Id be curious the surface area of those million population centers? Lots of the US is very spread out even for “cities” only the old cities on the East Coast have significant density.
Zoning to prohibit people from living on 99% of the land so that the population is dense enough to fully benefit from public transit? Lots of states don’t even have a true city at all. Should those be zoned as national parks?
Edit: I think I missed the point. You’re talking about just city zoning. Still, not a magical fix and would likely require moving lots of people and demolishing/building buildings and infrastructure. However, it’s more realistic than zoming everyone out of the midwest.
The nationwide fuckup in the US is zoning rules that block commercial venues from residential regions, which means people cannot step outside their front door and get groceries in a 1 block walk. People are forced to travel unwalkable distances to reach anything, like food and employment. Which puts everyone in a car. Which means huge amounts of space is needed for wide roads and extensive car parking, generally big asphalt lots, which exacerbates the problem because even more space is wasted which requires everything to be spread out even more, putting resources out of the reach of cyclists. Making the city mostly concrete and asphalt also means water draining problems where less of it makes it into the soil and groundwater, and it means the city temp is higher because of less evaporative cooling from the land mass (Arizona in particular).
This foolishness is all done for pleasant window views, so everyone can have a view of neighbors gardens instead of a shop front.
Europe demonstrates smarter zoning, where you often have a shop on the ground level and housing above it. You don’t need a car because everything is in walking or cycling distance. But you more likely have an unpleasant view.
Id be curious the surface area of those million population centers? Lots of the US is very spread out even for “cities” only the old cities on the East Coast have significant density.
Zoning will fix that.
Zoning to prohibit people from living on 99% of the land so that the population is dense enough to fully benefit from public transit? Lots of states don’t even have a true city at all. Should those be zoned as national parks?
Edit: I think I missed the point. You’re talking about just city zoning. Still, not a magical fix and would likely require moving lots of people and demolishing/building buildings and infrastructure. However, it’s more realistic than zoming everyone out of the midwest.
The nationwide fuckup in the US is zoning rules that block commercial venues from residential regions, which means people cannot step outside their front door and get groceries in a 1 block walk. People are forced to travel unwalkable distances to reach anything, like food and employment. Which puts everyone in a car. Which means huge amounts of space is needed for wide roads and extensive car parking, generally big asphalt lots, which exacerbates the problem because even more space is wasted which requires everything to be spread out even more, putting resources out of the reach of cyclists. Making the city mostly concrete and asphalt also means water draining problems where less of it makes it into the soil and groundwater, and it means the city temp is higher because of less evaporative cooling from the land mass (Arizona in particular).
This foolishness is all done for pleasant window views, so everyone can have a view of neighbors gardens instead of a shop front.
Europe demonstrates smarter zoning, where you often have a shop on the ground level and housing above it. You don’t need a car because everything is in walking or cycling distance. But you more likely have an unpleasant view.