I don't understand why we keep on building right next to highways which are some of the worst things for our health. You don't need to live in the countryside for that. Just stay roughly 1km away from them and the situation is significantly better.
There is evidence of a lot of ugly diseases caused by this, without even mentioning the constant 40+ dB background noise.
In London that is difficult – there is not a lot of space.
Plus the idea of having everything within a 15 minute walk including access to public transport.
Because the highways are built to the places where people and jobs are?
Once you build anything of significance, a highway gets built to it anyway.