While I like the idea of pedestrian areas, it does feel like this is another angle for our elites to prepare the lower classes for austerity. Owning your own home, eating meat, being able to raise a family; all of these are things that our parents and grandparents took for granted but are looking less and less likely to be affordable in the coming decades. Rather than fix our economic issues, the solution seems to be to frame them as unnecessary or even "bad".
On the other hand, available public transportation also increases economic mobility and decreases overall costs of the working poor. The ability to own, park, maintain a car is a large cliff, even in the cheapest of states. The ability to get to most jobs without a car in a reasonable time drastically decreases hurdles to economic mobility.
(and also of the middle class, whether that's the underinsured or carrying insurance against under insured divers.
