiative is complicated by the framing that the current way is a problem and this is The Way to fix it.

[bkettle]

I think it's an unfortunate reality that people don't necessarily get to have exactly what they want. I don't get to live in a place where I have access to world-class high speed rail, as much as I necessarily want that.

I also think the evidence is extremely compelling that car-centric society is a problem, that driving has real external costs that we have ignored (deaths, injuries, pollution, noise, inefficient land use, high infrastructure costs) and further that our reliance on cars has been the result of subsidies that themselves tipped market forces (by government hand!).

I agree that there is a hurdle to overcome when discussing this stuff because driving is such an essential piece of many people's lives. I think there are a lot of arguments that can help convince people that there are gradual improvements that we should make that would make their lives better---I'd recommend the Strong Towns book as a good option for market-oriented people.