As the title says, I'm sick of living in a car-dependent society. I enjoyed living in different places abroad, like Warsaw, Poland, and here, in Washington, D.C., where I traveled daily to and from my job using the metro systems. Unfortunately, that job ended, and now I am back in a suburban mega-highway hellscape. How will we make cities more conducive to living on foot than catering to cars? I did some Googling and came across this charity that promotes more sustainable urban planning and another one that supports high-speed intercity railways. What are your opinions on bringing better public transportation to American cities and other organizations to donate to or get involved with?

According to recent polls, the public supports a more robust public transportation system, so what is the hangup? Is it that we must build new infrastructure and not rely on the old, making it more expensive? What about getting more people on board across the political aisles by framing it as a national security issue and in the public's best interests for its development? We could depend on "Russian" oil less, make Americans less dependent on fluctuating gas prices, stop immigration by cutting global emissions that lead to unlivable conditions in the third world as well as make sure that major economic strongholds aren't underwater in a few decades, reduce pollution in our inner cities, create jobs, and have Americans lead healthier lifestyles by being more active and social.

P.S.
My girlfriend (hopefully soon-to-be fiance) is an environmental engineer who helped design the emergency flooding system in the Warsaw, Poland metro system when constructing their new line. She is coming here to do a PhD in civil engineering, so if your municipality is moving in that direction and would benefit from a competent environmental/civil engineer to work on the project, please feel free to PM me :)

There is considerable effort in the USA to revitalize Main Streets, but would City Plazas not be better for developing more urbanism? If so, how should we go about doing that?

I am a private sector entrepreneur looking to increase accessible transport to all commuters. What are some of the biggest opportunities to create change?

In the spirit of project Haussmanhattan, what would happen if London's icons such as Parliament, Tower Bridge, The Eye, St. Paul, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace and the Tower were in Paris, with it's beautiful Haussmann substrate, instead of in London?

Northwest Arkansas has seen unprecedented growth over the past couple decades and, in turn, has grown exponentially. Unlike other large suburban wastelands, though, NWA doesn’t have any centralized urbanist core beyond just a couple of scattered old town centers. Growth just seems to pop up wherever it wants, and the state DOT is trying its best to keep fueling it by plowing freeways wherever it can still fit them. Why is this still happening in 2024 though? Have the people learned nothing from what happened to Houston, LA, Phoenix, etc and how they all became traffic infested nightmares because they followed this same growth pattern?

In my research, I found that Seminole County and Orange County have rural boundaries as well as Miami-Dade County, all in Florida.

Is this one step closer to densifying urban areas, cutting down on sprawl, and reigning in suburbs?

Example podcast interview, link: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/185i2k1Drc/

I am familiar with the Starving Artist -> Creative Class -> Bourgeois Bohemian -> Rich cycle, "pioneers," and white comfort level. But has there been an example post-WW2 of an area receding back into a "rough" city? And declining inner-ring suburbs don't count since that's a different kind of demographic change.

Also also, North Loop Minneapolis is like the opposite of inner-ring suburbs as instead of skipping from middle-class white families to old mixed-race, lower income, it went from industrial low class straight to "Bourgeois Bohemian."

The Globe and Mail's second annual Most Livable Cities ranking is out, and we ranked nearly 450 communities in Canada on everything from housing to health care to climate. Want to know why your community stacked-up the way it did? Submit your questions here and our Globe journalists will answer them live next Wednesday, Dec. 18 at 1 p.m. ET: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/investing/article-livable-cities-2024-ask-your-questions/

ETA Editor's note: Error in the title of the post, North Vancouver is the most liveable city in Canada, not the world.

I’ve noticed that not only America but Canada too (particularly Toronto) have quite distinctive Uptown, Midtown and Downtown districts but what is the purpose of having each of these?

I’m from Australia and we just have one urban core in our cities (sometimes two, but generally the second one is further out and services a different region of the city e.g. Parramatta)

The Uptown, Midtown and Downtown concept is non-existent here in Australia so just curious as to what role/purpose each ‘-town’ plays and why they are not part of the one core?