Sure. And many of the downtowns of car-oriented cities have sidewalks too. Having sidewalks doesn't make it a place people want to walk around in, it just means

Sure. And many of the downtowns of car-oriented cities have sidewalks too. Having sidewalks doesn't make it a place people want to walk around in, it just means the developers are complying with zoning rules. For many suburbs in particular (not all, but many), walking around there is like walking around a fishbowl: fine for 5-10 minutes, until you hit a large road lined with strip malls; where you'll turn back. It's just not a place for a person. People won't do it. A colleague moved to to such a newish development. She drives to the park to walk with her toddler. Her "goal" is walking, and she could do it on her street. But she does it in a place that's actually for humans, not for cars. No amount of sidewalks is going to change that. So I disagree completely, it is a problem. Walking may be possible, the bureaucrats saw too that, but it doesn't mean it helps people to do it. Anyway, I will say, there's a personal preference surely, and I know perfectly happy people who live in car oriented neighborhoods, and couldn't care less about driving everywhere. But I very much think those places are a trap, and they sneak up on you. Elderly people who physically deteriorate, because there is no regular physical activity in their life, and suddenly find themselves at the mercy of their children: they are a burden (and I speak from experience). Children who can't go anywhere by themselves unless they're chauffeured, they are a burden. Many of these neighborhoods are long term liabilities too; the tax base after the first generation has moved out is often not sufficient to keep up all that infrastructure (depends from suburb to suburb). Many municipalities are borrowing for infrastructure maintenance. It is like if you would borrow money to change the lightbulbs in your house. It just means you have too many lightbulbs. The same with our cities, they have too much long term maintenance obligations. Roads and bridges to services all that sprawl are not investments, they are liabilities. And that's nothing to say about the aesthetic affront of these places (Where's your next vacation: Wildwood Estates or whatever it's called. Or downtown Savannah?); the environmental impact (loss of habitat, carbon blah blah); the low-value long term proposition (people store their retirement funds in particle board construction, somehow). Anyway, I'm really just parroting what others have been saying about the suburbs for decades, but I surely believe it. It is a genuinely compelling argument. Car-oriented city development is an experiment that we did not anticipate the long term consequences off. We are starting to see them now. And one of those consequences is that people reject their built environment as a place to move around in on their own two feet. So exercise becomes something optional, something you have to fit in, not something that comes naturally, to the point that we actually need Mr. Doctor to prescribe us our daily dose of moderate physical activity.