How do you know what the people in cars are doing? How do you know what the people are doing?
Cars take tons of space, and traffic means that they take it up for longer, and use the space even less efficiently. Cars are an inherently space-inefficient transport mechanism. Replacing cars with bikes improves street throughput several fold, removing that traffic. Removing cars mean that the same physical street can serve the transportation needs of more people, and let them travel more quickly.
We have to start to realize that the failures of car infrastructure result in less jobs, less leisure time, less living.
It is time efficient and convenient though.
> We have to start to realize that the failures of car infrastructure result in less jobs, less leisure time, less living.
How come? Having a car, I can reach tons of places in ~40km radius, without planning ahead too much, in any season. I would have to chop significant portion of my life if I were not able to drive anymore.
You seem to enjoy the number of places that you can reach in a car. But if the destinations are man-made places of interest, such as businesses, friends, shops, services, and social meeting places then cars' space inefficiency limit how many of those you can visit. Because each has to spend a massive amount of space on parking. And transport has a failure mode of creating traffic jams whenever demand for a certain route tips over a critics point, causing a phase change from free flowing traffic to a traffic jam, that can only be cleared by long periods of far lower number of cars.
With trains and bikes and walkable cities, you can achieve far far higher densities of interesting destinations, with a <40minute travel time. There is really no comparison.
If your interests and hobbies are limited to bars, restaurants and your yoga studio then yes. I lived in a dense and walkable city, with (most likely) the best public transit in the world, and I felt like I'm trapped in slums.
YMMV, but for me a car is freedom.
High density does mean more bars, restaurants, and yoga but it also the prerequisite for highly specialized professions like tailors, rare book collectors, rare tea, etc. etc. etc. Bars and restaurants are the tip of the iceberg, but the rest of the iceberg is a long tail. Just as the internet allows people with rare interests to find each other and talk, high density allows these rare interests to meet in real life and develop face to face relationships.
2) The second photo may have less people in it, but it's a *much* more zoomed in perspective. It's pretty clearly at least a higher density of people.
3) What makes you think these people aren't going to work?
But that doesn't tell us anything about day of week which could be a huge factor.
2) Assuming at least one person per vehicle, and assuming that the first stories of the buildings are about the same height in both photos in order to compare scales between the photos, the first seems to have a higher density of people.