I'm sorry, what? Why does having less cars create less usable land? If anything it provides way more of it, since you need less road, less parking lots/garages, less infrastructure to support cars like gas stations, huge on/off ramps, toll roads, etc.
> Why does having less cars create less usable land?
Not "usable-as-in-present", but "usable-as-in-available".
Having less cars drives up the value of land, making land more expensive for everyone, and making that land less usable for any one person specifically.
The N-minute radius around a destination is a lot smaller when you are walking to transit vs. driving. People who can afford to will spend to keep their door to door times low.
A huge chunk of American housing supply is in places that only made sense to settle because they were connected by freeways to downtown parking. Take that away and there will be just as much money, chasing less land.
>A huge chunk of American housing supply is in places that only made sense to settle because they were connected by freeways to downtown parking.
Err, no. It's because the government heavily subsidized it at the detriment to city centers. You don't have to be NYC. City centers by their very nature our extremely economical beneficial and affordable.
Our current housing infrastructure is in no way reasonably affordable or even sane. Building houses in a dense manner is not expensive.
