You don't need to ban cars. You just need to design around people instead of cars. Remove parking minimums. Don't put on-street parking but rather leave it to the free market to handle parking solutions (Yes, that means people pay to park.) Subsidize public transit but road maintenance must be paid by automobile-based taxes. Don't require density, but always zone for the next bigger thing. (The neighborhood is single house? Allow duplexes and MIL units. Is that the neighborhood? Allow 3 story buildings. Don't go from single house to giant skyscrapers, but rather build incrementally bigger.)
That means that there will be fewer automobiles, fewer large roads, and less traffic, lending to more density and more maintainable infrastructure.
It is quite likely that if we made cars pay for their direct and indirect costs, the shift towards transit would make it self sustaining or even profitable, allowing us to not have to subsidize it at all.
First you are going to make all the people in the cars nuts because they can't find parking, so they won't come.
Next all the people who find public transport tedious and slow won't come. (Yes, even the best public transport is not anywhere near as a good as a car that goes direct, and where you can actually leave your stuff in the car.)
Next all the people who hate living in dense places will leave because everything is all squished together, so you are again not designing for people.
How is that designing for people? It sounds more like you are designing for livestock.
Livestock who don't mind, or have no choice, about living in cramped quarters, and who don't mind wasting a lot of time.
No thank you, this is not the kind of city I want.
* Consider Manhattan. Large portions of it are built around people instead of cars. Many people live there, and others take alternative means of transportation to get there. I was there a few weeks ago, and Lyft often was comparable in time to the subway.
* When public transport is relied on by enough people, it becomes reliable. When it is a first class citizen, it becomes reliable. Consider Istanbul, a city whose core cannot accomodate as many cars as people would like to drive. However, busses are a first class citizen and come regularly. In rush hour, they have a dedicated bus lane for the most important route on the European side and there is literally no wait. In off-peak times like 2am, the max wait is 10 minutes.
* That's fine, you don't prefer living in density. As such, you should pay for the privilege. You should pay for the extra infrastructure needed to maintain your lifestyle.
Anything less is fiscally irresponsible. In some places, that's fine. However, we are seeing towns and cities drowning under the debt of infrastructure maintenance. Ever heard your city's citizens complain about potholes? Almost every city has the problem because the city is maintaining too many large roads.
Now, we certainly need to maintain rural areas for many reasons, and perhaps that's the right living area for you. However, when you come to town, it won't be custom fit for your vehicle.
I should also clarify that removing off-street parking isn't the first step - it's much closer to the last step. First is open on-street parking. Then resident + metered parking. Then as density increases, adding more permanent transit on the right streets at the expense of those parking spots. Off-street parking is the last to go, but it goes strategically.
If you advocate for this kind of city to be built, despite not actually wanting to live there yourself, then all the people in your city who want this kind of city will move there, leaving more space for you.
The US has a shocking amount of uniformity in it's building styles, because most people don't want to live in the dense environment that is advocated in the article.
I wish the people that didn't want to live in this kind of environment wouldn't simultaneously oppose it. Let it be built, let people move there who want to move there.
Dense cities already exist. People already live there. The OP even contains examples. As far as I can tell, what people are advocating for is to make existing cities harder (or impossible) to get around in when you're not on foot. I think that's why this meets with opposition.
There's a group of people that believe that most current "dense cities" in the united states are very poorly designed.
So, when you say "dense cities already exist", that group hears "your concerns are invalid/useless".
Conversely, "making cities harder to get around when not on foot" also means "making cities easier to get around if you don't own a car".
Individuals who live in cities and don't have a car are comfortable with this. Or, they live in cities and a car is not their dominant method of travel.
This whole issue is extremely complex, and not amenable to a simple solution, like "making cities easier to get around on foot" or "make it easier to drive around a city".
Jane Jacobs's "Death And Life of Great American Cities" is a fantastic (and beautifully written) exposé of the topic. Believe it or not, I finished the book this morning.
No, what we are advocating is that we make more areas where people can get around their own neighborhood on foot. That it makes the neighborhood harder for outsiders to get around is a side effect. However the neighborhood doesn't need outsiders in this model.
The person you're replying to assumes that transportation and demand to live/work/spend money in the city has such a high baseline volume that the city will always be relatively prosperous and the experience of walking in the city is the bottleneck when it comes to making the city better. This is fine if your world view doesn't extend beyond existing large cities. It's like being rich and complaining about having to maintain your vacation homes. Most smaller cities can't take that high baseline amount of economic activity and prosperity for granted so they need to balance luxury stuff like walk-ability, nice parks, etc. with making it easy and cheap to engage in commerce. Luxuries like walk-ability and parks are second to building up a baseline amount of (hopefully diverse) economic activity that won't go away at the next downturn.
Even earlier. There are historic reports from rome during the time of the senate, banning carts in some streets and areas of the cities during certain times of the day.
