> Sprawl, in a sprawling country, is inevitable. The communities listed in this page were suburbs, just not car-centric suburbs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

> Sprawl, in a sprawling country, is inevitable. The communities listed in this page were suburbs, just not car-centric suburbs: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetcar_suburb Development could have continued to be denser communities around either tram lines, rail stations, or existing towns. LA's 'sprawl' started around the trolley system: * https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/20/16340038/los-angeles-streetcar-conspiracy-theory-general-motors https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/20/16340038/los-angeles-streetc... * https://www.jstor.org/stable/26412661 https://www.jstor.org/stable/26412661 Some of the original bedroom communities were based around rail stations. But those communities still had 'urban-ish' communities that one walked around, and long distance travel was rail, or horse, later car. And I know well communities not around any dense urban area, as I visited my grandparents' farm in Communist Europe numerous times when I was young: my aunts/uncles had cars back in the Old Country, but my grand parents still used horses for a lot of work and even going into town. A random farm, in a rural area, in a sprawling country is not the same planned development on a parcel of land, which required government approval and permits. Low-density development, cul-de-sacs, restrictive zoning where residential is not with-in waling distance of commercial/industrial were all policy choices. There was nothing inevitable about it. Certainly in the 1940s and 50s maybe folks didn't know any better, but that's harder to say by the 1970s and 80s. (Parenthetically, originally people used to live in towns and commute to their farms: living right on the farm was a later development (relatively speaking).)