Must be why European democracy is in shambles then: it's the damn trains and buses! Who woulda thunk?

Yep. Increased over-centralization in the US wouldn't have been possible without transit.

And it's the main reason for polarization. You have large cities (SF, Seattle, Chicago, NYC) that are the centers of economic growth, and you have thousands of small cities that are slowly dying. These large cities and their satellites are growing at an unsustainable rate, even though the _overall_ population is flat.

And then the cities themselves, they have a huge population of low-income workers who can't afford to live there without some form of subsidies. It started with transit, but now the freaking NYC mayor is talking about subsidized grocery stores. This is another source of polarization.

Want to see an even starker example? Look at Japan. Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.