The UK has an amazing abundance of models for excellent dense walkable villages and neighborhoods... and then builds endless swaths of American-style car-based single-family houses, with not a grocer, chemist, cafe or pub within walking distance.
Only one motivation is powerful enough to propel such wave of single-use disposable crap over this green and pleasant land: shortest possible timeframe profit for landowners, developers and builders, ably aided and abetted by jobsworth planning departments and clueless in-their-pocket Councils. Bleh.
And let's not forget the elephant in the room. Money.
How much would it cost to add, say, a cycle lane to an existing road 1km long if it required more than just painting the pavement? £100K? More? How many Kms would be required to change even a small town over to be more pedestrian friendly? I just don't think the money is there.
Also, you have many places in the UK that to pedestrianise the centre would create genuine bad problems for drivers. Many small towns simply don't have more than one main route through them.
But then it does depress me when they create new build estates that they don't seem to take that once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do it right from the beginning.
The Cambridge City Deal assigned £8M to install 5 new off road cycle lanes around the city, IIRC. I don't have the actual costs and delivered distances to hand (the data is online to be found somewhere), but we're talking about a few miles.
Only one motivation is powerful enough to propel such wave of single-use disposable crap over this green and pleasant land: shortest possible timeframe profit for landowners, developers and builders, ably aided and abetted by jobsworth planning departments and clueless in-their-pocket Councils. Bleh.