TOD > Missing Middle

Using public transit to fix car-dependence is a failing strategy. Providing marginal transportation to marginalized groups (teenagers, people with disabilities, older seniors) is at best a band-aid and at worst a sop. Further, no level of public transit provision will ever be able to fully replace automobility. Hence, undoing car dependence is largely a land-use problem: allowing the magic of density and mixed use to shorten trip distances and enable non-auto modes. Since most of the magic in transportation shifts happens at a pretty high threshold, it's key to focus on land uses in a small portion of critical places. From a transportation perspective, enabling good TOD at a few places beats enabling Missing Middle everywhere.

Not to say that the Missing Middle doesn't matter. Most of America is caught on the threshold where the densest multifamily that's financially viable is the 3-story 'garden' apartment with a huge parking lot, such that until land prices rise to a level where 'wrap' apartments with structured parking become viable, almost no new apartments get built--rather, more and more 3-story apartments get built, just at increasingly peripheral locations.