Is it obvious? Do the majority of the public understand the value of a well planned community or have the option to participate in one? Being walking distance to a grocery store is not the same thing as living in a transit-oriented region and living your entire life without dependence on a car. Suburbs were born from industry, not out of the realization of American's idealized community.
I live in downtown Portland, OR and have done so for the last eight years without ever owning a car. I can walk or bike to literally everything in the city, or alternatively take a streetcar, light rail train, or technologically advanced bus system. There's a reason people move here – there's value in Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) that make more livable, walkable, awesome places to live your life.
And because of the UGB, it's even faster to escape the city's limits and find yourself in real green space. On Tuesday after work, I drove 45 minutes (using a car-sharing program) out of the city to a national wilderness where I slept under the stars, caught a few trout, and still made it back into the city for work the next morning. Something like that might be difficult in LA or in a large suburb.
As you can see, I really really disagree with you. :)
And the thing is, Portland isn't even that dense of a city. As far as urban environments go, it's hardly Blade Runner. Plenty of detached homes with yards, parks, etc.
The idea that people have that we have to live like sardines in some anime-inspired megalopolis is simply inaccurate.
If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass. Obviously, in terms of resources, it's more complicated than that, but it's clear that sprawling out is terrible for the environment, and that for true nature-lovers, it's much more advantageous to live in a city that has no suburbs, where the world of people truly ends at the city limits.
> If everyone lived in cities as dense as portland, the current human population would only be living on about 2.7% of the world's land mass.
What is the human population's current footprint? Wikipedia says humans' average population density worldwide (excluding Antarctica and oceans) is about 50 people/km^2.
Portland is a poor example. I love Portland, by the way, but we're essentially talking about economics here, and Portland is skewed. In Portland, you have people that want to live this lifestyle. They don't want the burden of the car, they are environmentally conscious, they work in the city, and they don't have kids. Sure, for them, it's doable (and you sound like one of them). This isn't usually the case. Industrial areas, where many people work, aren't dense enough to support frequent bus stops, and most families would have a hard time getting kids places without being able to drive them hither and thither.
I've lived in some of the densest cities in Europe, and families still had a hard time getting around without a car. At one point, I did get a car, and not having to deal with the scheduling hassles of public transportation made my life instantly easier.
You have to have an enormous population density for public transportation to be a break-even affair. Your Portland public transportation isn't self-sufficient, it's a net loss, and it's subsidized by taxes. Sure, it's more efficient than cars, but it still doesn't solve all the problems that cars do, as noted above (primarily for families). By the time you get the density required for public transportation to be self-sustaining, you're looking at a cost of living that is unacceptable for most families (eg, NYC).
Sure, public transportation is great for young single people. Try going to the grocery store with young kids on the bus. It's virtually impossible.
It's amazing how we had any sort of industry before the car. I live in a relatively small (500,000) city, though Sweden's second largest. One of my clients is in an industrial area. The city has extra lines for the morning and evening commute, but only about 20% of the people use them, and I think another 5% cycle. I don't know how many walk into work, but clearly over 50% do drive in.
This in a city and country which is pro-mass transit, pro-bicycles and pro-high fuel tax. The turning point is often, as you say, when children are born. People do take their babies, in strollers, on the trams and busses, but it's much easier if you can leave spare diapers and such in the car and not lug them with you all day.
(Your comment about taking the bus with young kids to get groceries is specious. If density is high enough then it's easy to walk to a grocery store. In town there's three grocery stores within a few blocks of me, and a corner store .. on the corner. Surely that was the same in the dense European city you lived in?)
On the other hand, kids and people up to 20 ride free or at reduced price. This means greatly increased mobility for anyone over about 8 or so. I've read autobiographies of people raised in New York City during the 1950s or so, who describe the sense of freedom of being able to go to Coney Island, or Central Park. That's not possible without a car in the standard suburbia we're talking about.
That said, I really don't understand why a public transportation system needs "to be a break-even affair." The road system definitely is not. Gas taxes even in Sweden isn't enough to pay for the road network, snow cleaning, and so on. Public transit should properly be seen, like the roads, as having a multiplier effect. It means you can have areas of town with higher density, which support those people and families you are talking about, which have higher numbers of clubs and restaurants and shops, and have areas for families with cars.
Yes, the corner market thing you said is true. But, they were limiting. Us Americans are used to our bigger stores, specialty stores, and more choices. It'd be hard for most Americans to adapt to that.
But, it's still not easy handling small children with groceries, whether walking nearby or taking the bus. I know because I've done it. Driving is much, much easier.
Fair point about roads not being break-even, but elsewhere in the thread I did argue for higher taxes on gas and automobiles, to internalize the costs more. I don't know what break-even would look like in America, but the idealist in me says both roads and public transportation should be break-even, if not profitable.
It's true - I like going to the "Maxi" store because it's huge and they have everything, including some American foods I can't find elsewhere. I also like going to the small specialty stores because where else are you going to find 50 different types of Hungarian sausages? The local grocery stores end up being more homogenous.
But my experience is that the bigger shock is the lack of expected items, like lack of Crisco for making pie crust, or vanilla extract, or chocolate chips, or American-style bratwurst, or August when corn goes for 8 cobs for a dollar. Not the lack of diversity.
By counter-example, I don't know what to do with all of the types of flours and sugars sold in most Swedish stores, and am only slowly beginning to understand the differences in herring sauces.
Regarding break-even, the problem is in where you define the boundaries. If roads cost 1% of the GDP to develop and maintain, but raise the economy so the overall tax revenue increases by enough to pay for the roads, then it's likely a good choice. Is it cost efficient to only charge those who use the roads directly (perhaps with some sort of GPS system)? Would that include, say, bicyclists and horse-drawn wagons? I think the current system, being a mix of gas tax and public revenue, is reasonable.
Of course revenue growth is not the only factor in deciding what happens. For example, good public transport may mean that people can visit with friends and drink a couple of glasses of wine, expecting to take the bus home instead of risking possible impaired driving. Or a scenic walking path next to a river may not be revenue generating but does serve as a place for people to interact and enjoy the city.
I was thinking the same thing. NYC was the main US harbor, steel in Pittsburgh, slaughterhouses in Chicago. All were industry close enough that people could walk or take public transit - back when cars were too expensive.
But containerized shipping has replaced stevedores, and other industries have moved as well to their own areas of town. I think this move has partially been enabled by people moving to the suburbs, so that a commute into the city or a commute to somewhere else doesn't make a large difference.
I live in downtown Portland, OR and have done so for the last eight years without ever owning a car. I can walk or bike to literally everything in the city, or alternatively take a streetcar, light rail train, or technologically advanced bus system. There's a reason people move here – there's value in Urban Growth Boundaries (UGBs) that make more livable, walkable, awesome places to live your life.
And because of the UGB, it's even faster to escape the city's limits and find yourself in real green space. On Tuesday after work, I drove 45 minutes (using a car-sharing program) out of the city to a national wilderness where I slept under the stars, caught a few trout, and still made it back into the city for work the next morning. Something like that might be difficult in LA or in a large suburb.
As you can see, I really really disagree with you. :)