'Building Cities' is a non-trivial activity that occurs on a time scale such that by the time it's substantially implemented driving won't mean what it means today. Suburbia is not so much a response to poor planning as a reaction to the mechanization of agriculture that sparked a demographic shift from rural to 'urban' living.
Mechanization meant that a minimal family farms became approximately an order of magnitude larger (from 1/4 section of 160 acres to a couple of sections and >1000 acres). Along with all those farmers the shopkeepers had to find someplace in the city too. Automobiles encouraged the migration by making it easier to relocate off the farm.
Cities had not planned for that influx. Or for cars. Moreover, cities were increasingly discouraging tenements...with sound scientific reasoning. The suburbs were about the only quick fix. Cities take a long time and a lot of money to build. It also costs more in political capital and financial capital than building roads...multiple jurisdictions will float bonds for transportation infrastructure versus multiple private interests that must agree for many modestly scaled real-estate development projects...https://nypost.com/2014/09/19/nyc-church-bags-71m-for-air-ov...
In the past couple of years, I've started thinking about real-estate in terms of monopolies. Locations are not fungible and control of a parcel is an absolute but localized monopoly. What suburbia does is disrupt (or maybe bypass do to the locality) entrenched monopolies. Forty minute commutes are somewhat fungible. Boxes made of ticky-tacky are also somewhat fungible. Chain retail is very much fungible.
The expressway + car infrastructure to support suburban development was not cheap. It was in no ways organic. It was supported by the FHA's race-based redlining policies and banks that gave loans in the post-war era to white GIs to build homes in white-only suburbs.
Cars revolutionized society in a lot of ways. They're cheap and opened up possibilities that were unthinkable beforehand. Greenfield building is cheaper and easier than retrofitting, and since real estate cartels typically dominate urban real estate, city life is always more expensive than the bigger, nicer and more stable suburban home.
A lot of things happened in the postwar era beyond redlining. The poor Italians, Irish, Jews and Polish who lived in the tenements started making more money and slighter better opportunity. Jim Crow sparked a great migration of blacks from the south northward. Government thought that bulldozing tenements would fix problems.
>since real estate cartels typically dominate urban real estate
Perhaps had all the resources of government been focused on fixing this problem instead of confining black and brown people to and divesting from the inner cities, we might have more affordable, walkable, dense, valuable, resource-efficient, revenue-positive neighborhoods today.
Mechanization meant that a minimal family farms became approximately an order of magnitude larger (from 1/4 section of 160 acres to a couple of sections and >1000 acres). Along with all those farmers the shopkeepers had to find someplace in the city too. Automobiles encouraged the migration by making it easier to relocate off the farm.
Cities had not planned for that influx. Or for cars. Moreover, cities were increasingly discouraging tenements...with sound scientific reasoning. The suburbs were about the only quick fix. Cities take a long time and a lot of money to build. It also costs more in political capital and financial capital than building roads...multiple jurisdictions will float bonds for transportation infrastructure versus multiple private interests that must agree for many modestly scaled real-estate development projects...https://nypost.com/2014/09/19/nyc-church-bags-71m-for-air-ov...
In the past couple of years, I've started thinking about real-estate in terms of monopolies. Locations are not fungible and control of a parcel is an absolute but localized monopoly. What suburbia does is disrupt (or maybe bypass do to the locality) entrenched monopolies. Forty minute commutes are somewhat fungible. Boxes made of ticky-tacky are also somewhat fungible. Chain retail is very much fungible.