Complete option 2 is just impossible. Even people in the cities usually use public transit for lack of a better option, not because they want to. I think that in the absence of alternatives, increasing car efficiency is the best we can do.
In the suburbs, I only use cars because there's virtually no alternative. There are no trains, no subways, few buses, and the distances are too great to make walking or cycling worthwhile. I really don't have an option.
Suburbs take up huge amounts of space, which often demands the destruction of ecosystems. They demand the use of polluting, resource-intensive, dangerous, infrastructure-intensive cars. Since the market is far away, it's more convenient to buy all your groceries for a week or two in one go, which in turn leads to preservative-laden, frozen, unhealthy foods getting stockpiled in huge, energy-intensive refrigerators. The houses have lawns that need to be maintained with energy-wasting lawnmowers and trimmers. The houses themselves tend to be overly large and waste energy in heating, cooling, and lighting. Transportation options are expensive and extremely limited, and since it encourages people to travel alone, being sedentary and sealed in their cars, they tend to get less social contact, which is bad for society as a whole.
A well-designed city, meanwhile, enables people to pick a variety of means of transportation; you aren't forced to buy a car
and gas
and insurance. Everything's closer, so cheap and healthy means of transportation like walking and cycling become options. Homes in the city tend to be smaller and less wasteful than great big suburban homes. Since markets are usually closer, it becomes possible to buy food a few days a week, which means that they can be fresh and preservative-free. You can store a few days' worth of food in a small, cheap, efficient fridge, and the food will be eaten before it goes bad. Being near so many people and coming into contact with them at least gives you more options to interact socially, even if many urbanites choose not to. You don't need to pamper any lawns, and the means of transportation use up less land and resources. Urban life is generally more efficient than suburban life. Now, I'm not going to pretend that everyone in the city leads lives of fresh food, efficient transportation, and socialization, but at least these things are options. They're impractical in the suburbs. Therefore, it follows that we as a society ought to encourage it more.
Due to things like the suburbia they encourage and the roads and highways they demand, cars are always going to be destructive and wasteful, no matter how fuel-efficient they are. I'm concerned that if we make cars more efficient instead of trying to wean ourselves from them, people will just use cars even more and abandon the cities and public transit for a life designed more for cars than people (a.k.a. the U.S.). If cars are made more popular, even if they also get more efficient, it'll result in more damage and waste than if more people started to forego cars and suburbia for cities and public transit.
Classical_hero claims that while city life is cheaper and less wasteful than suburban life, dying is cheaper still, so we all ought to do that. This is Insane Troll Logic. If you play by those rules, why bother getting a discount on a haircut when you could die and never need a haircut again? Why bike to work instead of driving when you could just die and not need transportation or work? He seems to suggest that we should never try to pick the most efficient option. Why not?
