[apenwarr]

One thing that I think people miss about the book is its profound disappointment that there are so few cities that even begin to approach her ideal. I think she would agree that you don't need to get the maximum number of people to live in a particular city; in fact, I recall that the book lists actual a goal range of densities. What we should do is learn the basics so that if more people want to live in urban environments, we can more easily build those environments. America has not built a "new" city in the style of NYC or SF in a very long time.