100% agree. I much prefer to live in a dense, urban, walkable area, but most built environments that satisfy these criteria violate modern zoning regulations.

So, the USA's supply of pleasant, dense environments is dwindling because every time an olde/walkable area revitalizes enough to attract new development, that new development must comply with modern zoning, and kills the thing that that makes the area attractive.

It's thoroughly frustrating.

Most of them are part of old cities that are past their prime in economic vitality, so those areas don't have the same liveliness as what you might get in downtown Boston. (I used to work for a company based there, and would spend hours walking around at night.)

I'd recommend Pittsburgh for walkability, too. It's one of the most delightful cities I've wandered around recently.

Unfortunately, even Boston, Pittsburgh, NYC, and the lesser-known but walkable/dense areas are pretty unappealing when compared to some cities in south/central america and Europe, that were built before cars took over everything.

I suspect once a few large cities go bankrupt and cannot enforce their zoning regulations, new construction will move in the direction of rational density again.

This said, the only reason why Hoboken and many other walkable cities can get public-support for being so walkable (and encouraging city planning as such) is the ample public-transit options.

This leads to no need for having a car which leads to most people not having one which leads to most people preferring walkable versus drivable. It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem.

Portions of Seattle are very walkable (From the International District going north, quite a few miles), and individual parts of Chicago are walkable. Heck there are 2 or 3 mile stretches of San Diego are walkable (there might be more than that, I only spent a week there!)

Seattle, on the other hand, is a city where I’ve never really needed a car no matter where I lived or worked. I think that part of the lifestyle is brilliant. I have a car, but the battery goes dead between usages as often as not.

Seattle has plenty of walkable parts, but I grew up in a working class suburban neighborhood within the city where driving to the store was most certainly necessary.

Some individual portions of Chicago are very walkable. Likewise with some small bits of San Diego, though you are right, not as good as European cities.

The entire city is only 7 miles wide, so about half the city is within a 30 minute walking radius.

People want the best of all worlds. I want to own 100 acres (for my pet goats - even though I don't have the time to care for them I want them). I want my kid's school to be a most 200 meters from my front door (with a playground). I want my office, church, a dozen restaurants, and 30 other retail stores to be at most 500 meters from my front door. I'm not rich enough to afford that though so I have to compromise. Even if I was that rich, it is not possible for more than 2 people rich enough to afford that to live within 1000 meters of each other, and to support that requires thousands of not rich people living in 1000 meters.

People will choose a walkable neighborhood when they think it is a good compromise. Some valuable large livestock more than others and so will be late to move to the walkable city. Others want to spend their free time at the theater and will move to the walkable neighborhood early just because it is the fastest way to bed after the late night show. Most people are not so into either choice that one answer is obvious.

If you want a walkable neighborhood to work you need to fix the local schools. At least in the US most walkable neighborhoods are old areas of town where the schools are bad, those who want children feel compelled to move to the suburbs and the car lifestyle just because of how much better the schools are.

If you want walkable neighborhoods you need to fix zoning so that it is possible for them to happen. Strongtowns has a lot of analysis of what makes it possible - there are thousands of subtle things required, heavy handed efforts tend to leave a lot of the subtle problems in place.

We already have effectively self-driving cars with Uber and other car-sharing services, and all you need to do is go to SFO's departure level during peak travel times to see the traffic havoc that self-driving cars will bring -- too many cars and not enough curb space to drop off/pick up everyone.

When self-driving cars are cheap and plentiful then downtown streets will look the same -- self-driving cars will more than double car traffic since instead of 200 employees driving to work and parking into the parking garage (making one trip), now 1000 employees will be dropped off by their self-driving car, which will then have to drive away to park or look for the next passenger, making a second trip on already crowded streets.

With inter-car communication, there won't be any confusion about where each car intends to go. No long waits for an opening.

Car design will push towards passenger comfort, and no longer towards "power" and "handling". This could mean smaller cars overall. 1-2 passenger vehicles could be common.

Yeah, it's definitely far down the road, and there will be a lot of forces that'll make it difficult to reach, but I think self driving cars are a chance to make things better.

How does a self-driving car predict the unexpected? Braking distance of a 30mph car is 45 ft (ignoring reaction time) so anything that happens less than 45 feet in front of a self-driving car is going to need evasive action. On a busy street with cars in all lanes, the self-driving car is going to need to decide whether to hit the object (which could be a person darting across the street), or swerve into the car next to it.

With an intelligent mesh the emergency lane abort order will propagate from one to many within the local area and a standard algorithm will determine what each traveling vehicle must do as they all react at the same time to avoid the intruding objects and bring energy in play to a minimum, hopefully zero, value in the affected area.

At the same time emergency response services would automatically be notified as well.

I don't understand? A pedestrian steps in front of a 30mph self driving car that's 20 feet away. There's a sidewalk to the right and oncoming traffic to the left.

The car needs 45 feet to stop, so it's going to strike the pedestrian. Which I assume you recognize this since you said EMS will be called.

You may think it's unlikely that a pedestrian will step right in front of a car, but wait until pedestrians are trained that the car will always stop for them.

if a car were to drive as if every thing in its vicinity has the potential to move rapidly in front of the car, and hence it takes precautions for all potential accidents, it can't be moving very fast can it? if it is traveling on a busy street with a lot of vehicular traffic and pedestrians on the sidewalk, must it take precautions for each and every vehicle and person around it? how fast can such a self driving car possibly go, if this were to be the case?

I think it's possible that self driving cars could increase total driving like you explain, but i think it's also possible that they will drive down car ownership. Once you pay primarily based on usage (parking, insurance, depreciation are mostly fixed costs), you are more likely to drive sparingly.

A walkable, pro-self-driving-car city could also theoretically tax self-driving-car rides to offset environmental impact.

Dense cities will most likely restrict access to personal cars by a lot (using congestion fees or whatever), that's why I think that self driving cars will bring down the number of cars in the city.

Well, d--b said "both noise and air". Drivers can contribute a fair amount of noise in busy cities when they get irate and lay on the horn...