Seriously though, this is a solved problem everywhere but major US cities. Paris - which once loved cars - has totally changed over to being bus, bike, and train promoting, and it works.
LA seems to be doing the right thing: build subway lines/high-density transit, even if it "goes nowhere," and the density will follow.
It's very hard to "fix" land use once the land is already "in use".
Robert Caro gets into this a little bit in his book "The Power Broker" describing Robert Moses' development of highways in NYC: basically, if you build a highway before you build a subway line, the resulting area will be developed in a low-density pattern (regardless of zoning), as the "last mile" of driving is much less difficult than the "last mile" on foot, coming off a train.
If you look at NYC in particular, this happened in eastern Queens -- the highways were built (with poor public transit coverage) and the properties were developed in a low density pattern.
This cannot be fixed by simply building more high-density housing (despite the massive city-wide demand for housing), because no transit exists. But you cannot build new transit because it's a political nightmare: current residents will complain that you're disrupting their neighborhood, and city residents elsewhere will complain that your new transit development doesn't "go anywhere useful."
From what I saw in LA when I visited a few weeks ago, much of the new systems of transit serve (a) large office campuses (I was regularly taking the metro at Universal City) and (b) non-commuter destinations such as Hollywood (for tourism) and the airport. The result, as pointed out to me by an Uber driver, was a huge explosion of development in Downtown LA. The newest line in LA, the Expo Line to Santa Monica, seems more commuter focused -- perhaps it is serving the new residential population moving into DTLA?
Eastern Queens, unfortunately, doesn't have the luxury of important destinations or office campuses. It's overshadowed by Manhattan in terms of tourism, and Moses built the Long Island-bound highways specifically to prevent the sorts of development that would lead to Long Island becoming a commuter destination rather than a residential community. Thus, Queens is trapped in this residential catch 22, and not even rezoning can fix it. The only solutions I can see involve closing down lanes of highway to obtain right-of-way for transit (the overpasses were intentionally built too low to support bus service, so it'd be a permanent closure), a sure path to political suicide in an area utterly dependent on its highways.
I live on the periphery of a major urban area and regularly see farmland/woods being turned into senior housing/single family homes/strip malls/banks etc. Some of it is needed but some of it just seems unnecessary. Why not build senior housing closer in where there are better public transportation options and amenities?
If I can't take my car or park for a reasonable fee, I simply won't go somewhere and most of the people I know are the same.
However, subways for example are heavily utilized when they are useful.
Europe was already developed pre-car. Asia had huge population growth when their people generally couldn't afford cars.
This is why US cities that were big before the Model T have a dense core with decent public transit. And cities that exploded after the Model T are basically suburbs of themselves, LA, Houston, Jacksonville. It's always why newly formed European suburbs often are just as car reliant as US suburbs. Though it's worth noting that some European suburbs existed before cars and at the time were just outlying cities that now got subsumed into the metro area.
If Japan had a new city naturally develop in an open area, it would a lot more like LA than Tokyo.
DC also is doing a decent job at using mass transit to re-densify areas. The orange line corridor is making suburbs become dense. That is pretty unique in America.
For a city that was "intended to not be dense from the start", it sure is up there as far as density and would be #16 on the list if it counted as a part of a state.
DC is incredibly dense by American standards and is actually one of the very few places in the US that you can get by without a car (which is, of course, priced into exorbitant rents and property prices)
I guess what I meant to say is that the grandparent comment is blatantly false. DC _is_ a high density city and is much more like a European city in that it combines decent public transport and medium-rise developments.
DC has 158.1 km2 with 681,170 people or 4,308 people per km ^2.
Paris has 105.4 km2 with 2,265,886 people or 250,065 people per km2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_of_Buildings_Act_of_191...
Vancouver went grew 250% from 1900 til 1911, which was right around when cars started being affordable for the common person. Vancouver also is somewhat restrained by being on a peninsula.
LA started growing massive in 1890-1910, but really exploded after. LA added 3.7 million people since 1910, but Vancouver only 500k.
My reply was to what's called a "parent" comment. And in that comment was context. And using that context you should understand my comment. They need to be read together. My comment and the parent comment. Read both together. First the parent comment and then my comment, the "child" comment.
I currently live in Seattle, and when I met guests and said we'd be taking the bus to my house (which involved a walk of about a block in good weather, with a bus line that ran every ~15 mins, would get us there in 30 mins, and I was covering the $3.50/person) they refused and called a $45 cab (they paid) to take the trip (still took 30 mins - the bus was an express).
I'm willing to bet a lot of city dwellers that DON'T use their public transit system have this negative view. They got it from somewhere else, brought it with them, and have no personal experience to change it. This will certainly impact how they vote on things like paying for transit and managing lines and stations.
From my own experience, I've lived in a place were the bus coverage was pretty good, but they ran in circles and were infrequent. So going from Point A to Point B might take 20 mins with a bus that came every 1.5 hours, but going from Point B to Point A would take over an hour, on that same bus that came every 1.5 hours. In another place (Richmond, VA) the coverage was TERRIBLE. Going to work from my apt (roughly 5 miles away) meant that I had a bus with 2 time slots I could catch (one at 6 something am and the other at 7 something - no buses ran after that until end of workday), it would take over an hour to make the trip, the bus was loud, smelly, and bouncy (I was unable to read on that bus, but have no such issues in Seattle), and if I had to work past 6pm, I had no transit options to get home, nor if something caused me to want to get home before the end of the workday. Needless to say, while there I drove myself and contributed to the traffic, parking, and environmental problems. I haven't even mentioned the other passengers on the bus, but let's just say all of us on the bus probably were on it for lack of other options. Very few people "elected" to take the bus, they were forced to.
A huge line at a stop, the amount of stops a bus makes, and traffic, can all make a huge difference in the amount of time a trip can take. Also, some of the crosstown buses are slower on average than walking.
Most people do not want new construction in their neighborhood. I assume that's as true in Japan as elsewhere.
Regardless of culture, if the neighbors have a veto against construction, it will be stopped. If they do not, it will be built.
Being coastal just means you have prevailing winds - if geography is working against you (barrier mountains or a basin) then you will have a pollution issue.
LA has the second-lowest carbon emissions in the country, after NYC. The problem is that it sits at the foothills of mountains which block the wind and prevent the pollution from blowing away.
NYC, on the other hand, has very clean air because it has incredibly low pollution output per capita and the geography favors its quick removal.
(In fact, most of the pollution in NYC air actually comes from across the Hudson - pollutants emitted by Newark and Elizabeth and which pass over NYC as they disseminate.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_New_...