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There are walking cities in the US. They are dense and thus, very expensive. Plus they tend to be in more temperate areas, making them more expensive (because of the nice weather).
Not everyone can/wants to live that way.
Why do you think you're in the position to change people? Some people like having a house in the suburbs... Have you every actually been to the US? It's kind of a big place...
I'll be honest; In the city I live in, there has been many attempts to make it more walk-able. They have all been heavy handed (locals complaining have been labeled deplorable adjacent), expensive, made traffic much worse, and have had little impact on anyone actually walking or taking mass transit.
You can have a car dependent city without it being as inefficient as most North American suburbs are. There is no reason for so much space to be dedicated roads and parking. There's no reason for things to be so far apart. There's no reason for all the traffic to be concentrated along a few arteries and for the rest of the road network to be a maze. Fixing these problems would make cities more walkable and even more drivable, without sacrificing anything that people who like cars and space like.
You don't have to do what the urban planners in my city are doing, which is making the transportation infrastructure as hostile as possible to cars while doing very little to make it more walkable or making public transit usable.
So people can travel large distances? So they don't have to live in a super dense environment. So you can have things like trucking (and general logistics) ...
You just said there's no reason for roads. You realize no one is going to take you seriously, outside of your bubble
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I know a lot of amateur urban planners will never acknowledge this, but a car is the most pleasant, efficient way to get anywhere more than a few blocks away. You're not going to get 99% of people out their cars unless you actively make driving unfeasible.
A car is the most pleasant, efficient way to get anywhere more than a few blocks away if everything is designed around the assumption of everyone going everywhere with a car, such as surrounding everything with huge parking lots and stroads. Otherwise it can be a lot easier to take a train or metro a couple stops than worry about where to park.
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I don't think you're getting my point at all. I never said I wanted to change anybody - I posted that specifically against that position because nobody can change people. My point is that you cannot change a non-walkable area into a walkable one. I specifically said "IMO, the majority of attempts to make walkable neighborhoods in non-walkable regions are not particularly useful."
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