If your goals are different, you have different options.
I don't think totally planned or totally laissez faire are optimal for most settings, but if there's plenty of land and the goal is suburbanized clusters then you'll probably lean more laissez faire.
If the goal is to keep things as they are, you have lots of options... most western cities are good at this.
This conversation (I'm contending) is context dependent. I think the/a current issue and the topic of this article (besides Berkely) is extremely high demand cities and their problems growing. It's a similar set of issues in Munich, London, NY, SF, etc. Housing availability is terrible. There are overcrowding & transport related problems. Looking at them, it seems like they're mice grown to elephant sized. The body plan doesn't suite the scale.
It gets philosophical, and you can definitely lean too far into creative destruction as well... I tend to favour evolution. Things will change. They need to.
Besides that, I think there is plenty of choice. Especially in the US, different locals are different. If you can and want to move, choice exists. I don't think that's the friction. The friction is from people who stay put and aren't comfortable with change. Those two things also go together. We all have a more conservative disposition about the things we've known the longest.
I don't think totally planned or totally laissez faire are optimal for most settings, but if there's plenty of land and the goal is suburbanized clusters then you'll probably lean more laissez faire.
If the goal is to keep things as they are, you have lots of options... most western cities are good at this.
This conversation (I'm contending) is context dependent. I think the/a current issue and the topic of this article (besides Berkely) is extremely high demand cities and their problems growing. It's a similar set of issues in Munich, London, NY, SF, etc. Housing availability is terrible. There are overcrowding & transport related problems. Looking at them, it seems like they're mice grown to elephant sized. The body plan doesn't suite the scale.
It gets philosophical, and you can definitely lean too far into creative destruction as well... I tend to favour evolution. Things will change. They need to.
Besides that, I think there is plenty of choice. Especially in the US, different locals are different. If you can and want to move, choice exists. I don't think that's the friction. The friction is from people who stay put and aren't comfortable with change. Those two things also go together. We all have a more conservative disposition about the things we've known the longest.