Comment by xmprt
14 hours ago
> You aren't going to stop the US from being car centric
I think this isn't true. The same way suburbia spread out from cities, I think walkability can spread outwards too in baby steps.
For example, SF is relatively walkable/has public transit. The next step would be slowly removing parking minimums and making the areas surrounding SF more walkable. And then over time as people in those surrounding areas start using their cars less (not getting rid of them but at least trying to do short journeys on foot/bike/transit).
Over time that spreads outwards because half the community served by an area no longer needs a car for their daily travel and the envelope of walkability spreads further.
Sure you can slowly, over a long time, convert already dense areas into being less car centric, but you aren't going to make the rest of the country that way. Parking minimums, when they exist, are set by super local governments, they already don't exist or are set very low in areas of high density. The solution is to increase density, but again you aren't going to do that in the rest of the country. Random bars in Ohio are still going to have large parking lots, because land is cheap and given the choice, most people prefer less density.