> Culdesac is a far cry from "the incremental urbanism and thickening our cities need. A dozen or even a thousand Culdesacs can’t solve that problem," because they would lack long-term growth benefits including "the resilience of a system where many hands have built the neighborhood and have a financial stake in it" and would reflect "a zoning and finance stream that favors industrial over incremental production."

It's interesting that one of the most walkable, lively and beautiful urban centers —Paris—was not built this way, but was the result of a big reform by Eugene Haussmann that flattened the "previous Paris" and put his new version on top, which was extremely centrally planned.

The idea of a community incrementally building their infrastructure together based on arising needs and desires is beautiful. But it's not practical in the 2020s where housing is much harder to build due to regulation, zoning etc.

Plus this "incremental" approach can go wrong as well. People forget that for the longest time, cities had higher mortality because they just grew organically and some of that wasn't actually great for humans.

The things we see have survived for a reason. Most cities have gotten rid of A LOT of things that grew "incrementally".

I think this incremental approach is a romantic idea and more is right than wrong about it. But it's also the 2020s where housing is crazy expensive and we have higher expectations of buildings and neighborhoods.