Still, do you see how many trees there are? That place must've still looked nice and was certainly transformable into a really nice place without unreasonable effort.

Now, it's basically a wasteland.

No, the 1950s version (actually more like 1900s; those houses were already decades old at the time they were photographed) was good. It was a traditional street grid with small blocks, and there were streetcars going all over the place. Sure it was mostly single-family (probably with more than a few duplexes sprinkled in), but it had great bones for densifying later when demand justified it.

I live only a few miles from the area pictured, in a neighborhood with the same development pattern. Even though it's been damaged by the removal of the old streetcars and having zoning superimposed upon it after the fact (which causes problems by mandating things like too-large setbacks and minimum parking requirements, as well as outlawing corner stores within residential areas), it's still mostly fine.

That's what I was thinking. Neither solve the problem. The 1950s one just resulted in bigger traffic jams. What solves the problem is robust public transportation.