West Coast baby
I don’t disagree that it would improve things. But don’t just expect something to fix all the problems magically, especially not when it’s basically waving your hands and going “just city plan better this time around.” It won’t be magical, 40 years down the line when this movement of new planning strategies is finally finished, it will already have been outdated for 35 years. These problems are hilariously complicated.
Outdated? The things that people are now advocating for are things that used to be commonplace:
- being close to shops, work, and third places
- large areas of inner cities left for public parks
- roads not yet dominated by cars
- majority of people relying on decent affordable/free public transport or walking
Sure. And now we clearly know that it would’ve been better to develop things that way in the first place; instead of rapid relatively unplanned sprawling residential. At the time these developments were being mostly planned, zoned, and legislated, that was seen as the right strategy.
That’s literally my point. We don’t know everything, don’t expect magic fixes. This will be better, it will need improvements.
I mean without researching I know that Tolkien was pro-car and then flipped to really anti car early on (I think either 10s or 20s). There was no doubt others that saw that car infrastructure was bad for society. I think you can probly blame a really strong car lobby for how bad we ended up.
Its’s also not that crazy to undo, look at the Netherlands. There is at least one example where they got rid of canals for motorways, realised it was terrible and put the canals back. Amsterdam also was a mess of roads and it only took 20 years to get to what it is today.
