I'm really doubting this is the case. It seems much more likely to be due to zoning laws.

It's not really.

If you have cheap, abundant land it makes no sense to build densely.

Look at Houston with ~zero zoning laws and ~infinite sprawl.

"A neighborhood" in a high-sprawl suburb wouldn't be able to support local mixed use amenities because even singular "neighborhoods" are gigantic enough to warrant driving across them. Once you're in the car, why would you go to the place 2min down the road instead of the far superior place 8min down the road.

It only makes sense to sprawl like in Houston if you never mind spending 3-4 hours commuting to work and back. Or if you can't afford anything better.

Ask well-paid people who keep renting apartments in Manhattan, or in downtown SF, to say nothing of Tokyo or Seoul.

I realize "makes no sense" carries a double meaning here. I am speaking of the system-level decisions which end up actually producing infrastructure. You're right that sprawl is absolutely inhumane – we should absolutely nudge processes/incentives such that it's discouraged, but doing so is not as simple as just "get rid of zoning."

> It only makes sense to sprawl like in Houston if you never mind spending 3-4 hours commuting to work and back.

Much easier to do with self driving cars though. Remember the promise? “Take a nap in your car and arrive at your destination” or “be productive on your commute”.

I live well out of Boston/Cambridge. These days, I rarely drive in. (Mostly for flights or the occasional theater). I would absolutely go in more if someone/something were driving me for a reasonable cost. I'm actually fairly convenient to commuter rail but doesn't really work except for commuting during the day which I very rarely do.

Average commute time in Houston is just under half an hour (depend on which source you read, varies from 26-29 in my quick search). Sure you can do commutes more than an hour long, but people generally don't - if they get a new job more than about half an hour away they will move.

Houston doesn't have zoning laws, but it does have private deed covenants enforced by the city which effectively work as zoning laws. https://www.houstontx.gov/planning/Neighborhood/deed_restr.h...

These allegedly cover only ~25% of residential lots in HTX (mostly the wealthy ones). So sure that's a similar tool and probably distorts things, but I would be very shocked to hear this is anywhere near as important as the infinite supply of ultra-cheap land on the outskirts of town plus public subsidized roads (which will eventually bankrupt the city).

Houston has these, parking requirements, etc. I would argue if anything that mandatory parking requirements have a larger impact than zoning. Parking lots themselves push things farther apart and make not driving unpleasant.

I agree with you but I don't believe the marketplace does. If you get rid of parking requirements in Houston I doubt you'd see a significantly different development pattern because ultimately people there actually do need to park their cars.

If you remove parking requirements then the marketplace can discover the right amount of parking. Parking minimums keep the amount of parking artificially high.

That's kind of eliding the whole point of parking minimums (which I also hate, by the way). Parking is a classic tragedy of the commons issue where each individual developer would prefer not to build any parking and externalize that cost onto nearby lots/public streets/following developers.

In fact developers did do this, and "the market" responded by creating regulations that prevent it. Which are obviously causing their own set of serious problems.

What if it's both? People drive everywhere because zoning forces car infrastructure everywhere. There's few to no safe places to walk/bike anymore.

And further why are zoning laws the way they are? It's exactly because the suburbs people don't want a bunch of hippie trailer park riffraff around.

At this point it is more because they have always been that way and people don't think about it anymore. in 1920-1950 when they were first enacted they were for those reasons, but now people are more afraid of change.

It already has!

Ethnic food has thoroughly suburbanized, as has shopping.

What's ethnic food?

If you're in America, it's Italian/Greek/Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai/Japanese/Ethiopian/Moroccan/Brazilian/Indian food. Etc.

So basically any non-diner non-fastfood.

Well, there are some rural staples like BBQ, and Mexican to a degree.

But, yes. The sort of ... enduring narrative is that rural areas and suburbs have chain restaurants, diners, and fast food, because immigrants go to cities and open restaurants from their native cuisine, and that suburbanites think black pepper is spicy and sushi is gross.

In actuality I think immigrants are increasingly (a) enamored of the American big-car / big-house lifestyle (makes sense, they choose to come here) and (b) bought-in to the notion that cities are dangerous, with bad schools. So immigrants rent a place in a strip mall near the suburban school district some other immigrant said was good online and start restaurants there. Google maps exists, suburbanites think nothing of a 25 minute drive, so they ask around online after the best examples of a particular ethnic cuisine, and they drive there.

In Maryland, where I live, it's certainly true that the highly-regarded Chinese and Korean dining is in suburbs. Latin Americans, specifically Guatemalans and Salvadorans, are the only immigrant group moving in to Baltimore (where I live) with any sort of enthusiasm.

I suspect I can get a larger variety of ethnic food of very decent quality in 1 hour in NYC than in 99% of suburbs.

Shopping for large items, or large quantities, definitely tends to use suburban land because it's cheaper, and a shopping center uses a lot of it. The cost for the customers is the time to drive there.

I can't speak to NYC - best case it would take me 4 hours to get there (.5 to the airport, 1 hour security, 2 hours on the plane, .5 from ny airport to the city). Meanwhile I can get to nearly anywhere in my entire MSA in less than an hour, both city and suburbs (and even a few farms). Within that the majority of ethnic food is in suburbs, though the largest concentration is still downtown.

Well, NYC is NYC.

I live in Baltimore, and if you ask after Chinese, Korean, Indian, or Vietnamese, without specifying city limits, you will be directed to a place in the suburbs with a parking lot (I think this is essentially true of DC as well).

Same in Atlanta. Best ethnic food is in the suburbs.

If you think that culture is strictly a matter of consumption this is a reasonable clap back, but it belies its own shallow premise

While it’s true that there is food and shopping in suburbs, I think it’s also true that suburbs are still food and culture deserts, since the food and other amenities is typically far away from most houses.

Not really. Get in a car and you can be at all. For many in the city walking it is about as long to get to those things - the distance is less, but the time is similar and time is what counts.(which isn't very many!) the city is the food desert - there are bars and restaurants, but zero grocery stories. If you want to cook a meal you have to get to the suburbs to buy the supplies.

i take it you are not from the old world? Only in north america will you find dense cities without small, normal grocery stores.

These are incredibly common in all of the old world.

True. One other people you find in cities in the old world is people who are not in that weird place between college and kids where they can afford to eat out all the time and alcohol hasn't started catching up to their health

Even just paying for the roads for these cars to drive on is a challenge with the lack-of-density they require. So many suburbs with large lot sizes just learn to live with the potholes.

that is until autonomous pothole-fixers. Just the other way, looking at the Waymo driving by and with me doing small autonomy myself i was wondering what niche they leave for me, and looking at the road i thought that autonomous pothole-fixers is going to be multi-trillion business.

People writing in other comments about cost of roads, new and repair - it all will change with autonomous road paving hardware.