DougM said: The challenge here is similar to that any US mass transit and or anti sprawl thread. The US has to much land. Thus we can spread out.

Let’s be honest you will NEVER get people in the US to WANT to create a city with the density and traffic of Tokyo. Tinny tinny apertments and rediculus bad commutes are not something that people typically want. Heck I don’t think Japan WANTS Tokyo the way it is. I am sure if you gave them the opritunity they would glad spread out a bit.

So I don’t see how you get this in the US we just sprawl out and or move elsewhere. Click to expand...

And as I have said to you multiple times as well, in the case of some major American cities - New York, San Francisco, Boston, Miami, Seattle, New Orleans - this doesn't apply for geography reasons, and for cities with dense cores and a lack of ability to build highways - this applies to Chicago and Washington most of all, but Portland, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, even Detroit and Los Angeles to an extent - the possibility of much-improved public transport is entirely possible IF - and this is a big if, but several cities prove its possible - the cities aren't specifically designed for cars. New York's average commuting times are below the North American average, whereas many cities with low population densities tend to be towards the higher end. Spreading out is no help to commuting times, even when you have expressways to help with that. I will give you that tiny apartments are generally not seen as desirable, though the development of taller residential buildings starting about 1930 makes the prospect of higher population densities and larger living spaces NOT mutually exclusive.Now, to go to the OP of this thread, the question of American city like Tokyo really needs to be better defined. High population density is possible in several of them - all of the cities I mentioned above with geographical limits can have this happen. Elevated highways are generally frowned upon in North America, particularly in seismically-active areas - remember what happened to I-880 in Oakland in the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 - but also in other areas because in most cases highways were built to complement existing arterial roads and as such building over said roads wasn't a good idea. (The Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle and the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto are notable exceptions to this - they both were built over existing roadways.) The state of most North American cities at that time added to this, as urban renewal was encouraged and so clearing out broken-down neighborhoods for highways was seen by many as a positive.