How can you tell? American economy is the biggest in the world and growing, unlike Europe.
Do you claim it'd be even bigger with European style cities?
I can agree on quality of life grounds, but "damage to the US economy" seems like a hard sell.
Do you claim it'd be even bigger with European style cities?
I can agree on quality of life grounds, but "damage to the US economy" seems like a hard sell.
Yeah, very likely it would be bigger if people didn't have to waste time in traffic, commuting. Imagine the value added if 50% of the people wasting their time driving in major US cities could be instead using that time to do something else during their commute. Or how much money has been dumped into building and maintaining roads that could be used for other public utilities/services with higher ROI, like education, or healthcare.
American economy is the biggest due to other factors, in spite of being entirely car-dependent, not because of it.