No. Humans have lived in walkable villages and towns built at missing middle densities (hundreds to a few thousand people and markets all within walking distance linked by long distance travel corridors you walked to or what you are calling ‘urban’) with local services and a handful of people living on the outskirts.
Endless suburban seas of <500 people per km^2 were invented for the automobile. The past you are counterfactually claiming exists did not have half an acre of roads, car parks, 4-car garages, set backs and car yards per resident, nor did it have all the services in a central gigantic box building 20 miles away through a sea of identical houses, nor did your rural people demand those in higher density regions provode them with infrastructure for heating, cooling, water and sewerage. Nor did they demolish all the houses around the market just in case they wanted to leave a cart there.
You have a very US-centric perspective on “sustainability”.
There are plenty of sustainable communities all over the world, today as in the past, that consist of 100s to 1000s of people living in low density housing within reach of a small center.
Some of their garages have two cars, some have only a moped, and some have no vehicles at all.
They are generally rural, not suburban. Not all are near big box stores. Those with big box stores existed before the big box stores arrived, and they would continue to exist if the big box stores left.
Their existence does not necessarily depend on support from higher density regions, especially in parts of the world where higher density regions will ignore their requests anyway.
No. Humans have lived in walkable villages and towns built at missing middle densities (hundreds to a few thousand people and markets all within walking distance linked by long distance travel corridors you walked to or what you are calling ‘urban’) with local services and a handful of people living on the outskirts.
Endless suburban seas of <500 people per km^2 were invented for the automobile. The past you are counterfactually claiming exists did not have half an acre of roads, car parks, 4-car garages, set backs and car yards per resident, nor did it have all the services in a central gigantic box building 20 miles away through a sea of identical houses, nor did your rural people demand those in higher density regions provode them with infrastructure for heating, cooling, water and sewerage. Nor did they demolish all the houses around the market just in case they wanted to leave a cart there.
You have a very US-centric perspective on “sustainability”.
There are plenty of sustainable communities all over the world, today as in the past, that consist of 100s to 1000s of people living in low density housing within reach of a small center.
Some of their garages have two cars, some have only a moped, and some have no vehicles at all.
They are generally rural, not suburban. Not all are near big box stores. Those with big box stores existed before the big box stores arrived, and they would continue to exist if the big box stores left.
Their existence does not necessarily depend on support from higher density regions, especially in parts of the world where higher density regions will ignore their requests anyway.