It’s a terrible place to live alone when young and single, but that’s not what it’s for.

To replicate the 25 minute commute times that are completely normal across America's car-centric sprawl into a dense and transit-centric area, one has to live in the most central and premium real estate. Great if you can afford it. Most can’t.

We stopped building the sorts of places where you can still get somewhere going at a reasonable speed around the end of WW2, and made it illegal, so it's now very expensive to live in a sensible neighbourhood, there aren't many left. It's a simple supply and demand problem, though not so simple once you attempt to unpack the reasons as to why we have this simple supply and demand problem.

There's a banality to true evil. It's a quirk of human social psychology that when everyone is doing the wrong thing, it stops being the wrong thing. This why rape=bad, and destroying the planet=pretty alright if you ask me.

Typical American suburbia takes density way lower than that. People here seem to value that separation for reasons above and beyond their parking needs. For example, not hearing the neighbors' footsteps through the ceilings or their TVs and family disputes through the walls. Giving each child their own bedroom. Having room for play and gatherings in the backyard. This suggests that, even without cars, we'd still insist on a pretty low densities. (Since it is homeowners in the center who control land use in the center, the frustrations of outer-ring commuters under such an arrangement don't make a difference).

I'm fortunate that I can afford to live in a high-rise district and commute in reasonable time by train and elevator. But even with so many places a short walk from home, it's a big metro area - there are many more I want to go which are not so close. Without a car, I felt isolated and trapped. It's great to have neighborhood businesses, but you get tired of the monotony after a while.