Start with a basic question. If Americans truly prefer car-dependent suburbia above all other ways of living, why is it illegal to build almost anything else?

If you want to know what people actually want, look at what they pay for. And what Americans are paying for is the thing we made illegal: Walkable neighborhoods.

Because that is the actual situation. In most American cities, on roughly seventy-five percent of all residential land, it is against the law to build a duplex, a corner store, a small apartment building, or anything denser than a single detached house on a large lot.