Or... hear me out. You could just build walkable suburbs. Why there is a distinction between 'suburb' and 'smaller city' is beyond me, but there really is.
A small city still has a walkable downtown core with apartments around which there is a small area of single family homes within walking distance to the downtown area.
A suburb is just tracts of single family homes and nothing else for miles on end. No real 'business area', certainly no walkable one.
We could just talk a normal suburb, rezone some homes to business districts and take cars off that street. Voila. Now you have a mini downtown near a bunch of single family homes. Oh yeah, and you have a nice business district that's cheaper than the real downtown that is a good launching place for local businesses. win win win.
Now do that everywhere, and then connect the little townie areas via rapid transit and you have something lovely.
A small city still has a walkable downtown core with apartments around which there is a small area of single family homes within walking distance to the downtown area.
A suburb is just tracts of single family homes and nothing else for miles on end. No real 'business area', certainly no walkable one.
We could just talk a normal suburb, rezone some homes to business districts and take cars off that street. Voila. Now you have a mini downtown near a bunch of single family homes. Oh yeah, and you have a nice business district that's cheaper than the real downtown that is a good launching place for local businesses. win win win.
Now do that everywhere, and then connect the little townie areas via rapid transit and you have something lovely.