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cause kotkin's a shill.

from a dispassionate third party perspective, suburbia is inherently more expensive and more dysfunctional than urbanity. yet the real estate industry has a lot of media/political/financial power, makes huge money from continually transforming greenfield land into autocentric suburbia (with many of its costs externalized), and wants to maintain its vested interests.

thus a lot of the supposed journalistic articles about development are really just veiled PR releases for the real estate industry. kotkin just happens to be a slick and somewhat articulate voice of his patrons.