No one is against people living in rural areas; people who want that are welcome to it.
The focus is more on suburbs, which are more of a recent invention, especially the US-style ones where no one can live without a car and all the subsidies that accompany them.
Realistically, not everyone is going to live in some dense urban core, and there'd be a gradation from that to rural, like there always has been. The point is that should probably be a bit more natural curve, rather than having tons of burbs that don't really pay for themselves, long term.
Some people would, sure. You'd expect that in a free market, right? Part of the point of all this is that the market we have now is very, very far from free: vast areas of our cities are zoned exclusively for single family homes.
I don't think that's very realistic in many cases - they could sell the land for a lot more money for housing.
But in any event: a few hard-core libertarians would like to completely throw out zoning, but most people just want to bring it back in line with things that are actual nuisances - or bring back actual nuisance laws in some cases.
We've gone from legit things like trying to keep factories away from houses and schools to people losing their marbles about a duplex being built in their neighborhood. It's gone way too far.
As to why markets are generally a good way of solving complex problems with lots of moving parts, I did mention that in the article.
The focus is more on suburbs, which are more of a recent invention, especially the US-style ones where no one can live without a car and all the subsidies that accompany them.
Realistically, not everyone is going to live in some dense urban core, and there'd be a gradation from that to rural, like there always has been. The point is that should probably be a bit more natural curve, rather than having tons of burbs that don't really pay for themselves, long term.