Rationally speaking the NIMBYs and pro-transit urbanists should not be the same people but people often hold absurdly contradictory views. I recall meeting peop

Rationally speaking the NIMBYs and pro-transit urbanists should not be the same people but people often hold absurdly contradictory views. I recall meeting people in California who were anti-development and wanted California to be a “sanctuary state” for immigrants and LGBTQ people who feel unwelcome elsewhere. So where will they live? Usually a complicated answer that boiled down to “not next to me.” The suburbs probably can’t be as efficient as dense cities but they can be improved. The gap is also not as huge as you might think. A lot of a person’s footprint is in the food they eat and the stuff they buy not their house. People in cities still eat and buy things. I agree that degrowth won’t work out well in any currently understood political system for numerous reasons. The “continued growth is impossible” argument is built on the fallacy that growth must equal increased resource use when in advanced economies these have been decoupling for a while. The real limits to growth probably relate to the physical limits on the information density of mass-energy. How much value can exist per unit of “stuff?” Then there are things like space flight but I’m not even sure you have to go there.