This new video series from Not Just Bikes provides a solid overview of the Strong Towns message about how the suburban development pattern is literally bankrupting cities because the cost of the infrastructure maintenance can't be covered by taxing low density suburbia. If you're an urbanist of any sort, you need to know about this. No, these people are not leftists, but yes, all of America is going to look like Flint or Detroit if nothing is done to address this. Also check out strongtowns.org, a very good resource for general urbanism and how to talk to people about urban issues.
Would you not rather already have a good built environment in place?
Is the alienation from sprawl not worse than the alienation from whatever infill you're talking about? Densifying housing in the core means that people don't get displaced as far as they do currently.
Also I got bad news about "community involvement". It exists now and it's terrible. Unless you're talking about democratizing that process more so it's not just old rich white people? That sounds better, but I find that working class people don't typically have any better opinions about density or change. American car-fixation transcends race and class.
I agree with most of what you said, except car-fixation does transcend race, but not class and or location. People (of all races) who live in urban spaces hate cars unless they hit a specific wealth threshold.
I also mean alienation in the strictly marxist sense of social alienation, not displacement from ones home, sorry about that. I should have thought about the secondary meaning.
Also, with community involvement I also mean democratic control of decisions, yes.