> it's the way American cities are designed. Instead of mixed-use walkable neighborhoods where people with a variety of incomes and backgrounds live, and stay p

> it's the way American cities are designed. Instead of mixed-use walkable neighborhoods where people with a variety of incomes and backgrounds live, and stay put, we have suburban fortresses where people live in a box, never talk to their neighbors, drive a box to work, work in a box, then do it all over again. That's not the highways fault in any way. Walkable neighborhoods are expensive, and most Americans are too poor to afford anything like that. You can't jump in early, because you'll just get gentrified out as soon as decent density & transit exist. You can't jump in after, because the costs are 3x to 50x higher. If your not wealthy, it's a loose-loose situation. That's why walkable neighborhoods can't maintain their "variety of incomes and backgrounds". If anyone could afford to put their family in walkable NYC / San Francisco / Seattle / etc, many more would choose to do it. But until high-quality safe family housing in walkable neighborhoods drops to $150k - $250k, it's just not going to happen. Suburbs don't happen because people love looking at asphalt. Suburbs can be made cheap, safe and affordable for regular middle-class people. Dense urban housing is almost never affordable, even in tiny little towns with no zoning or permitting in low-cost-of-living places like the Midwest. Until people honestly address the exploding high costs of density (and not just blame "red tape" or "design" or "subsidy" for it), that won't change and suburbs will continue to get built.