I'm not suggesting it's the only choice, or it being a good choice, or anything like that. I'm just pushing back against the narrative that people didn't freely choose this. Popularly elected leaders chose the city planning. Local elections and people leaving the cities by choice created the suburbs. If most the people in the cities wanted the change it would happen.
And hey look, you're doing it too. "Zoning laws" just magically happened with zero input and somehow radically changed the world without anyone noticing. How did the zoning laws get there? Popularly elected people chosen by the people who live there who made it happen year over year over year. If people didn't like the zoning, they'd vote to change it. That's how it happened in the Netherlands, people elected people who wanted the change.
It was a mess of utopian central planning, good intentions, private capture, bad science, corruption, bad incentives, and never looking back and fixing it. At very few points did people had a say in how this turned out.
> At very few points did people had a say in how this turned out.
This is an incorrect take from this though. Those parking minimums coud be changed tomorrow. They could have been changed any time these last 60 years. It doesn't take a federal constitutional amendment. It doesn't take 60 votes in the US senate. Those parking minimums and car centric developments continue to be policy because people continue choosing it. Local elections don't take that many votes to swing! Lots of positions run unopposed every year! They didn't change because the people there didn't care to change it.
Acting like zoning laws are something people can't change and that people don't want is to ignore reality. Zoning laws exist because people choose to have them!
I'm all for cities removing parking minimums. They're often really bad policy. I agree with a lot of things pushed by NotJustBikes and StrongTowns and what not. But acting like nobody wants these policies just isn't reality. Go see the town halls full of people complaing against density, complaining against bike lanes, complaining against transit, complaining against traffic soothing and then tell me nobody wants zoning laws.
> Those parking minimums and car centric developments continue to be policy because people continue choosing it
This is unambiguously true, but at the same time it's not an answer. There's a deeper problem here that I don't think you can dismiss with "well, people vote for it". Yeah. And people voted for redlining, and people voted for school segregation.
It is very hard not to see (growing up in such places and visiting occasionally still) a deep-seated kind of racism driving a whole lot of that separation, much more than "I want cars". You see elsewhere in the thread the predictable dog-whistles of "crime"--but rural crime is prevalent, too! It's just crime perpetuated by...well...people who look like those worried about crime. You see right-wing influencers on YouTube getting strapped to go to cities or even to Subway restaurants and it's not because of actual incidents--one's more likely to commit suicide with a firearm than to have to "defend oneself". It's just saying the quiet part loud.
At some point we're going to need a societal unfucking, and this is symptomatic (but not causative) of why we need it.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to be dismissive as a "well, people vote for it" kind of way. I'm just trying to point out its not just that these things appeared or happened without the majority's consent which is what people seem to continue to suggest over and over. These policies exist because they're popular at least with those who actually get out and vote in local elections, that's all I'm trying to say. And we won't successfully get rid of these policies in a lot of the country until we change the culture, which is challenging.
I definitely agree that there's strong overlaps with those demanding far flung remote suburbs, car-centric infrastructure, gun culture, and right-wing ideology. These people want their castles and their tanks to drive around. I do agree this is probably an overall unhealthy culture for our society and do vote against it. In those town halls people argue against densification because "the wrong people" will come into their town, that adding busses will only lead to increased crime rates, etc. I continue to proselytize to those around me about better transit, traffic soothing, right-sizing vehicle choices with realistic needs, pushing for sensible densification, better mixing of zoning, etc. and continue voting for policies to move the needle.
It's not the only choice and it has lots of bad consequences.
And I'd argue most citizens were never asked about it, it was decided for them by zoning laws and planning commitees in both countries.