I'm not suggesting the pre-war world was perfect. Cities had tons of problems, some that wouldn't apply today and some that would. What I am suggesting is, for

I'm not suggesting the pre-war world was perfect. Cities had tons of problems, some that wouldn't apply today and some that would. What I am suggesting is, for all their faults, urban design reflected the fact that people could not commute to work by car, because they did not own cars. It was categorically impossible that a cities poor workers could be pushed 50 miles out to some cheap exurb. And it turns out, the politically connected elite still needed cheap workers, and so urban design reflected the need for cheap housing. No, cities weren't perfect. I'm not advocating a return to tenements, and I doubt anyone else is. But car dependence isn't just environmentally damaging, it is fundamentally unable to scale to the demands of modern innovation hubs. Cars are well-suited to the dispersed living patterns of the late 20th century, but as I already mentioned the dispersed living patterns of the late 20th century do not match the centralized work patterns of innovation hubs today.