As somone who's lived in different European and Japanese cities it just saddens me that highways replaced local public transport in many American cities rather than added to it. That really doesn't make any sense to me. The way I see it, any healthy city needs local transport like metro or streetcar so sou can do your business there without wasting time (getting back to your car, drive to the next place you need to go, find a parking lot, walk). It seems like shopping malls have replaced that 'going to the city' activity - the problem there is that you have no choice in the individual stores - they tend to have one, max two of the bigger stores you need. Low competition results in low quality - then the next big thing gets built further away, people drive there instead and the whole cycle continues. The lesson here is to stop lobbying from becoming too powerful - building highways is not the problem, ripping apart public transport is.