The piece blames zoning, but the real smoking gun is the car. You don’t get suburban sprawl without the federal highway system and oceans of free parking mandates. Every time a block got downzoned, it was paired with minimum parking requirements that made dense housing impossible. We didn’t just ban apartments, we made sure every human had to come with 1.5 cars attached.

It’s almost funny how invisible that subsidy is. Billions poured into asphalt, “free” parking baked into codes, gas taxes that don’t even cover road maintenance. Cars won by policy fiat, not market choice.

There are many reasons to pump the brakes on city development, such as pollution, crime, sanitation... many of these have been solved since then, so it's hard to see. But back then - city life could be no fun.

Even into the 80s, New York City was perceived as having basic safety issues. I never went there, but TV shows and movies of the era mostly went for a certain feel: graffitied subway cars, car alarms, gritty night spots, and all the things that go with that.

So I think there are many more reasons than just "the poors!"

By contrast: why didn't European population centers (all the way from small cities to capitals like Paris) have quite such an extreme reversal? Was the "anti-poors" thing real, just less prevalent in Europe?

I wish the article had gone deeper into this idea of zoning being responsible: an exploration of the specific policies and laws that made this happen. As written, it's just an assertion.

You take public transit and some person who's been to prison many times for violent crimes decides to murder you with a pocket knife for no reason, like Iryna Zarutska, is why we don't have dense walkable urban cities. It's as simple as that. People who get their news from mainstream media that refuses to report these crimes that happen on a regular basis are completely mystified.