this post was submitted on 15 Mar 2026
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For what it's worth, dense infrastructure is possible everywhere, even in large spaces like the United States. It just doesn't get built because the people tasked with making such decisions choose not to for various reasons.
The density in a specific location isn't the issue, it's the space BETWEEN all other locations. Too much sprawl to begin with requires extensive work of a long period of time to even be able to do something this.
Also helps that the cities this works for were built for walking a long time before cities in the US had even developed a unique urban footprint. East Coast cities established in the 1500-1700's would be the closest in design to European cities.
Eeeeh... We don't need to go back to 1500 to find good urban design. We had good urban design happening all the way up to the second world war. In fact, cities built around streetcar networks in the early 20th century, like Denver and San Francisco, could be considered even more walkable than older cities like Boston, since the efficient streetcar network made more parts of the city easily accessible to people travelling on foot.
Meanwhile, I will note that while reforming sprawling urban areas will take a lot of work, it doesn't have to take a lot of taxpayer money. Reforming sprawling areas takes a three-pronged approach: reforming zoning laws and building codes; enacting pigouvian taxes and fees to incentivize pro-social spending; and reforming infrastructure and transit services.
Zoning and building code reform, like removing minimum lot size requirements, allowing parcel splitting, removing setback requirements, eliminating R1 zoning and making mixed use zoning universal, streamlining permitting processes, and freely publishing building codes makes it possible to build more densely (especially for individual homeowners and small developers), and to create businesses (like gyms, cafes, and corner stores) near where people live.
Pigouvian taxes and fees, like carbon taxes, vehicle registration fees, highway use and exit tolls, land value taxes, and utility connection maintenance fees, parking fees, incentivize people to stop doing things which harm the public good or hoard public resources. Tolling highway exits into dense urban cores, for example, encourages people to take transit into their downtowns rather than taking up valuable urban space with their cars. And land value taxes encourage people with valuable land (like that in urban downtowns) to do something useful with it, like build a mixed use apartment building - rather than speculating on it by keeping it as a surface parking lot while the land appreciates in value because everyone else around them are building something useful.
Infrastructure and transit services are things likeaiing BRT lines, increasing transit service to run frequently enough that people dont need to plan around it, and creating protected bike lanes.
But importantly, the first two prongs take minimal public funding. Rough implementations could be deployed tomorrow, and then we would just sit back and wait for individuals to make their own worlds better.
Given several more developed nations have solved the distance problem using trains, I don't think space between cities is much more than a talking point. Need somewhere to put the farmlands anyhow.
Yes it has been solved in other countries...with 1/5 the land mass of the US. That's the problem as I mentioned.
Every major US city aside from LA has both local and long distance train networks, and they are heavily utilized. These cities were not planned around walking or rail though. Most US cities didn't even hit what constitutes as "Urban" density until after the advent of the car,.so everything is built around cars. Reclaiming land to focus on ped or rail after the fact is in quite difficult.
Case in point, the California high speed rail project which has blown Billions of dollars over more than a decade and has yet to manifest anything usable. That's just one state, and only serving a handful of cities. Doing this in a national scale as Japan has done is just not going to happen when Air Travel is faster.
The priciest bit of rail per mile is in cities because of the stations and land use, but even those are one time costs. If we magically moved two cities in Japan 5x further apart, it wouldn't cost 5x the amount to install the rail to connect them. When considering maintenance costs, a comparison to highways wouldn't be close.
Rail infrastructure across America is mostly dedicated to freight, with passenger travel taking a literal back seat. Comparing rail to air isn't exactly apples to apples considering how artificially cheap domestic air travel is permitted to be.
California's rail situation is an entire can of worms on its own. My underlying point is that the type of cities shown in this post are possible everywhere. All it really takes is willpower.
Do you need to visit every single location in your city state or county? Or do you need to reach certain amenities and would happily use a closer one of similar quality?
Density matters more than size. People aren't shopping on the other side of the country. They go to the most convenient option.
Well, you're either unaware of, or just ignoring a lot of things that do not fit into your tidy explanation.
Every been the Bay Area in the US? You know what it takes to ride a bike from one side of SF to the other and any direction? What about crossing a bridge to Oakland? What about crossing the GGB to get to literally any other city on the other side?
Also,.most major US cities were not built for walking, only East Coast earlier cities. Let me ramble off a bunch that discount your point: Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Seattle, San Diego, Denver, Philadelphia, and even Washington DC.
Your immediate response is going to be something like "Well they WERE originally...", but that doesn't matter. Maybe 100+ years ago, but that's not where we live. We live in the reality of now, and that reality is that none of the cities are AS accessible by walking or bike as they are with cars. If not Topography, then the general logistics of where jobs vs living spaces are located.
People don't have the luxury of choosing where they get to live in the US anymore in proximity and convenience of their commute to work. Just not the reality of things. No argument you might have will beat the consumer logic of finding the most ideal place to live first, and worrying about the commute second. Likely to be by car.
I have literally biked many of the routes you're discussing here. I live in Sacramento and regularly visit the Bay Area without driving. Actually, that's already the most convenient way to do so. But that's a fun outing, not practical urban transit. Practical urban transit takes place within or to adjacent neighborhoods. That's the whole point. Once you reach a certain density of amenities, car infrastructure and travel becomes totally impractical. This density is well below American suburbs, which is why our cities are all clogged with traffic and people are being flattened left and right.
For occasional longer distance trips you can rent a car or take a train. We're not talking about inter-city travel here. The point is, like the above video, people, especially children should have the ability to safely navigate their neighborhoods. And this is totally achievable in the US.
Regarding the history... all of those cities predate automobiles and most of them still have dense, walkable neighborhoods. A few demolished them. It's the surrounding suburbs that were built for cars. But they can and should be rebuilt in a better way. It will be a process but the alternatives are far worse.
Most of Seattle is readily walkable, I'd often go on basically hikes through the city taking 6+ hours. There's definitely a few places that are difficult to get from one area to the next but individual neighborhoods and most the connecting areas are solid for pedestrians and bikes. Denver though holy fuck I've never been somewhere less walkable it's a disaster there
You literally just said "walkable", and then referred to it as "hikes". Hiking is not walking 🤣
It's the difference between somebody with mobility issues walking two blocks, or eight. Neither Seattle or SF even attempt to pretend they are walkable because of the topography.
I don't think that's the gotcha you think it is? What do you call a 6+ hour walk, a casual stroll? You have to bring water and food when you're out for that long doesn't matter where you go which is why I called it a hike. I can walk for 6+ hours in Seattle and be in walkable neighborhoods the entire time with proper sidewalks, shops, parks, and near transit to head back if I don't feel like continuing to walk
The least walkable topography is near downtown where you have the one line, streetcars, and busses. There are several transit options to get in, out, and around the downtown hills; hell the monorail is still running if you are feeling fancy. Outside of downtown you have the one line that's being expanded every day with busses leading out from it's stops. I won't say Seattle has it perfect or is the best but it is undeniably one of the better US cities for walking and they're actively working to improve it in several ways
Great! Glad you can do that.
Your elderly neighbors can't, and also can't ride a bike 8 blocks to the nearest grocery store, then lug groceries home.
The terrain in Seattle is just not walkable, is my point.
And for them there is the one line, street cars, and busses that elderly and disabled people regularly use. Literally every grocery store I know of in Seattle has a bus stop within a block of it and all but like 2 are on flat ground. I feel like I'm going crazy am I missing something about what counts as walkable?