Comments by "alex smith" (@alexsmith-ob3lu) on "U.S. Zoning, Explained" video.

Many small towns below 15k population have been abandoned after WW2. Many people have been displaced into suburbs, inner cities, farms, isolated gas stations, and car mechanic shops to earn their bread. Passenger railways have either been demolished or converted over to freight rails, so that’s another reason why townships are so car centric. Difficult to say what will happen in the future, as most of our infrastructure systems fall apart, interest on decades long debt accumulates more, and we have less skilled tradesmen to do the heavy lifting. We’re basically living in a century of decline.
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Good points you make, but why would urban planners and local governments change their bad habits, when the Feds continue to reward financial loans/grants to local governments to continue their bad behaviour? Psychologists call that phenomena “Cognitive Dissonance”.
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@ianhomerpura8937 No, urban planners are also part of the problem. It is not just building density, it is about understanding people and where they struggle. Strong Towns has a better approach of incremental development.
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@ianhomerpura8937 For ordinary people without much money, it is all about returning back to the civilian ways of Victorian America.
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@reenakemp9132 Texas has zoning codes but they don't call it zoning codes, which is deceptive. Urban areas in Texas have the same development pattern as every other state (car dependent suburban sprawl).
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@ianhomerpura8937 Yes, there are many faults to your assumption. You and urban planners cannot fix the urban mess without correcting the regulations, code books, revising skilled labor etc. etc. Everyone benefits from this urban mess except poor people, which is why they'll be forced into areas less urban, with less infrastructure and have less basic life support.
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@reenakemp9132 They make it sound looser, but it really is not. In urban areas of Texas, they still have minimum parking, minimum lot sizes, minimum road sizes etc. And they keep building more freeways for cars; which in inefficient at moving lots of people around as quickly as possible.
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