American cities have too many streets, parking lots, and garages

Like King Midas discovering he couldn’t eat golden food, we’re discovering that car-dependent places can’t sustain the human activities they were meant to enable.

To a certain point, cars are fantastic inventions making it easy to get to far-flung places, opening doors for new places to live or work or play. But there’s a tipping point when the built environment and our lives are arranged around motor vehicles where the benefits start to come undone. Building to prioritize space-hogging cars brings a long list of negative externalities.