It’s pretty easy to destroy a walkable place. We’ve been doing it for so long, it’s almost second nature. First, prioritize auto travel. Require every new building to be surrounded by lots of parking; and require every new street to be designed for high-volume, fast-moving traffic. Second, designate separate areas for people to live, work and shop, and don’t allow any of these “uses” to mingle. Third…. Well, actually, the first two will do it.

I could go on. We could talk about over-zealous fire marshals, outdated subdivision regulations that recommend cul-de-sacs instead of connected streets, federal policies that prioritize single-family suburban homes over mixed-use buildings, and inadequate transit systems. We could certainly talk about redlined neighborhoods, the Interstate Highway Act, and urban “renewal”—policies that transformed American cities like the Allied bombers transformed Dresden.

But let’s keep it simple. Over decades—one parcel and one building at a time—we have created new places where it’s virtually impossible to survive without a car, while systematically chipping away at the older places that used to be fully functioning, walkable, high-yield neighborhoods. Little by little, these once thriving areas have been degraded until they no longer work for people on foot.