Liberals hate suburbia

“We’ve reached the limits of suburban development,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan declared in 2010. “People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.” Only one problem: it isn't true.

Joel Kotkin explains

that the "chattering classes," who congregate in the urban areas, have a hate affair with the suburbs.

Suburbs have never been popular with the chattering classes, whose members tend to cluster in a handful of denser, urban communities—and who tend to assume that place shapes behavior, so that if others are pushed to live in these communities they will also behave in a more enlightened fashion, like the chatterers.

People want to own single-family homes. Even if they cannot yet afford to own their own homes, they want access to jobs. They want privacy. They want safety. They want space of their own.