'Triumph of Suburbia' is a Far-Fetched Story

"Joel Kotkin is on a roll in the past few weeks, now making the case that the revival of cities and decline of suburbs is a fraud perpetrated by a long list of elites and urbanists including Edward Glaeser, Richard Florida, Alan Ehrenhalt, Christopher Leinberger, James Howard Kunstler, Peter Katz, and many others. Those he names should feel honored, because he traces what he calls 'a hate affair with suburbia' back to Jane Jacobs and William H. Whyte."

"Mostly Kotkin ignores, or doesn't understand, that the issue is not single-family versus multifamily, or suburb versus city. It's not even higher density versus lower density," says Steuteville. "The issue is really walkable places versus auto-oriented places."

At Slate, Matthew Yglesias doesn't mince words in his response to an argument that Kotkin seems to make "every six months."