Cities should belong to people, not cars

Every lane we hand to traffic is a lane taken from human beings who want to walk, sit, talk and linger. We spent seventy years optimising cities around a metal box that sits unused ninety five percent of the day and we called that progress. Dense, mixed-use neighbourhoods with good transit are the most effective climate policy available to a city government, and they happen to be the most effective loneliness policy too. What I cannot get past is that we know this. The evidence has been clear for two decades. It is simply easier to fund a flyover than to tell drivers no.