Every square inch of America is governed according to the philosophy that what makes it valuable is having not too many people. Save for a few dozen blocks of h

Every square inch of America is governed according to the philosophy that what makes it valuable is having not too many people. Save for a few dozen blocks of half a dozen cities. And even then we’re suspicious. Our most iconic and beloved streetscapes are mostly non-conforming with postwar codes. But we obviously - obviously! - love these places. They are our travel destinations, our movie settings, our identity and sense of place. Superheroes defending the American way of life don’t defend Developer Model #4 on Pleasant View Court or the Denny’s in the strip mall, they defend fucking Manhattan. Yet our entire planning and zoning regime - including Manhattan’s own, to a surprising degree, treats it like like some kind of nuclear accident. I would like proper urbanism to be be on a few hundred more blocks, or a few thousand blocks, maybe even a few hundred thousand blocks. Still nowhere near 10% of the developable or inhabited land area. But no, not only does “not everyone want to live stacked on top of each other,” we must make sure walkable communities are kept so rare that one of those little hell boxes “nobody wants” costs $3 million. Every single unit permitted is its own little bloodbath, because no place, not even the heart of a city, is allowed to grow as a city anymore. All sprawl, all the time, exclusively.