When the COVID-19 Pandemic forced us into isolation, over a quarter of Americans lived alone. Many of these people live in single homes or apartments inside complexes surrounded by busy roads and highways. Less than a tenth of a percent of the United States and only 1.2 percent of the metropolitan land area was described as “walkable.” With so much of the United States designed around the use of cars and so many people living alone, we’re facing a crisis of isolation. Our national infrastructure, much of which was designed in the mid-to-late 20th century, is no longer working. American infrastructure uniquely isolates its citizens due to a combination of outdated policies, restrictive zoning laws, and cultural attitudes that combined are actually causing us serious harm. 

There is a wide variety of factors that causes American infrastructure to be so isolating. First and foremost, cities are no longer designed for people. State and local governments invest heavily in car-centric infrastructure, especially in the form of new suburban areas and strip mall-style construction. If you travel to the outskirts of almost any city in the United States, you will notice striking similarities between any suburban stretch from Houston to Seattle. Three-lane roads surrounded by parking lots and isolated stores are increasingly the dominant form of construction on the outskirts of towns. While many people blame market pressures for this, it was, in reality, a direct result of government regulations forcing this kind of construction. Single-use zoning policies nationwide, which separate housing from retail, often mean that commercial retail is limited to streets such as these on the outskirts of town, crowding all similar stores into mile-long stretches of sprawl. Minimum parking requirements force stores to construct huge parking lots. For example, Los Angeles requires a parking space for every 100 ft2 of store space. This leads to mandatory parking lots left unused and empty. Finally, minimum setback requirements force stores to be a certain distance from the road. When combined, these regulations result in strip malls being the only form of construction allowed in many zones. It is policies like these that directly force us away from walkable communities with public spaces, thus dividing our environment into home, work, and everything else. Sprawl, or uncontrolled growth of cities into agricultural and natural areas around them, is beginning to define the United States. 

This sprawl has also led to an epidemic of immobility. A third of American adults reported walking no more than 10 minutes in the past week, and 92 percent of Americans’ daily commute is done by car. In many places, sidewalks are not built nor required, leading many suburban and rural areas to be completely hostile to foot traffic. Walking has been found to help with weight loss, boosting immune function, reducing unhealthy cravings, and improving mental health. Studies have also shown that American adults have a much higher rate of loneliness as compared to our European counterparts. This loneliness can be attributed to increased social media usage combined with a decline in in-person relationships among Americans. Loneliness is inextricably linked to societal connection; by encouraging real-life interactions and companionship, we can work to shrink the loneliness gap between U.S. and E.U. citizens. Cutting off the ability to walk places safely and easily will directly correlate to exacerbating the obesity and mental health crises in the United States. 

Not only is our reliance on cars hurting us physically, it’s also hurting us financially. The average American spent 52 hours in traffic congestion in 2021, resulting in individual losses of approximately $1000 due to lost time and fuel costs from traffic. If we could reduce commute times and replace driving with public transit or walking, it would not only immensely improve our health as a nation but could save us thousands of dollars a year as well. 

Another aspect of this issue is cultural. The United States has long been a country defined by its “rugged individualism” and focus on self-reliance. The idea of simply “pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps” can be seen throughout our history. Even today Americans are more than twice as likely to agree with the idea that poverty can solely be explained by laziness compared to inhabitants of other industrialized countries. This mindset of blaming the individual must change if we are to fix other problems in our country. We need to find the root cause of problems, rather than pointing to the easiest target to blame. For example, train travel is often touted as a more sustainable and comfortable way to travel long distances compared to by car, yet Amtrak, one of the only passenger rail lines, often takes longer and is more expensive than driving. It would be easy to blame Amtrak or its management, but this would be ignoring the root cause of the problem. Amtrak only owns 30 percent of the track it uses, with the rest owned by freight companies who are legally obligated to give passenger trains right-of-way. However, this almost never happens, meaning freight companies are able to bully Amtrak trains into delays, track switches, and slower travel speeds. Even from Boston to DC, where Amtrak owns most of its lines, infrastructure budget deficits leave tracks in disrepair with little hope for improvement. A recent report found that Amtrak is missing close to $7 billion of what they would need to fix the Northeast Corridor. 

The solution to our infrastructure problems is twofold. We need to change cultural preferences to orient them toward biking, walking, and public transit and fix the laws and building styles holding us back. Existing movements like New Urbanism seek to do both. They promote designing cities as they were before the invention of the automobile, with walkable streets and homes in close proximity to workplaces and retail developments. By using preexisting sites and replacing low-density homes and stores with higher-density units, we can increase the number of homes without contributing to sprawl or degrading our natural spaces. 60 percent of Americans already favor walkable neighborhoods with mixed housing and stores over traditional suburbs. Key tenets of these movements focus on increased access to green space, increased connectivity between communities, and bringing back local and regional culture. By building walkable communities with abundant green spaces, cities can encourage people to spend more time commuting by foot or bike. Using locally-sourced materials and environmentally-informed designs for new buildings will usher in a new era of architectural and cultural diversity across the United States, enhancing regional character and addressing the problem of “placelessness”. 

We are already seeing major improvements in this regard, but there is still a long way to go. For example, Charlottesville, Virginia, just abolished minimum parking requirements, legalized higher density housing citywide, and made the permitting process more modern. Cities like Houston and DC are adding new pedestrian bridges and multi-use trails, as well as massively increasing the amount of multi-use developments. Atlanta is converting a 22-mile stretch of abandoned rail lines into a multi-use trail, which has catalyzed $4 billion of economic development around it. These changes are incredibly popular, and people are willing to pay for them. Over the past decade, over two-thirds of Los Angeles County voters have approved sales tax increases twice to fund transit projects. Reclaiming our cities will be a gradual process, requiring collective effort nationwide, but it will ultimately restore urban spaces to their true purpose: serving us.