It would be much simpler creating a walkable area as part of a large scale urban renewal/redevelopment project than trying to retrofit an existing area. I wonder why there is so much focus on transforming an existing area. People should all want to buy/invest/rent in these areas designed with walking, biking, and expanded green space in mind.
Real estate value in cities rises because of scarcity and demand which then makes any sort of redesign prohibitively expensive. Instead we opt for half-assed approaches like ADUs to provide increased density with substandard units in areas that aren't capable of handling the increased density.
A better approach, if we could muster the political will, would be to raise the large amounts of capital needed to transform large swaths of low-density suburbia into a comprehensively planned neighborhood. Otherwise, short of bombing the US back to the stone age and starting again, we will be trapped by the layouts of the 20th century.
There's a cool approach called Transit Oriented Development[1]. You build a corridor of public-transit, and rezone the area around the corridor for higher density. Then it becomes economically viable for developers to build higher density in those areas and the urban infill can occur more organically.
Where were you when the cities were altered to be more car friendly. Those car owners should just have moved to some place where their cars didn't bother others /s
