> It is very parochial to believe that everyone will want the same things as you.

I appreciate the point you make, and I certainly don’t believe that everyone wants the same things I do.

But I also think that it’s false dichotomy to say you can either have walkability or you can have cars and car parks. That’s simply not true.

The Netherlands has plenty of fantastic examples of cities, towns, villages, business parks and industrial areas that are all friendly to pedestrians and bikes, and not just endless slabs of asphalt. Plentiful public transport, that makes it easy to get anywhere without a car. I personally don’t accept the idea that cars are essential for people to have options in their living environments, to say they are just strikes me as an immense lack of imagination.

> For these people, driving to a grocery store and parking in parking lots are just things they put up with in order to get what they really want.

Your point here would carry more weight, if it was legal in the U.S. to build anything except huge empty suburbs, with soulless car park shops miles away. US planning law simply doesn’t allow any other form of building, so people can’t choose anything else. There are obviously small fragments of the U.S. that buck this trend, built before modern planning laws, but there’s so much demand for them, only the wealthiest can afford to live there.

>> For these people, driving to a grocery store and parking in parking lots are just things they put up with in order to get what they really want.

> Your point here would carry more weight, if it was legal in the U.S. to build anything except huge empty suburbs, with soulless car park shops miles away.

This is completely and utterly false. Any laws governing what can and cannot be built are entirely _local_. There are no laws that govern construction on a national scale, or even a state–wide scale.

And you are the one that judges a suburb to be “empty”, and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it. The majority of people in America prefer suburbs precisely because it maximizes the type of neighborhood that they want and choose to live in.

The US use a zoning systems almost to the exclusion of any form of planning system, and pretty simple zoning systems at that. As a general rule the zoning systems simply don't allow mix used zones, you simply can't build a shop or business in a residential area. As a consequence you force a design where shops and homes must be kept physically separated, and usually with a significant distance between them.

Are there exceptions to these patterns? Of course there are, but a general rule, zoning with no mixed used land areas is the only allowed development pattern.

> The majority of people in America prefer suburbs precisely because it maximizes the type of neighborhood that they want and choose to live in.

What are you basing this on? Just because it dominant doesn't mean people want. Stupidly expensive healthcare bills are dominant in the US, do you think people want that?

Where mixed used developments exist in the US, demand far outstrips supply, resulting in crazy high house prices. Given the huge premium these developments command, you have ask the question, why doesn't more of it exist? People are willing to pay, so aren't other people taking that cash? Mixed used, walkable developments demand much higher $/sqft than suburban development does, and is cheaper to construct due to the density. So all the right market signals for medium and high density development exist, what's preventing the market from responding?

> And you are the one that judges a suburb to be “empty”, and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it

True, it's an opinion. But are you honestly trying to argue that Americans find parking lots soulful? I'm not sure what you find so exciting about a featureless slab of asphalt with some painted lines on it, but I've yet to encounter a parking lot with architectural protection, or awards for beauty.

> The US use a zoning systems almost to the exclusion of any form of planning system, and pretty simple zoning systems at that. As a general rule the zoning systems simply don't allow mix used zones, you simply can't build a shop or business in a residential area. As a consequence you force a design where shops and homes must be kept physically separated, and usually with a significant distance between them.

Yes, this is true. But remember that these rules are not the same everywhere, and they are not imposed nationally. Cities and towns are largely free to choose their own zoning laws. In the 50s and 60s they overwhelmingly voted to change them to allow suburban areas, and a huge percentage of the population moved to those areas. They did this because _they wanted to live in a suburban environment_. They weren’t forced into it.

>> The majority of people in America prefer suburbs precisely because it maximizes the type of neighborhood that they want and choose to live in.

> What are you basing this on? Just because it dominant doesn't mean people want. Stupidly expensive healthcare bills are dominant in the US, do you think people want that?

Don’t be ridiculous; of course nobody voted for higher medical bills. During the war, employers were largely prohibited from raising salaries to attract employees, so they had to resort to perks like medical insurance instead. After the war the practice became nearly universal. Higher prices for medical services was an _unintended consequence_ of that change.

