Idiot anti-urbanists

Arrgh, I was turned onto this neocon mealy-brain Joel Kotkin by James Howard Kunstler. The insufferable George Will quotes him in one of his recent WaPO bits. Money quote:

Writing in the Weekly Standard, Joel Kotkin, author of the forthcoming book "The City: A Global History," distinguishes between America's "aspirational" cities and "Euro-American" cities. The former -- e.g., Atlanta; Boise, Idaho; Charlotte; Fort Myers and Orlando, Fla.; Las Vegas and Reno, Nev.; Phoenix; and Salt Lake City -- are thriving. The latter -- e.g., Boston, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco -- are experiencing social fragmentation as government's clients fight over dwindling scarce resources, and many of these cities are losing population, often to the aspirational cities.

Yaaaaack.

Scarce resources? Let's talk water and oil. Which of these cities consume proportionally massively higher quantities of both per capita? The "Old Europe" cities, if you will, or the throwaway pseudocities of the Sunbelt? (And for water: None of the "old" cities except for San Francisco has a serious water supply problem to begin with, while nearly all of the "new" cities do.)

And does anybody moving to, say, Phoenix, ever cite more compelling reasons than "I can afford a 3-car garage there" or "it's a good place to raise kids"? The latter being specious and, in my opinion, wrong.

Anyway, read Kunstler. He often needs a copy editor (as do his books; is his editor asleep at the switch?) for minor factual and spelling errors, but his arguments are right on and very provocative.