The answers are very uncomfortable
Like cleaner air, safer streets, less traffic and a better place to raise a child and/or dog with backyards and privacy.
Like cleaner air, safer streets, less traffic and a better place to raise a child and/or dog with backyards and privacy.
So, you ban cars from streets and allow only pedestrians and cyclists. Next, you allow local amenities to pop up so you don't feel the need to get a car out.
The suburban pattern of development as it currently exists isn't the only way to facilitate the quality of life you're looking for.
In suburban hell what are you supposed to play with? And with whom? The only other two kids on the street?
So, like in European cities.
But in any case, it does not change the fact that I grew up in a big city, with, as listed above, "cleaner air, safer streets, less traffic, a better place to raise a child and/or dog with backyards and privacy", and that that was common all around me. Children, me included, played on the streets. It's literally called a "Spielstraße", and they are very common. We just walked over to school, too, maybe took the bus for a few stations.
I've been living in the US for close than a decade now, and it's markedly different. I don't blame the US, I just hate zoning with a passion. I so miss living in a nice area in the city and being able to walk over to a small supermarket, a café, a barber, within the same area. Just live my life, without having to hop into my car and make it a journey for every tiny thing. It's so isolating here.
These news give me hope.
For what it's worth, the US is huge. I've lived in a number of places around this country, and I can't generalize much of anything between them. This is probably why I love suburbia and you hate it. My neighborhood is awesome and sounds just like you describe your ideal neighborhood to be. It's also suburban by any definition.
Sometimes I wonder if people just assume that all of the US has Midwest-style tract housing that sprawls for miles, or if we're all like California, etc. It's so variable, and the generalizations unhelpful (but hilarious).
So what’s stopping you? Move to the downtown area of any decently-sized city. You make it sound as if such areas don’t exist at all in the US.
But it is true that I don't know every larger city. So if there is a city where the zoning laws I'm lamenting do not apply, great, let's have that in California as well, please.