There is no doubt that some urban planners do not listen to the residents and build the community they want. This is not my experience, I have been surrounded by great planners works hard to implement the kind of city that there residents want.

“The world is run by those who show up”
It is so hard to get people to show up to planning meetings. The city I live in is updating their master plan. They arranged free daycare, food, and games to get people to show up to help plan the city. If anyone has ever watched the TV show Parks and Rec, in my favorite scene Amy Pohler was conducting a public city meeting and thanked the crowd for such a great turnout. I laugh every time I see it because there were only about 15 to 20 people in the audience and that was a great turnout.

It is not suburban folks who seek to transform our cities. It is urban folks who seek to either transform or steal from our suburbs. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area they would use our taxes to subsidize their view of cities by providing incentives for transit-oriented development. They already use our gasoline taxes to subsidize mass transit oriented toward the remaining center city employers. In Texas, wealthy suburban school districts have been forced to subsidize less wealthy districts.

Cities such as Dallas have made themselves so unfriendly to families that we deserted them in droves. The tax base for those cities has seriously eroded. Liberals now scheme to confiscate funds from suburbanites to make up that shortfall. For many urban leaders, "sprawl" is a red herring. The real problem is declining tax base.

I'm sure we both agree that the personal automobiles made suburban living more economically efficient than before such transportation existed, and this opened up rural areas to suburbanization.

I also have no doubt that urban living causes you a great deal of personal disgust, and it's surely your right not to be forced to live in an environment you don't like.

The point of my argument has never been that suburbs make no sense at all, but rather that more people live in suburbs than otherwise would were it not for government interferences that favor suburbs over city. This seems to be the opposite of your contention that cities would not exist at all were it not for liberals forcing people to live there. It's not true that all people hate urban living, you are presuming that everyone else has the exact same likes and dislikes as you do.

"Exactly my point, forced busing is a government policy. Government policy created bad schools in the cities."

Sorry, Half Sigma, but I really do not understand what is your point.

Most suburbs built after World War II were the result of free market forces. Some were admittedly a reaction to government policies, such as forced busing. Some were the reaction to non-functioning local governments, such as lack of crime control. But long before the public so reacted to government actions and inactions, people of all incomes were moving to suburbs. The simple fact remains: most people do not desire congestion and high-density. They only put up with it for centuries because of limits on mobility and the need for commercial activity to be centralized. Technology, especially automobiles and computers, has finally freed man from the ills of congested living. Yet some folks would use government to take away that freedom.

Exactly my point, forced busing is a government policy. Government policy created bad schools in the cities. Government policy prevents the creation of urban school districts without poor people.

Crime is also caused by poor people, and once again that's a government policy creating areas where poor people can't live.

If there was actually a free market, poor people would live far away from the city where land is cheaper, leaving the more desirable short commute time areas to richer people.