The public transit problem in the US isn't actually a "build public transit" problem, it's a "remove zoning rules that prohibit the housing density required for public transit to be viable" problem. But it would take decades to fix that even if we started now, and we haven't even started now because people are still trying to fix it by adding bus lanes to places where the density required for viable bus service continues to be prohibited.
Not everyone wants to live in a dense city. I would say about half the population doesn't. Removing zoning (and I think they should - let people build what they want), will not make cities more dense, and that's fine - people should be able to live how they want.
Nobody is forcing anybody to live anywhere. The problem right now is that you have areas where 90% of the land is zoned exclusively for single family homes and the areas that aren't have already been developed, so there is nowhere that new higher density development is allowed.
How about we make it so that only 50% of the residential land is zoned for single family homes and let people build whatever they want on the rest of it? The newly rezoned land will be worth more, so if you want to live in a single family home, sell yours at a profit and buy one in the area still zoned for it.
> Removing zoning (and I think they should - let people build what they want), will not make cities more dense
IMO yes it will, because it just makes sense. Denser cities are more efficient for everyone, normal people included. Transport price per unit drops, rent drops, all infrastructure costs per unit drop. I think most people will happily take a reduction in expenses in exchange for density.
> Transport price per unit drops, rent drops, all infrastructure costs per unit drop
No they don't, all that stuff is cheaper out of the city. People move to a city because their income also goes up, services (such as those you listed, but also others) are more expensive in a city, but goods are the same price, i.e. relatively cheaper compared to what you can earn out of a city.
So people in a city can, and are, far more wasteful of purchased goods because the price is effectively lower for them.
From the perspective of absolute cost, those things are absolutely cheaper. It's cheaper to build things closer together, period, because then you need less stuff. It's cheaper to build denser housing because it's less housing, and less land.
The reason this doesn't pan out is because cities are subsidizing everything around them. We take tax dollars from denser areas, which are the only areas that are economically viable, and then we redistribute them to suburbs.
It's time for that meme to die, cities are not subsidizing everything around them.
Cities would die without those "areas around them", because those are the places where food is grown and stuff is made. Adjusting prices for food via taxation is something the government does all the time, but if it didn't food prices would just go up, and cities would pay the same amount, just via a different path.
You might need less "stuff" to build things denser, but we've long passed the time when the main cost is "stuff". Labor is what matters, and building in a city takes much more labor.
In the real world non-cities are cheaper in every way, and that includes roads and utilities - and this despite needing more road and pipes.
