I can't help but think that we're doing a repeat with building things around mobile phone use too

How do mobile phones affect city planning?

No need for door bells. No need for street signs. No need for taxi stops. No need for privately owned cars (rent via phone app or use Uber like service).

Those things affect urban planning a lot.

I don't think we're ready for all those things to disappear. The only thing that really has gone since mobile phones are phone booths.

But the thing is Street signs and door bells don't take up any space. There's no real benefit in removing them anyway.

Private cars are a big issue but the problem is people commuting from outside the city and shared car schemes are too expensive for that.

Walking around Toronto, Canada, I've noticed that it's getting harder to find street signs. Their placement is for drivers in cars, not for people walking.

That's silly. Phones can get damaged or stolen, looking at a sign is much faster than looking at a phony and signs hardly take up any space.

Its still really convenient. It is really starting to pick up - I can use my phone to pay fares in a lot of metros now, have real time transit tracking, and use it for navigation even when walking.

Its definitely, imo, to the point where it is becoming a responsibility of societies to provide its citizens access to these technologies because of their utility. That means subsidized / free phones and service, imo. Everyone really should have a baseline of digital access as a fundamental right, hopefully this decade. The COVID relief free cell service in the US I think has been an eye opener for me.

Are you suggesting that cars can't get damaged or stolen? lol

All those phones require towers and some 5g bands need way more to blanket whole areas.

Many European cities were also constrained by city walls. Land may have been available but it wasn't necessarily defensible.

Yup. Urban growth boundaries are very important, and aren’t new.

I’d always wondered what would happen if the US had a city with an UGB and very unrestrictive zoning.

You're talking about Portland, OR.

L.A consists of many fairly dense walkable neighborhoods. You can live in these neighborhoods without a car.

If you mean Los Angeles then I can't disagree more. Maybe Westwood, maybe downtown. But "consisting many of fairly dense walkable neighborhoods" is not a description I would ever have been expected to be applied to Los Angeles.

Venice, Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Silverlake ?

These are vanishingly small postage stamps compared the absolutely vast sprawl that is LA. I mean seriously. Get on the 10 and head east. Let me know when you get outside the sprawl. It'll be over an hour at highway speeds. It's that big. Just the city of LA itself is 503 square miles. Santa Monica is (nominally) 8 square miles--and most of that is not what you are referring to. 3rd street promenade, a few beachfront streets, a few blocks on Wilshire and Santa Monica blvd. I have a feeling you never really drove around LA and appreciated how absolutely massive it is.

And here's a nice infographic comparing the density of LA and New York, if you're interested in more than anecdotes:

https://www.its.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2014/05/...

TLDR; no, LA is not mostly dense, walkable areas. Very far from it.

I don’t live there, but I’ve driven around it. Just saying, it’s possible to get by without absolutely having to drive to get a cup of coffee or a bite to eat at least in some parts of LA. If that’s important to you, you can live in those parts. Most people actually don’t care about that at all. So, having to drive everywhere is not a problem for them.

Well, I lived in LA for 4 years and walkable is one of the least applicable adjectives I can think of. I enjoyed LA but chose to leave.

How many neighborhoods in LA have a walkability score high enough where most errands can be accomplished on foot ? Quite a few, right? This list has 10 and doesn’t even mention all of them https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rent.com/blog/four-walkable...

This one is a better list https://www.walkscore.com/CA/Los_Angeles