I live in a mid-sized city in Michigan (Grand Rapids). Housing in the inner city is relatively expensive (3x+ the cost of the housing 20 miles out). Congestion is not really a thing ... maybe for 1/2 an hour right at 5PM and for 1/2 an hour in the morning. Parking is solved by having cheap lots at the fringes of the city center and providing a shuttle in (parking in the city center is only for higher income folks). Affordable point-to-point transit enables lower income folks to have nice houses and work jobs in the city, all while still having enough time left over for cooking & hanging out with family.

For instance, a nice 3br 1500 sqft house can be had outside of the city for under 100k (which works out to < $1k/month for principal, tax, insurance). A nice 3br 1500 sqft condo rents in the city for nearly 3k/month.

That's irrelevant in a discussion about banning cars from inner cities.

re: driving a long ways in Michigan - absolutely! I’ve lived in many states where I drove plenty to get to work or school.

Why have suburban areas, and cities in some places, been built with this kind of sprawl? Partially because there was no significant downside not to spread out.

I’m curious if people actively enjoy driving 20 to 30 minutes, and what kind of policy or other changes or incentives could be introduced (governmental or otherwise) to encourage people to bunch together more so driving would be much less necessary in places like you mention in Michigan.

To be clear, you believe that in this hypothetical only the rich would be able to afford to drive but the jobs and their employees would remain 20 miles from each other.

Average across the US is 16 miles, so it would essentially be asking people to pay an extra $700/month or so. Kinda like an instant 25% pay cut. Definitely would suck, but I bet a lot of people would make it work, and it would reduce congestion pretty dramatically.

It would also be political suicide, but this whole subtopic is a theoretical discussion anyway.