adjl posted...
And now, of course, so many people have only ever known car dependence that they can't wrap their heads around alternatives being any better (see: the number of people that steadfastly believe that owning a car is the only way to be free or independent), so of course they aren't going to be in favour of changing the status quo.
I always recommend people read this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Brief-History-Motion-Wheel-Comes/dp/1635579368
It's incredibly interesting and gives a perspective most people lack. The idea that car culture has radically reshaped so many aspects of our lives, in ways we don't even think about. Like how it literally changed human social interaction (the concept of "dating" as we know it only exists because of the car). Or how "grocery stores" exist because cars made the idea of a separate store location where you can browse product tenable (replacing the "general store" and "mail order" models). And yes, cars essentially invented the suburbs. But they also made long-distance commerce viable in ways it never really was before (supplemented by overseas shipping and flight).
It's easy to say "Let's get rid of cars" or "Let's find an alternative to cars", but most people have no realistic perspective of just how much of our lives you'd need to
change
in order to do so without sacrificing
huge
chunks of your lifestyle.
Interestingly, smart phones and online interaction are currently doing a similar sort of reshaping of social culture, and could potentially become at least part of the solution towards minimizing the impact of cars (e.g. online shopping potentially rendering grocery stores obsolete), but that sort of change always takes generations to really set in (car culture took about 50 years and a post-war economic boom to really entrench), and usually requires the older generation to die off before they become fully established.
Or to put it another way, you're probably never going to be able to really do away with cars and suburbs until all the Boomers and Gen X are dead, and probably quite a few of the older Millennials as well.