Creating larger spaces that aren't made for cars is great, but people will still need long-range individual transportation.
Nobody's going to build a rail system with a thousand subway stations connecting every neighborhood in a US metro area. That would cost like a trillion dollars, plus maintenance. It's just not feasible to cater good public transport to people living that spread out. And no one wants to walk miles to a less-dense rail system or take some slow bus route.
And outside of major cities, I've never heard of someone complain about cars. Most people are perfectly happy with cars. Sure they might think trains are cool, but they wouldn't want to move inward for it or pay whatever cost would be necessary for trains to come outward.
That's not what the data says, at least in the US. We consistently see a net change of about 2 million people per year moving out of cities and into the surrounding suburbs: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/12/16/in-2020-few...
And the desire to live in cities is shrinking as well, now at under 20%: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/12/16/america...
What do you mean in regards to CO2? I'd suggest that many people living a rural lifestyle completely offset their CO2 footprint due to carbon sequestration. I know I have enough trees and vegetation on my acreage to completely offset my carbon emissions. But, of course, to counter your argument I really only need to offset the extra emissions that come with driving an extra n miles into the city.
The infrastructure-to-population cost ratio of urban areas is way, way higher than rural areas. A meter of footpath, road or sewer in a city is reused by (just spitballing numbers) 10x as many people compared to a suburb, and probably 100x vs a rural area. Infrastructure is just much cheaper in cities relative to the served population, because so much less land area needs to be covered.
Since people generally pay the same taxes no matter where they live, the net result is cities generally fund a lot of infrastructure for other areas, as they are so much more efficient.
There's nothing necessarily wrong with this for genuinely rural areas - we do need farms etc, so infrastructure built to serve them is well spent. The issue arises when we sprawl with suburbs, as they don't serve any particular purpose that couldn't be fulfilled by a dense city, but cost much more in terms of infrastructure expense.
I have no problem with people living in suburbs, so long as they bear most of the cost of living that lifestyle, rather than dense urban areas funding them.
Cities could incorporate suburbs into their boundaries, yet cities don't want to do that, because despite griping about their lack of paying city taxes, they don't want to pay to maintain/manage those spaces.
I really believe the "suburbs cost cities money" statement is overplayed. Between county taxes (which feed back into the cities in those counties) and HOA (for neighborhood maintenance), they are paying for themselves.
The truth is that row houses is the lowest density that still can just barely pay for maintenance of the roads, sewers, water lines, gas lines, electricity lines, and everything else.
Any lower density than that, and the taxes of the residents can't cover the actual costs anymore.
"Cities are loud and dangerous. This is just life in the big city!" No, no, no, and no. Cars are loud and dangerous. This is a choice. It's not an unavoidable fact of life in cities. We choose to live this way.
NYC would be so much better if it weren't for all the car traffic. It's not the density that's strangling it, it's the car completely degrading the experience.
> "Cities are loud and dangerous. This is just life in the big city!" No, no, no, and no. Cars are loud and dangerous. This is a choice. It's not an unavoidable fact of life in cities. We choose to live this way.
Yes! Americans have a real lack of imagination when it comes to city life. Makes me sad.
Cities aren’t loud, cars are loud: https://youtu.be/CTV-wwszGw8
If there was a 50K population max car-free walkable town with all the necessities available within said town, I would move there in an instant. I've searched for this, in the past, it doesn't exist. I live in the next best, a <50K population town where I can get most necessities via walking/biking, but have to contend with hostile vehicular traffic that is especially daunting on longer routes to the outskirts of town that are only serviced by freeways (like the college I used to work at)-- I am terrified to bicycle on these routes with 85mph traffic brushing past (technically those sections are not "freeways", but are indistinguishable save the signage "begin freeway" [no bikes] "end freeway" [bikes allowed]).
For long range travel, expand passenger trains. There is an Amtrak stop in my town, and I travel via Amtrak extensively to visit friends-- it is a very nice way to travel long distances.