Meanwhile people voted for suburban zoning _because they wanted it_. It wasn’t an unintended consequence, it was the _intended_ consequence.

> Where mixed used developments exist in the US, demand far outstrips supply, resulting in crazy high house prices.

This is true today, but remember that we are talking about nearly 80 years of change here since the war. In the 80s and 90s demand for mixed–use development was super low. People had moved out of urban areas by the tens of millions, and very few wanted to move back. _Today_ there is much more interest, as generational changes kick in.

My Grandfather on my father’s side came back from the Pacific theater, purchased a farm, and raised 9 children. This was not for lack of skill or education either; he wanted peace above all else. After a couple of decades or so he sold the farm and moved to a suburban area in a small town, where he took a job as an electrical engineer at a hydroelectric power plant.

To house all of the children he raised the new house by a whole story, dug out a basement below it (the house was on a hill, so that eliminated about half of the digging), then built a whole bunch of bedrooms down there plus a really nice workbench.

His children (my Aunts and Uncles), had a lot more interest in travel and adventure than he did (having gotten his fill during the war), but they all lived in quiet suburban areas, not urban ones. Among the many many grandchildren there are some who live in bustling cities with nightlife, but not all of them.

>> And you are the one that judges a suburb to be “empty”, and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it

> True, it's an opinion. But are you honestly trying to argue that Americans find parking lots soulful?

Seriously? Are you deliberately misreading what I wrote? I said that most people _don’t care_ about parking lots, and I meant it. A parking lot is neither a positive nor a negative aspect of life; it's just a place you spend a few minutes at before and after you do your weekly grocery shopping. The rest of the time it never enters people’s thoughts. Home is the important place that people think about; parking lots don’t matter.

> Meanwhile people voted for suburban zoning because they wanted it. It wasn’t an unintended consequence, it was the intended consequence.

Ah I understand your point better now. But I would position that people at the time probably didn’t completely understand what they were giving up when they instituted those laws. I’m not trying to claim they were stupid or ignorant, suburban style land development simply wasn’t possible before then, and I can why that lifestyle would be seductive if the consequences of such development simply weren’t known.

> People had moved out of urban areas by the tens of millions, and very few wanted to move back. Today there is much more interest, as generational changes kick in.

I think to claim it’s just generational change (which suggest the change is a bit of a fad) is overly reductive. Instead I would argue the consequences, and costs, of suburban sprawl are now much better understood, and its long term unsustainability is becoming apparent. Ultimately a mono-culture, whether in biology or in land development tends to result in bad outcomes, and current U.S. planning doctrine enforces an unhealthy monoculture.

> His children (my Aunts and Uncles), had a lot more interest in travel and adventure than he did (having gotten his fill during the war), but they all lived in quiet suburban areas, not urban ones. Among the many many grandchildren there are some who live in bustling cities with nightlife, but not all of them.

Again there are more flavour of land development and residential design than suburbia, or city. They represent two extreme ends of scale, if you only give people a choice of two extremes, you shouldn’t be surprised when you end up with two large clusters of behaviour.

> Seriously? Are you deliberately misreading what I wrote?

Hey! You’re the one that wrote

> and the parking lots to be “soulless”. That is just your opinion; not everyone shares it

The opposite of soulless is soulful. You claim that not everyone shares my view, which by necessity means you make the argument that some people find parking lots soulful.

> it. A parking lot is neither a positive nor a negative aspect of life; it's just a place you spend a few minutes at before and after you do your weekly grocery shopping. The rest of the time it never enters people’s thoughts.

That’s kind of the point. Parking lots take huge slabs of potential useful land, and make it almost useless be design. Sure nobody thinks about a parking lot, to say that means their existence is inconsequential is foolish and completely the huge opportunity cost. That thoughtless nothingness could have been a field, an open park or some other productive public amenity. Hell just leave it as unmaintained grass, it massively improves water and runoff management. Instead it’s a slab of asphalt, with its huge negative externalities in the form of contributing to urban heat islanding, increased rain runoff in drains, and reduced water holding capacity on the ground below. Parking lots aren’t free and without consequence, they contribute plenty in turning a potential lush green area into a lifeless desert.