grue , 9 months ago

Did those cities already have good mass transit set up to facilitate a better option

Maybe, but that’s a moot point because so did cities in the US. Take some of the biggest poster-child cities for car-dependency, Atlanta and Los Angeles, for instance.

Here’s what Atlanta’s streetcar network looked like in 1924:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7LB53fF3LaA/SF1yM9zOf6I/AAAAAAAAARs/Am68J_uR8zU/s1024/1924.jpg

And here’s what LA’s streetcar network looked like in 1938:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FNNfyIY8B-a36E2STKtmu26Fg17u5GpjP8FhrcrjmLpk.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D104df6e6f3cfce41ff915a43792ec13dad9c8b36&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=c0f7155751352b730667f0bdf0886a91addbe8f3f1c309f97d48cc9c7b82124a&ipo=images

We had good cities with public transit in the US. We didn’t build our cities – even sunbelt ones – for the car; we demolished them for the car.

One more example. Here’s downtown Houston from the 1970s:

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fazl41bwu0j821.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dde79623c5c25c27f1e7fdf710e3925ffe0d8f4ef&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=946fc682c84f9151f1319312e067126c7e8683901d3c31fc7e33c8c2cd729f5d&ipo=images

All those parking lots used to have buildings on them.