They only want change that doesn't involve money, effort or change, or what?
Banning vehicles has been shown to greatly increase shopping revenue and improve the healthiness of the area, so if a few businesses suffer, poor them... I'll not shed a tear for the strip malls.
I’m going to sorely disappoint you there…
However, if you want to talk about the United States, I would agree with you that it’s going to be expensive to shift the suburban sprawl away from personal vehicles. As much as that particular urbanisation failure is seen as typically American, it’s far from the exclusive option there. You will be surprised to learn that there are dozens of millions of Americans living in cities dense enough to justify not using cars as the default transport mode (“banning” isn’t a very accurate description of what that city did).
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-most-crowded-city-in...
Electric scooters or bikes, typically the dockless kind, combined with existing (but re-inforced) public transport sounds doable, especially if you invest the same order of magnitude as local authorities spend on highways. That would require little investment (most of it would be private and from people keen on giving away billions).
it sounds like you assume that (an unnamed) we *has* to be in the United States.
I wouldn't say this to anyone on hn who uses "we" without a qualifier because I assume as a matter of course that everyone on this website is aware that there are non American users. The pedantry here isn't appreciated. I’m going to sorely disappoint you there…
You will be surprised
>> ban cars
> unrealistic statements
You, sir, are funny.