Reply #242: It's not really public or private that matters. It is the

[GumboYaYa]

homogenization of life that matters. There is little difference between a public school that is predominantely white middle class students versus a private school. A big motivator in the flight to the suburbs was white folks wanting to get away from black folks. While not universally true, there is still tremendous segregation in the suburbs and their schools. If you don't beleive that ask a black person who has tried to move to the suburbs how they were accepted in their new neighboirhood.

People will walk places when it is easier than driving a car. Unfortunartely, we have constructed the suburbs in ways that make it easier to drive than walk. Look at the sidewalks in suburbs, if they have any. The vast majority of suburban sidewalks are there for aestyhetic purpose but lack the real functionality of a sidewalk. I see these wastes of concrete all over the place where a sliver of a sidewalk is constructed next to a major thoroughfare with speeding traffic right next to pedestrians. City sidewalks in real cities typically have a line of trees in a green space between the street and sidewalk. This creates an environment where one is not scared for their life to walk, so they do. Sometime look at the entrance and egress to just about any major shopping area. They are funnels for traffic. Frequently nearby residential neighborhoods are walled off from the areas causing peopole to have to wlak substantially freater distances than the natural foot path. Look at residential zoning laws that require consistent density in residential developments with no commercial development anywhere near. Modern zoning practices dictate the strip malls we have that so segregate businesses from the people they serve.

As I said before, if you need to live in suburbs for whatever reason go ahead, but city planners and developers need to get smarter about how they build these communities if they want them to be around in fifty years.