When we accept “over-officing” and central business districts as the norm for our metropolises (and thus for our cities in general) we are forced to make infrastructure/logistics our primary focus just to make a city operate instead of the creation of attractive places to live.

This isn’t to say that you can’t make transit corridors etc. attractive. You definitely can and should. The problem is when the design of a city is based not on the places of the city but on the routes from place to place and how to make them most efficient.

And because of our huge emphasis on personal choice (especially concerning where we live/work etc.) this kind of “infrastructure first” approach will almost always lead to “car infrastructure” since it gives people the most flexibility.

And DOTs will always be this way as long as we have this metropolitan development model. https://twitter.com/dmtrubman/status/1380284693388623882