The fix? Don't do dense cities. 80-85% of the US population prefers single-family houses to apartments.
We need to promote remote work and BUILD NEW SPARSE HOUSING. Do not do the nonsense "upzoning", instead build new suburbs.
Remote work can be promoted by giving tax breaks for remote positions or by taxing dense office space.
The economics simply do not work to make this sustainable. Let's not forget how expensive basic infrastructure is just because it's normalized. Water/power/sewer/trash/roads/lighting is a massive expense that just keeps getting more expensive, not to mention that you have to factor in maintenance costs.
They actually don't. Go on, try to find anything in my words that is factually incorrect.
I'll wait.
A simple verifiable fact of life: density increases do not result in cheaper housing prices. Scholarly literature is unambiguous on that point. The best positive result for new construction was a one-time 5-9% decrease in _rents_ immediately near the new construction.
Experts, who made their career in pushing urbanism, try to dance around that point.
I don't care if maintaining large roads and power and water is expensive. I'm happy to pay for the increased quality of life.
I don't see how this is unsustainable at all. It might need higher taxes or some other way of ensuring that ongoing maintenance actually gets paid for. So what?
One mile of Manhattan subway now costs more than 1000 miles of new 6-lane freeway.
20yrs with a car in car infested suburbia and then 18 without in a city with amazing public transportation. Without was way better.
Here's another fact: not a single large transit-rich city in the _world_ has faster commutes than the US average. And car-rich Greater Houston Area has faster commutes than ANY other megalopolis.
Surprised?
Not even the slightest bit, the odds of the parent's sole life experience being "car infested suburbia" is ~1.0 Chalk it up to narrow context us centric hip view myopia.