>> That would totally suck for pedestrians and cyclists. Optimizing for cars and not for pedestrians and cyclists is what gave us the awful suburbs of America. No thanks.

One thing I keep coming back to is a separation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic. The idea of having sidewalks right next to the roads is just as stupid as having opposite direction traffic side by side.

Imagine a long high density urban area with pedestrian areas down the middle, and roadways around the outside. This is speculative of course, but the idea is to start with high level concepts like: keep the people away from the cars, make sure traffic doesn't cross, use only high density construction (because it makes public transit work). You get lots of conflicts, but I think we could do a lot better than what exists today.

Some cities in the Netherland does it like this. There's high speed ring roads around the city, but in the city it's a maze of one way streets and dead ends. Basically, if you are in the city and want to drive to another part of the city you have to drive out on to the ring road and in again from another angle. Pedestrians, bicyclists and public transport can move freely inside the city.

This discourages driving within city limits, and encourages bicycling, walking and public transport.

> separation of pedestrian and vehicle traffic

I have an anecdote to support this. The bike path to my place of work runs along a river, far from traffic. There is a wide area for pedestrians as well. The difference between riding on this (think peaceful) and riding in a bike lane on the shoulder (life threatening) couldn't be any larger.

Maybe, but the reality is that the vast majority of street use is by automobiles. Optimizing for that massive use case is only logical.