People who want fiscally responsible government? "The Many Costs of Too Much Parking":
* https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2018/11/20/the-many-cost...
And that's not even getting into high(er) density areas subsidizing low(er) density areas:
* https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Nw6qyyrTeI
* https://usa.streetsblog.org/2015/03/05/sprawl-costs-the-publ...
* https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2020/4/16/when-apartment...
Want to live in low(er) density areas? Go ahead: but stop externalizing the costs onto others.
The Washington D.C metro is a multi-billion dollar money pit from hell that's mismanaged and filled with graft, death and delays. California built a 1 billion dollar bus station that nearly collapsed on itself. In the US, some of the most fiscally un-responsible transportation is public government run transportation.
So no different than highway construction then? The seventh annual report of Highway Boondoggles:
* https://frontiergroup.org/resources/highway-boondoggles/
And let's not forget that it's been empirically measured for decades that building more roads/highways doesn't decrease congestion:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand
And that car-oriented 'improvements' makes things worse for drivers and worse for those for those taking public transit (often due to not being able to afford a car):
> It is a paradox in that improvements in the road network will not reduce traffic congestion. Improvements in the road network can make congestion worse if the improvements make public transport more inconvenient or if they shift investment, causing disinvestment in the public transport system.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs–Thomson_paradox
And that improving things for non-car users can actually make things better for drivers:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8RRE2rDw4k
* https://fortune.com/2015/09/30/best-country-drive-waze/
In no instantiation of the multiverse does the data show that focusing on car-centric development and private automobile transportation is more efficient, from a fiscal or energy point of view, or better for individuals' health and things like climate change.
Certainly roads are useful for commerce and trade, but personal transportation? Not so much.
A whole lot of Americans don't want that. You can tell by how much more expensive it is to live in walkable city centers than in suburbs.
You do realize that much of that parking exists because of mandates and subsidies, right? If Americans want something else then let them. Does your interest in letting people make their own choices extend to other people's choices as well as your own?
Strawman. No one said anything about 40 floor high shoeboxes.
Turns out 2 large yards are plenty for even 100 families, and lawn care is super affordable when split 100 ways!
My car gets under 100 miles of use a week. Excluding commuting to work, during the summer months I literally do not have to drive if I don't want to. Within walking distance of me there is a public library, 2 bakeries, 3 grocery stores, a public pool, a wading pools, 2 very large parks, 1 of which has equipped with grills, and 1 smaller neighborhood park. If I want to ride a bike, and extend my range out to all of 3 miles, then that list gets absurdly long.
I don't even live in a dense part of Seattle, I just happen to live in the city proper.
You have a limited view of 'urban living'. Want a front yard, back yard, and garage (attached to a laneway)? Plenty of that was built pre-WW2, and there's no reason why it couldn't be again:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWsGBRdK2N0&t=1m8s
The Oh the Urbanity channel has a video on the (misguided) idea that "urban living" = Manhattan / Hong Kong apartment blocks:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCmz-fgp24E
Examples (Streetview) of urban tree-lined streets which can support transit and where cycling is practical (and where a car is an option versus a necessity):
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/125+Hampton+Ave,+Toronto,+...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/50+Geoffrey+St,+Toronto,+O...
* https://www.google.com/maps/place/70+Jackman+Ave+Toronto,+ON
See also:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cO6txCZpbsQ&t=9m28s
Fifteen minutes pedalling in one direction is downtown, fifteen minutes in the other is farm land.
It’s terrible for the environment and leads to soulless shitty suburbs rather than vibrant, dense neighbourhoods.
Scenario 2: less land dedicated to parking, people live closer together, commutes are shorter and can more often be done by bike/transit/walking
It's pretty clear which of those is better for the environment.
* Concrete and asphalt EVERYWHERE. Ask yourself about the carbon cost of all that concrete - which, in the northeast, requires constant repair.
* Street lighting - I mean, you can see dense, urban areas from freaking space - think about all the energy that takes. Is that environmentally friendly and efficient?
* Heat islands - Dense, urban areas concentrate so much heat they literally change local weather.
* I've got an entire ecosystem of nature right in my back yard. Trees, wildflowers, grass, an array of wildlife, even a small garden growing local food (that the deer and groundhogs are determined to eat). What do dense, urban environments have? A practical monoculture of pigeons and rats?
That's exactly the problem. Any asphalt and concrete you add is sustaining 1 person. Any asphalt and concrete in an urban place is sustaining 1000s of people.
You burn more fossil fuels in the winter to stay warm. You burn more fossil fuels to provide 1 source of light that only you use.
The multiplier you're missing is the number of people we service with the things we're doing in an urban environment.
Having a 1,000s crammed into small spaces is China and that populatin density caused covid, sars, etc to spread. It's not health physically or for your psychology to live in an endless noise, light polluting environment.
What non-US cities do most people like to visit?
You can look up suburban fossil fuel usage per capita vs urban fossil fuel usage per-capita just as well as I can.
I wonder why the USA, with all its fantastic green suburbs and private motor transport, had a much higher COVID case rate and death rate per capita than other countries that have denser urban living?
Concrete and asphalt: If you add up all the parking lots and roads in a suburb and divide it by the number of people, the area is much larger than the amount of concrete per apartment dweller.
Street lighting: Again, much higher in the suburbs due to the low density. An apartment building with 100 units might have 10 street lights. Each house could very well have 1 street light in front of it. Not to mention all the arterial stroads where no one lives.
Extra topic - heating: A house is surrounded on 5 sides by cold. An apartment is surrounded on 5 sides by apartment.
All that open space means things are farther apart and you have to expend more energy to get from Point A to Point B. Less density means more joules per capita for transportation:
* https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment...
Does it take more energy to drive 5 minutes to the store to pick up some milk and eggs, or to walk (or cycle) 5 minutes to the store?
* https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/1/26/14388942/bu...
If instead, every person took up 800 sqft in an apartment building, and assuming absolutely no vertical building, we would take up ~1/7th of that space (7,346,189 acres, 0.38% of the Continental US). That would free up ~44 Million acres of open space. Every level up you build, you get to increase the amount of open space by A further 6/7ths of the previous value.
Now, Admittedly, this is back-of-the-envelope math that doesn't work for all scenarios (farms and whatnot are a separate thing). But pretending that suburbanism is better for "open space" is a load of BS. Urbanism provides more open space.
average yard size is ~4x that. So that's 4x less open space. You're also assuming that all parts of the US are equally habitable. We're doing a lot of work to try and let people live in increasingly inhospitable deserts.
Some people fix that problem by driving drunk (the stats aren't pretty), but I fix it by living somewhere where there are bars within walking distance, and will not countenance the idea of living in a suburb even if it would cost me 3x less for the same space.
Lots of people write glowingly about the "gritty, vibrant" streets of 1970s New York City too. Places like that helped spur the move to the suburbs - ask yourself why.
The article is explicitly about city centers, not suburbs let alone outer ones.