[quadrangle]

Seems we're talking past one another. The point isn't that people can afford whatever they want, the point is that people don't directly want car-dependent suburban sprawl.

Sure, people want the impossible: quiet beautiful wilderness where you can also walk to school, groceries, concerts, and medical centers.

But the question at hand is actually how much of all the good things we are capable of having. And we really can do a lot better than sprawlville USA without the only alternative being San Francisco.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/11/3/our-self-impos...

[refurb]

People want the impossible, but if they can't have it they will make trade-offs. And it's pretty apparent the trade off is "I'll put up with having to get a car in order to get more space at an affordable price".

[quadrangle]

Yes, but that's not an argument for anyone wanting car-dependent life. It's an argument for people being willing to tolerate car-dependent life (in order to have some benefits like affordability and more space), and that was never a disputed claim.

Incidentally, car-dependent affordable space is a farce. It's not actually more affordable, it only externalizes the costs. The huge infrastructure costs to support sprawl-style development are subsidized by denser parts of town. This is laid out bluntly in the articles on https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme and that's not to mention the externalized costs of the pollution of all the car traffic and many other things we could bring up.

In short, the car-dependent suburbs are artificially more affordable. And yes, tons of people will accept car-dependency in order to get the benefits and affordability of those places as we know them.