We might have continued to a counterfactual built environment of suburbanization without cars! But then it would have been relatively dense “transit oriented development”, because those carless commuters would generally want to be in walking distance of the train and commercial amenities. 1/

Would that kind if suburbanization have been better or worse than no suburbanization? I don’t know. It sounds less horrible, though it would still impose a commute cost, people do enjoy aspects of suburbanization too. 2/

I think what we can say is that the car-centric suburbanization we evolved into has proven very costly, because it imposes a high transportation debt not just to get to work but for commerce and social participation. We don’t know the counterfactuals, but lots of us would try a different path! /fin