The myth of revealed preference for suburbs
There are several severe issues with the study.<p>The first is confusing want with what you&#x27;re culturally conditioned to say based on style of question.  We don&#x27;t know how the questions were led or if they attempted to be neutral, they made a huge logical leap from asking people what they want to declaring thats what they actually want, real world doesn&#x27;t work that way.  We know from prior propaganda issues that people can be led to claim almost anything, when questioned correctly to lead to it.  Its a universal part of human existence that what people are socialized to say to get along, generally has nothing to do with what they&#x27;ll actually want (or do) in private or semi-private, which also generally has nothing to do with whats best for them (and good luck finding a fair and unbiased judge of whats best for them, LOL).  The study actually abstracts to &quot;I know from intensive propaganda my whole life that a good person would say they want X, therefore I&#x27;ll say I want X, but I actually want and will execute plan Y&quot;.  What could be more pithy than &quot;do as I say not as I do?&quot;  The study doesn&#x27;t even scratch the surface of &quot;what should they do&quot; which is a totally orthogonal third dimension.  The study is willfully and intentionally ignoring a major component of human psychology to push a propaganda point; this really does not look good at all.<p>To help non USA people, there&#x27;s a large aspect of group affinity and identification going on.  Essentially a non-metaphysical religion, complete with proselytizers and those who define whats holy and who is or is not.  So for the &quot;new urbanists&quot; for over half a century, fervent belief in returning to the cities after white flight from the 60s race riots is the definition of what a good person is, in a simplistic 1 to 1 mapping.  Trying to argue rational logic merely strengthens their beliefs, like trying to reason about fossil records with a creationist Christian.  If your worldview is defining being a good person as holding a set of beliefs X, Y, Z, regardless if those are good or terrible ideas, then someone trying the atheistic rational argument against those beliefs &quot;just think about it&quot;, well, a good person would NOT think about it, they would believe, wouldn&#x27;t they?  That type of argument will just strengthen the belief set; look here is a bad person who is defined as bad by not having matching beliefs, being bad by making sacrilegious statements, why look how great my beliefs must be?  People who don&#x27;t understand this try to interact with urbanists on a rational level which certainly doesn&#x27;t work.  No Christian ever lost their faith by a pagan nostalgia along the lines of &quot;My childhood as a pagan was not so bad, I don&#x27;t understand the hate&quot;.  Likewise its a waste of time to tell an urbanist that suburbs are not that bad why all the propaganda.  You&#x27;d have better luck trying to convert a Christian Fundamentalist by telling them that Satan guy gets a lot of bad press but he&#x27;s not all bad all.  Trying to talk a urbanist out of the city is literally on a psychological level like trying to talk a devoted missionary out of going on a mission.  It is the same thought process.  Please don&#x27;t waste everyone&#x27;s time trying to convert them, merely wish them well on their pilgrimage and hope they survive, etc.<p>Everyone on both sides should understand and accept the group affinity issue.  There is absolutely no moral, ethical, medical, technological, or rational argument that black tennis shoes are worse or better than white tennis shoes.  None the less, the cool kids have proclaimed one or the other is cool this year and the only choice you have in the issue, the only reason for discussing it anywhere including here on HN, is to declare your group affinity with the cool kids for todays fad, or try to be that cool apostate rebelling against &quot;the man&quot;, or just be confused about the social dynamics of the whole thing and make the huge mistake of thinking the discussion is actually about sneakers or ethics or anything other than declaring your allegiance or opposition or cluelessness.  Are tattoos rebellious or conformist today?  Well, fundamentally they&#x27;re neither, they&#x27;re art ink on skin.  If the argument is about enforcement of conformity, such as devout belief in new urbanism, don&#x27;t get in weird side arguments about tattoo ink toxicity or stretch marks, thats totally not the point of the discussion.  This incredibly boring topic boils down to are you an new urbanist conformist or a rebellious suburbanite, and the only thing that matters is the conformity or rebellion.  Forest for the trees and all that.<p>If you can&#x27;t tell I think &quot;new urbanist&quot; stories are pointless and should probably be globally banned on HN, they&#x27;re just trash, fibrous filler, the low formaldehyde particle board of furniture, as a discussion topic, but others disagree, sometimes with strong arguments that I admit may be strong but none the less disagree with.  So the article is this weeks two minutes hate on the burbs, oh well, whatevs.