I don't think you're wrong per se, but I hesitate to say that the problems we have are that everyone individually but also en masse decided to move to the subur

I don't think you're wrong per se, but I hesitate to say that the problems we have are that everyone individually but also en masse decided to move to the suburbs and also drive big honkin' cars everywhere, all the time. I think it's more likely there were systems and incentives (both economic and cultural) that led to this. I think this is actually good news, because it means we can fix this with some (slow) cultural shifts and (less slow, hopefully) policy changes. If we really had to directly convince 10,000,000s of people to move into townhomes we'd have no hope. (FWIW I've lived in lots of places, tiny apartments, townhomes, big apartments, single rooms, mcmansions, old houses. I've been lucky enough to more or less choose them--most people live wherever they can--and for the last ~10 years have chosen tiny apartment. I like the idea of living small, they're a lot more maintainable, cheaper, and I used to move a lot so having a ceiling on the amount of stuff I could have was real attractive)