In the United States, we half-ass urban living.

While you might not need a car to live in one of our nation’s great cities, it still greatly influences, if not dominates, your daily life. Closing or improving a street — or even a Great Highway here or there — to cars might help transform isolated areas, but it does next to nothing to change the overall look, feel and character of a city. Just take a look at Santa Monica, a city that has seen its once-lauded Third Street Promenade fall into disrepair.

So, in January, my wife and I are moving to Valencia, Spain, after more than 25 years in California. I love San Francisco and Los Angeles as two distinct California cities that, in many ways, represent the best of America. And I might be willing to keep paying a premium to live in either place if not for the perverse and never-ending influence of the automobile on the planet, our safety, and how we function and feel in our day-to-day surroundings.

My love of cities, which started during my seven years in San Francisco, prompted me to focus on urban studies at San Francisco State and publish papers on the relationship between the built environment and physical and mental health. But I decided I couldn’t handle the daily frustration of trying to make big things happen in seemingly impossible bureaucratic, not to mention contentious, environments. I want things in my backyard.

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When urban planning is lacking, cities and city dwellers suffer. In San Francisco, there’s a fight over closing one block of Hayes Street in Hayes Valley.

Yes, one block.

The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association wants to continue and expand car-free Hayes Street, which started at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Andrew Seigner, the association’s vice president, said an overwhelming majority of businesses and residents on Hayes support closing the 400 block of the street permanently.

The opposition, which is led by a group called Hayes Valley Safe, comes from, according to........

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