Huh, I came back and found my comment to be more polarizing than expected... I am unsure where the preference lies. I don't always think there's a preference,

Huh, I came back and found my comment to be more polarizing than expected... I am unsure where the preference lies. I don't always think there's a preference, but you can get forced into it by other economic factors. Young people move into a city, getting adapted a mass transit lifestyle, but they move to a more car-centric area when they inevitably get priced out of car-free living downtown or on a popular rail/bus line because they want to start a family. Personally I don't really want to give up being able to walk outside and down the street to go to restaurants and shop or connect to transit easily, but it would be short-sighted to say that everyone has the same preferences as me. There's benefits to living in a detached house with a yard. The price is usually being tethered to a car in the US. If you pick a low density area you're probably not going to have an oppressive commute and running errands will be easy (if predictably lengthy, but knowing it'll always be a 20 minute drive and not 20-60 minutes based on traffic is valuable) because there's large roads and every business was mandated to build a large parking lot. The problem comes when inevitably other people make the same decision and development happens and more people move in. A Californian pattern of development (and in the many areas of the country that have since copied this pattern) is incredibly hostile to good public transit, but due to the geometry of cars, you inevitably have to do _something_... it's just probably going to suck and get underused. So, an alternative strategy emerges: fight tooth and nail against growth.