Comment by drnick1
4 hours ago
I think the fundamental issue here is that many in America don't actually want dense cities, public transit, and more generally shared spaces. I, for one, would not want to live in condo when I can live in a house. When enough people want this, you end up with "urban sprawl" and one or more cars per house.
Genuinely dense cities basically don't exist in the U.S. The average "dense" city downtown in a U.S. city is broadly comparable to the worst car-dependent suburban or exurbian hellscapes of Europe and East Asia, and things only go worse from there. City downtowns near the East Coast are an exception since they were built in colonial times or thereabouts, so when you think "dense" you should really think of e.g. the densest boroughs in NYC.
Yes and that reflects historical and cultural factors. Cities in Europe were largely built in the preindustrial era. In the U.S. there is just so much more space; it does not make sense to build small or dense. Transportation habits just reflect this.
You make it sound like the construction of US cities were not at all lobbied by the auto industry back in the day and that urban sprawl was exclusively people's choice.