There really isn’t an argument here. City living is great for the young and unencumbered, and will undoubtedly increase as the size of the population increases. It can also be incredibly inconvenient and expensive for those with kids/pets, depending on the location and building. For that reason suburbs will always have a prominent place in U.S. society. Maybe city living is the norm for other cultures, but we have the room for it, we LIKE it, and until city planning is done correctly, the upsides of the burbs usually outweigh the upsides of the city for families – even if it’s a terrible use of resources.
If individual units have no ground level patio or yard and the nearest park is blocks away, then for us and the gadzillions of people like us (small kids and a dog) it is completely out of the question. When you have kids and pets, and in your 30’s you probably do, then that living arrangement complicates life – it doesn’t simplify it, even if work is literally across the street. We don’t need to be able to walk to a bar, as awesome as that would be – we need to be able to take a few steps to get to the grass and vitamin D (the backyard), without leading a toddler into downtown streets. I stress out just thinking about doing that on a daily basis. And the thought of living without an attached garage is horrifying.
Maybe in 200 years we’ll get city planning right, and there will be many much smaller city centers surrounded by burbs – or whatever the ideal layout is.
Meanwhile, I would be happy living in a place like “The Gates”, minus the vampires.
