Because it’s a well known fact that Rome shrunk because of those damn liberals and their totalitarian walkable cities… There is nothing of substance in that es

Because it’s a well known fact that Rome shrunk because of those damn liberals and their totalitarian walkable cities… There is nothing of substance in that essay. He paints the cities as criminal socialist nightmares and suburbia as carbon-free utopian bliss, which is exactly what he claims “the urbanists” do except with the roles swapped. Yes, urban sprawl is terrible for a lot of reasons. (Some) people like it because they want massive tacky houses but it is still terrible. And it will get more and more terrible as fuel prices increase. It’s also a form of ghettoisation where poor people are stuck in their run down neighbourhoods for a lack of free time, money, and public infrastructure, which leads to the exact problems he pins on evil liberals (concentration of poverty in some areas, crime, lack of investment, etc). He bangs on about crime, putting London and Paris in the same situation as Los Angeles and Chicago (lol), without any thought about long-term trends in crime statistics. I wish Americans could look outside their borders at what is done in the rest of the world instead of wringing their hands as if they were the only ones on earth grappling with this sort of problems. Particularly someone who’s ostensibly paid to think about urbanism for a living. You can have moderately-sized cities that are perfectly liveable, ideal for remote working, with not that much crime and without that endless, soul-destroying suburban sprawl that buries entire countries’ worth of natural ecosystems under asphalt and concrete. It’s not even that difficult. “Rome was once mighty and fell; New York is mighty and therefore will fall” is a tired trope, a non sequitur, and not particularly clever. No argument is given as to how the latter could happen except “the liberals” increasing crime somehow. Rome was sacked several times. New York won’t be eternal, but it is more at risk of rising sea levels and increasingly dangerous storms than barbarians at the gates. Or indeed liberals in the city.