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There is an important distinction between "we need to stop building suburbs because there are already too many suburbs, and what people want is more urbanism and less suburb than we have now" and "we need to stop building suburbs as a first step towards demolishing the ones that already exist, because nobody should live in a suburb". My impression is that the vast majority of online urbanism hold the first view, and definitely that the YIMBYs do - the whole point of YIMBYism is that places need to build more of what they don't have, not demolish what they already do. Of course, the American culture war is perceived as zero sum in a way which means that "we need more urbanism", "we need less suburbia" and "we need zero suburbia" all read to a moron in a hurry as "I stan fixed gear bicycle owners and spit on F150 owners".
My view is that America has too much suburbia, as demonstrated by the very large price premium housing commands in the small number of less-crime-ridden, less-car-centric places. America needs to build more less-car-centric places, and fix the crime problem in the existing ones. The UK, on the other hand, has a shortage of competently executed auto-orientated places - so Milton Keynes commands a price premium. In the British context, I am a housing maximalist - I favour more dense urbanism AND more suburbs (but please no auto-orientated suburbia in zones 1-4 of London or within walking distance of railway stations in the London commuter belt). The problem in the London commuter belt is that too much land is reserved for golf and horses, not cars.
There is a separate issue that the American model of one-car-per-adult suburbia sucks above a metro area population of about 5 million. If you look at the top-10 CSA's by population (I am using CSA's instead of MSA's because otherwise the Bay Area gets broken up which borks the statistics):
New York, Washington-Baltimore, Chicago, the Bay Area, Boston and Philly are all less-car-dependent by American standards.
LA is notoriously unlivable due to traffic and smog, and everyone agrees that further auto-orientated growth is a bad idea. In fact, you can make a decent argument that the financial failure of inappropriate auto-orientated growth in the LA exurbs was a major cause of the 2008 financial crisis - the mortgage bust began in the Inland Empire.
Houston is well aware that need to do something to stop their city turning into LA. Texan Republicans in the Houston suburbs are not willing to use public transport, but they are willing to vote higher taxes on themselves to subsidise other people using public transport. The success of Houston's light rail scheme suggests that there is unmet demand for public transport there. Greater Houston is also YIMBY in a way which makes densification of the core easier.
DFW is blithely turning into LA. For whatever reason coverage of DFW traffic jams doesn't cross the Atlantic the way it does for LA, Houston or Atlanta, but published surveys suggest that DFW traffic is actually worse than Houston.
Atlanta is in the middle of a political battle between the core and the suburbs about whether or not it wants to turn into LA, but so far a de facto alliance between the core and suburban NIMBYs seems to be slowing suburban growth, while the core is gentrifying and densifying.
So if you want to live in a large metro area and enjoy the benefits thereof (which by no means everyone does, but the most productive places are generally large metros) then urbanism is essential because suburbia doesn't scale. But at a national level, the whole point of YIMBY is that non-zero-sum outcomes are possible. More urbanism and about the same amount of suburbia is a thing that can happen, that would make both America and the UK better places, and that online urbanists would take as a win.
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