It made more sense to me watching historic footage of when freeway expansion was happening in the US in the 50s and 60s. Congestion was very low. If you're one

It made more sense to me watching historic footage of when freeway expansion was happening in the US in the 50s and 60s. Congestion was very low. If you're one of a small number of cars, where you never see traffic jams, there's always an empty parking space waiting for you, then it all looks quite pleasant. In other words, it was a luxury that couldn't scale to higher densities. And if you think like an anthropologist you see this same dynamic popping up in neighboring contexts. Why do we have houses with grassy yards? Because this echos the estates of aristocrats in centuries past, where only the wealthy could afford to have land maintained as purely aesthetic gardens rather than some practical agricultural purpose. Suburbia essentially offered everyone the chance to live like a royal of days past. Except because it doesn't scale, that offer ended up being a trap many places. Thinking of it like this, as status symbols that didn't scale, lots of things like the trend towards McMansions makes more straightforward sense. And to be clear, I'm not some sort of density zealot. I just think the options should be more diverse, rather than the current system in the US which prioritizes cars at the cost of everyone else, even in contexts where it clearly simply does not work.