A letter from Doug Davis of Hercules in @sfc_opinions illustrates a common myth by contrasting "expensive, car-free living in dense urban environments" with cheaper suburbs. Urbanists need to work hard to dispel this myth. /1

If you consider it, it is obvious that car-centric suburbs are far more expensive in land, materials, infrastructure, and energy requirements. The perception that walkable neighborhoods are expensive is understandably but entirely the fault of bad policy. /2

Very simply, we subsidize suburbs and ban additions to walkable neighborhoods while making it hard to build new ones-- limiting access to these desirable living spaces to the wealthy, explained in @T4America's https://t4america.org/maps-tools/driving-down-emissions/. We must reverse these policies. /3

I'm sure someone will object that land values are more expensive in cities. That is true, but we need to distinguish access to booming central business districts from walkable neighborhoods more generally. There is no reason these could not be ubiquitous. /4

Oh, & #LandValueTax.