^ this is very accurate.

There are multiple studies and historical accounts documenting exactly this TsunamiFury. Car lobbies are actually clearly tied to many city planning decisions, combined with white flight and corresponding government loans to create suburban communities that essentially cut others out.

Additionally interstate commerce in a comparatively intensely large land mass like the US did create a need for additional transportation, but the sprawl has indeed been very much tied to the factors PaulDavisThe1st and others have pointed out. Its not 'not liking' each other. Its money + racism + poor representation of the populous. Like a lot of things.

Sure. I’ve studied that for years and I’ve come to the conclusion that is not the root cause. At the end of the day it’s a boogie man people trot out to excuse the fact that they did that and continue to do it together. They let it happen because they wanted it.

Hm... fair enough. I have studied this for years and come to the opposite conclusion. Specifically in Geography and Urban and city planning courses.

What studies or books lead you to your conclusion?

That people ultimately do what they want. They aren’t brainwashed. Car companies or lobbies don’t build our cities. We build them they way we want them. If we wanted them some other way we would. And most people live in suburban sprawl where they distance themselves from their fellow American — who they don’t particularly like very much.

Womp.

I don’t understand what you are refuting.

But I live in Pacific Heights, one of the most desirable old world communities in America, and it’s mostly empty and full of ghost capital homes.

People like it for a while but they leave for the suburbs pretty fast and go looking for elbow room away from others. And it’s mostly because the energy under the surface of the beautiful homes is rude, selfish and inconsiderate. From the owners to the workers that come to service the homes. Regardless of class we are really angry people.

Pacific Heights is indeed one of the most desirable neighboors, and is very much non-surburban in its nature.

but ...

The current situation in uber-expensive real-estate markets when it comes to high-end housing should not be over-interpreted as having more to say about what most Americans want from the places where they live.

Pacific Heights current situation is also very similar to wealthy old neighborhoods in cities across Europe. London at the very least is full of such examples.

also ...

> I don’t understand what you are refuting.

>> We would have built better cities if we wanted carless communities. But we didn’t and still don’t.

I wouldn't say it's an emergence of a general dislike of each other. It was desegregation; the dislike always existed, but before Brown vs Board of Ed and other decisions in the same cities different racial groups lived in different worlds.

Blockbusting was a real phenomenon in which real estate agents would move a black family into the neighborhood to get white families to fire sell their homes, and it worked because they could no longer legally isolate minorities from their children. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting

We know that this happens today, even with minority groups that are affluent and do well in education metrics. https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/07/silicon-valley-whit... (And before anyone accuses me of "wokism", the original story was broken by the Wall Street Journal, which is decidedly not a "woke" publication.)

Rather than they “used to build cities this way”, perhaps it just takes centuries for cities to evolve to a good form.