But that needs to be balanced with the desires of some to have fewer connections, but perhaps more yard. And some people honestly desire to have fewer connections and live further away from others.

However, what if the suburban area was more varied in locations: smaller businesses and corner markets mixed in with residential areas? Right now most suburban development consists square miles of nothing but residential cul-de-sacs peppered with massive clusters of big box stores that require huge parking lots and must serve large numbers of people to survive. People want the big box stores because they think they save money, but the same savings are possible with lots of small stores as long as there's a real market and clever people running small businesses. With that type of sparse use of land, greater distances between things on average but with the speed of cars, would that allow more interconnections than density?

I think that over the past few decades, that those that desire the yard, and those that desire fewer interconnections have been able to prevent those that want density from building it. There's a clear undersupply of dense locations and a clear oversupply of sparse locations.

I think the key is to have lots of diversity so that many experiments can be tried. Right now there have been few styles that have been tried with cars, and though I personally consider it a failure in that I don't want to live like that, there are plenty of people that consider density to be a failure and would never want to live like that. Any solution(s) to cities should be able to meet everybody's desires.

This is a development from 2005, started as pure residential suburb: https://maps.here.com/?map=54.3557,10.07057,17,satellite

Look at the street planning, look at how the foot paths exist, and look at that one odd park on the one side.

Over the next decades and centuries, the houses will be replaced with denser ones again and again, and it will slowly develop to something like https://maps.here.com/?map=54.33864,10.14098,17,satellite and then something like https://maps.here.com/?map=54.31908,10.12497,17,satellite

You notice how they get more and more pedestrian friendly over time – but the first one is already bikable, walkable, has a bus line cutting through it, and is still usable by car.

This is what the initial stage looks like: http://i.imgur.com/P0T2DaG.jpg http://i.imgur.com/DHhjSQ8.jpg

This is a typical residential suburb – but, as you might have noticed on bing maps, at several points, stores and services and small businesses already popped up. A dentist, two physiotherapy and a logotherapy practice, a small bakery and shop.

Currently there are discussions about a small supermarket coming into the area.

Maybe later some more stores, and some buildings might be replaced with new ones that have on the lowest floor businesses instead.

Such a drive is likely not stable. 9 mile 10 minute drives, in rural areas, are stable. But unless your economy is moribund, once that's up to 20 minutes, chances are good that ten years from now that same drive will be 45 minutes.

It was far worse at my old apartment 5 miles in 11 minutes became 50 minutes if I took the bus.

I'm in RTP which is far from moribund but Durham where I live is getting the least new residents it seems.