> A century ago, captains of industry and their allies in government launched a social experiment in urban America: the abandonment of mass transit in favor of a new personal technology, the private automobile. Decades of investment in this shift have created a car-centric landscape with Dickensian consequences.
> In the United States, motor vehicles are now the leading killer of children and the top producer of greenhouse gases. Each year, they rack up trillions of dollars in direct and indirect costs and claim nearly 100,000 American lives via crashes and pollution, ...
>Many of the automobile’s social costs originate in individual preferences, but an overlooked amount is encouraged—indeed enforced—by law. Yes, the United States is car-dependent by choice. But it is also car-dependent by law.
All cities need to do is loosen their belts, and loosening zoning belts doesn't mean "become Manhattan", but rather just allowing townhouses, duplexes, triplets, and generally low rise <6 floor buildings, which were fairly common everywhere in cities prior to the introduction of zoning.