> Yes, and that's great. The world where people are free to move is so much better than Soviet-style arrangements where you have to live in your factory's provided units. With great transit, sure.
I appreciate the value in being able to move freely, but cars also constrain in many ways. They force more building to happen at the wildland-urban interface, to devastating effect as seen in the Palisades fire.
More importantly, current zoning and parking regulations make modern America very far from a free market. Not as far away as the Soviets were, but definitely nowhere close to reflecting people's true preferences once all benefits and costs are factored in. I doubt cars would be nearly as central in a market where single-family zoning was abolished and the full externalities of driving were captured.
And? Buses also take a lot of space. A road footprint of a bus is equivalent to about 15-20 cars (because it has to stop often). It pays off when the bus is fully occupied, but outside of rush hours, cars are a more _efficient_ way to use the road space.
Cars force city designers to build in a people-oriented way, rather than optimize for bike lanes.
> The presence of cars alters the built world in a direction which favors more cars
Yes, and that's great. The world where people are free to move is so much better than Soviet-style arrangements where you have to live in your factory's provided units. With great transit, sure.
> It is true that transit doesn't work as well with how post-war American suburbs are typically laid out
It works nowhere. And yes, I lived in very dense areas (Amsterdam, NYC, Moscow).