Thread by @KAErdmann

People prefer privacy and space. People also prefer activity and interaction. These preferences are at tension with each other. In many ways, they are substitutes.

If the US population was still 20 million, dense, busy interaction just wouldn't be as much of an option.

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So, as we grow, things get better, because the privacy option still exists, but the possibility of choosing dense interactions keeps getting potentially better and better. That draws more people in to making that choice, even if it is in tension with preferences for privacy.

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The problem is that density doesn't just pop up in a pasture in northern Wyoming. It develops in the center of growing cities. That means density develops where there are neighborhoods which were chosen when the lack of dense options made privacy and space a better choice.

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But, the only way to create these new options is to let those neighborhoods become more dense.

My point here is two-fold.

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First, it doesn't matter what you think people, in general, prefer. The direction of progress and history is toward having more options that are made better by density.

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Second, gaining those options requires a political framework that converts neighborhoods on the margin to more density.

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It doesn't matter if "most people prefer the suburbs" is true. We must think on the margin. And, as density develops into an option with heretofore unrealized potential, fewer people will prefer the suburbs, because a wider variety of dense options will be available.

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Those options will not be available if we continue to allow residents in marginal neighborhoods to express the discomforts this creates by obstructing it.

Practically all progress creates discomfort for somebody. Obstructing progress is not the solution to that dilemma.

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