Funny video

In Soviet condo, doorman tip you!
 
Ahahaha that sounds like the people I hear in Missouri! We want our open space!
 
I think it boils down to a misunderstanding about the fundamental issue. The issue is NOT open space versus highrise or ultra dense condo blocks next to public transit. Who doesn't like efficient and enjoyable scenic open space? Even people in NYC love it, that's why they flock to Maine in the summer. The real issue is that the current state and pattern of land use is not sustainable, regardless of what people "want." I know I am preaching to the choir here, but honestly, it bears repeating. Its not open space versus city. Its walkable urban amenity filled towns versus sprawling crap. The notion that there is somehow this Utopian open space that everyone can hang out around and drive to in their cars that they fill up with gas (that they pay for how?) from jobs that, what, don't exist (lest the open space be gobbled up) is ludicrous.
 
Patrick, those are good arguments of course, but not ones I would use to butt heads with people like the narrator of that video. His notion that new urbanism and higher density, carless living are government conspiracies will only be fed by the notion that they're driven by resource allocation planning.

One winning strategy may be to present this as an issue of lifestyle choice - some people who live in the Sunbelt WANT to live in condos near mass transit. Then you barrage them with facts about how the government and planners have been using a half-century of draconian tools to induce the creation of a car-friendly landscape alone: the construction of interstate highways, the ripping out of transit lines, mortgage subsidies for GIs, etc.
 
not to mention the oil lobby, redlining leading to crumbling and avoided inner cities, etc. I get your point, but I guess I was aiming my argument more at "reasonable" people, not the conspiracy theorists like the guy in the video. It seems like what he is saying could be a credible argument in the minds of some, even without the conspiracy crap, but in such a case I would argue that the framing of the issue is wrong altogether.

If government policies (not conspiracies) got us into sprawl, it should be interesting seeing what new technology and policy regulations/incentives get us into better developments (if anything actually does).
 
...if those regulations and incentives ever materialize on the same level.
 
Right. But it seems that they must. The question is whether the emerge preemptively or as a reaction to crumbling suburbs. In some more progressive areas of the country (development wise) patterns of new urbanism, smart growth yada yada that have emerged tend to correlate with surrounding areas that have the worst effects of sprawl. Will the rest of the country take note of this, or wait until they are in similar positions? That would seem to be the relevant question to answer in terms of answering whether things develop along the same lines or magnitude. Logically, you would think the rest of the country would take note, and some have. But politically things are not always so commonsensical
 
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