Drive Until You Die: The American Suburban Experiment: How Suburbia Broke Americ

Why do Americans vacation in walkable European cities but come home to stroads, strip malls, and soul-crushing commutes? Drive Until You Die dismantles the postwar suburban experiment and exposes how asphalt, zoning codes, and car dependency quietly reshaped a nation into a cage of convenience. With biting wit and unsparing clarity, this book reveals the machinery behind America’s sprawl: parking mandates, single-use zoning, traffic engineering, and fiscal policies that subsidize dead space. From McMansions to Costco hauls, from retirement ghettos to office parks, suburbia isn't a lifestyle—it’s a system of social isolation, financial extraction, and slow-motion health decline.
But escape is possible. This book shows how cities can be rebuilt around people, not vehicles. It explains why real community starts with walkability, proximity, and public life—not HOA covenants or vinyl-sided privacy. Drawing from planning history, public health research, and real-world reform, Drive Until You Die offers a clear-eyed path forward. This isn’t a nostalgia trip for trolleys. It’s a demand to legalize cities again.
Perfect for fans of Strong Towns, Not Just Bikes, and The Death and Life of Great American Cities, this book is a manifesto for anyone ready to abandon traffic-choked misery and build places worth living in. If you’ve ever wondered why you need a car to buy milk—or why your city feels like a parking lot with chain restaurants—this book has your answer.