I'm not saying "because they are lazy!" but, I think it is a combination of a large portion of people wanting a large piece of land and planners just using cars to fill in the gaps on convenience. I do think that a lot of folks would prefer to have better public access to things like parks, it would mean a lot less personal maintenance. But this is a hard sell for some people that have a vision of a certain lifestyle. And for planners, they are probably working with some very tight budgets and timelines to deliver. It is just easier to produce yet another grid of McSame because they know there is an audience for it and it makes their jobs a lot easier.

I do wonder where this will lead in decades down the line but for many that is not an issue they are considering.

> people wanting a large piece of land and planners just using cars to fill in the gaps on convenience.

The US fed gov also did well to incentivize suburban home ownership in various ways. Suburban growth was a post-war feel good national narrative. The idea was as much sold it was bought.

Yep, like most things it is no one single thing driving it. They arise mutually.

And mass group-think is a thing. Get an idea going and few are willing to say, "Wait. Let's think about this a second..." Instead, "everyone is doing it" becomes the norm.

We had walkable American cities for centuries. It was the norm. Kids played in alleys and walked to school, neighbors chatted over the back fence, we reaped the economic benefits of density and proximity. Then millions fled America's inner cities in the 1960s due to skyrocketing crime and racial violence. The suburbs were seen as an inferior substitute by many from the start; the upshot was that their kids would be safe from muggings on the street, gunfire in schools, and race riots. Chicagoland writer Ray Hanania (no relation to Richard) wrote about his family's experience with this in Chicago:

https://suburbanchicagoland.com/2016/01/29/midnight-flight-c...

"Yes, it’s wonderful. And, instead of placing your garbage cans in the alley where the stink and unsightliness of the trash would be hidden from view, you will place all that on the front lawn. At the curb. Next to your new mailbox. Oh. I didn’t tell you that your mailbox was a metal little box on the top of a wood poll in your lawn in front of your house along the street? Where any Tom, Dick or Harry could drive by, reach in, and easily steal your Social Security check any time they want?"

The suburbs were spaced out and isolated on purpose. The alternative was worse:

https://suburbanchicagoland.com/2016/01/29/midnight-flight-c...

"When I returned to Bowen High school that fall, there were more Black students registered at the school and there were frequent gang fights between Black and Hispanic students. The Spanish Kings were really up in arms, painting street gang symbols insulting Black gangs, and vice versa. The increase in Black and Hispanic gang violence at the school only fed the stereotype and the growing fears of Whites in the area."

"One day, there was a shooting in the lunchroom. That was bringing it real close to home, so to speak."

The people who by their own actions and choices ruined America's inner cities have never been held accountable. Instead we blamed ourselves, the auto companies, skip-floor elevators in public housing... The same antisocial patterns of behavior continue. They make Memphis, Philly, New Orleans, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. what they are today. And today we blame TikTok, drill rap, ourselves again...

Milwaukee's murder rate in 2023 was ten times the rate back in 1920, before antibiotics and modern medicine and 911 emergency services:

https://devinhelton.com/why-urban-decay

For as long as this continues the suburbs will remain a preferable alternative for many, especially families with young children. Young childless people can tolerate more urban anarchy, and today more people in cities are childless, but this is not how to sustain a civilization.

> The people who by their own actions and choices ruined America's inner cities have never been held accountable.

Who are these people?

The criminals doing crime and the people who enabled them in the name of inter-ethnic conflict.

> Then millions fled America's inner cities in the 1960s due to skyrocketing crime and racial violence.

Let’s make sure we keep the cause-and-effect straight here. White flight was what created the crime, not the other way around. Inner cities in the US became poor, losing their business and tax bases, because of the racially-motivated flight of white people to avoid coloured people. Policies that facilitated white flight were done with the explicit purpose of creating white suburbs and preventing coloured people from following suit. It was not people making rational decisions about crime statistics.

When in doubt blame white people right?

You blame the people that architected it: Racist & oportunistic politicians, bankers, and real estate agents.

Who were predominately white, yes. Not sure why that makes you feel so defensive.

It's true that some white elites took a hand in destroying ethnic white urban neighborhoods, particularly among Italian, German, Jewish and Eastern European communities. Most Americans affected by redlining were white. "Urban renewal" destroyed not only certain poor black neighborhoods, but many ethnic white enclaves. It was a big government money faucet that tempted even the leaders of such communities to raze perfectly good homes and blocks in exchange for federal redevelopment funds.

One example that tells the story in Burlington, VT. Practically zero black or brown people lived there in the 1960s. It was a homogenous white town of mostly Anglo-European heritage. Nevertheless city leaders razed entire blocks and long-established neighborhoods in the name of urban renewal. Parts of downtown have arguably still not recovered.

https://www.sevendaysvt.com/news/before-burlington-town-cent...

>White flight was what created the crime

This is ahistorical libel against millions of families who fled their homes in rational fear for themselves and their children. You may read the last link in my above post for a near-complete refutation of such a view. Incidentally, many successful middle-class black families also fled to the suburbs around this time. Here's another primary source collection, there are many:

https://www.city-journal.org/article/white-ethnic-flight-fro...

It’s interesting how you keep up the divide between „us“ (good, law-abiding, educated, friendly and most importantly white people) and „them“ (evil, criminal, murdering,rioting, shooting black and Hispanic people). There’s only a thin intellectual veneer on top of your racism.

Did you ever wonder how it came to be that non-white people ended up in a worse position than whites?

>It’s interesting how you keep up the divide between „us“ (good, law-abiding, educated, friendly and most importantly white people) and „them“ (evil, criminal, murdering,rioting, shooting black and Hispanic people).

You can read the primary historical sources and decades of public statistics for yourself. You can walk down the streets of West Baltimore, West Philadelphia, Anacostia, the south side of Chicago, or Northwest Milwaukee on your own and see what has become of those environments. The prior inhabitants of those areas managed to create thriving, safe neighborhoods without youth centers, constant media pandering, or massive public wealth retribution.

Recognizing the truth of history is of course distinct from blaming entire ethnic groups wholesale.

Implying an ethnicity is linked to elevated crime rates and quoting statistics is no different from blaming ethnic groups straight away. Both display your reasoning just the same.

> The prior inhabitants of those areas managed to create thriving, safe neighborhoods without youth centers, constant media pandering, or massive public wealth retribution.

The prior inhabitants are not descendants of slaves; they did not suffer a collective trauma, decades of strategic abuse and discrimination by the government and those nice people you’re talking about.

I can’t even fathom how void of empathy one has to be to assume the massive imbalance white people actively created won’t leave deep scars that take time to heal. Merely changing the laws and pretending everyone’s equal now won’t cut it.

This sort of historical and emotional incontinence helps no one. You talk as though white urbanites were unfairly prejudiced or deserved the uprooting and destruction of their neighborhoods. That's simply not true, but I don't expect you'll believe me even if I explain with abundant sourcing, so I won't bother.

>> We had walkable American cities for centuries. It was the norm.

Two centuries ago in America, walkable cities were not the norm. Cities were not the norm. 95% of the population was rural.

You're right, I should have been more specific. Dense urban living was the norm for people who worked in cities. Suburbs were not a significant part of urban living until later.