The US is the wild west and always will be. We are fundamentally a country that loves big desolate places that require rugged individualism to navigate. You can

The US is the wild west and always will be. We are fundamentally a country that loves big desolate places that require rugged individualism to navigate. You can argue that there are pockets where this isn’t true, but I lived in post 9/11 NYC to see the worst pathologies of suburbanism creeping into Manhattan. The few real human scale areas (downtown,fidi) become disneyfied and overwhelmed. I have found it easier to embrace this reality than deny it.