Comment by mrngld

Not even remotely true. US cities are spread out because they could be, because the landmass is beyond the comprehension of someone if they never left the UK or western Europe. It takes nearly a full day of high-speed driving to cross Texas if you stop for some decent meals. Cities are spread out because, what, you expect a group of farmers out in remote areas to see their options as travel weeks on horse to a single distant city or set up a local community and decide to travel weeks every time they need something?

And that condition was true long before the last 50-60 years -- which, I mean, do you know what year it is? 60 years ago was 1966. Route 66 was famously a thing in the 20s, the modern highway system in the late 50s. Those things connected what already was happening, it didn't create the phenomenon from thin air. Of course cities/communities have tended to spread along the interstate highway corridors -- which tells you how much people value them -- but again, that was happening first. There's old neighborhoods in many older American cities (including my own that were built between 1890 and the 1920s) that look just like suburban ones -- small front and back yards, packed fairly close together -- that predate even widespread adoption of cars. Again, US policy gave the people what they were already desiring, in a more efficient way.

That's what you'd expect from representative government when its functioning. The people that spend the most time talking about a need to "reshape" things are typically taking a more autocratic, I-know-what-you-want-better-than-you-do paternalistic, anti-democratic approach.