A Conservative's Response to Joel Kotkin

Salam admits that he's an admirer of Kotkin, but "[Kotkin] gets a number of important things wrong"

"Specifically," writes Salam, "he takes the anti-suburban conservatives to task for suggesting that suburbanites have longer commutes than city-dwellers (they don’t) and that they’re less likely to be engaged in civic life (they aren’t)."

Among Salam's complaints: Kotkin's tendency to argue with unnamed conservative urbanists and his reliance on outdated survey data in claiming consumer preferences.

And Salam's final line of argument:

Kotkin neglects one of the most compelling arguments against an excessive reliance on low-density suburbs. Neighborhoods of single-family homes serve the interests of some families very well, particularly middle- and upper-middle-income two-parent families with children. But they serve the interests of other families far less well. 

Specifically, Salam cites an argument he made in a previous column for Slate: "a built environment dominated by single-family homes is ill-suited to the needs of single-parent families, not to mention single adults."