Urban planners and environmental groups have long favored greater urban density as an essential tool to achieve significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In the inflated language of density advocates, the alternative - sprawl - would be: ”catastrophically wrong…environmentally  unsustainable…[and] economically ruinous”.

Sprawl is just another way to say spreading suburbs. Why do they spread? Because a lot of people want to live in the suburbs, especially once they’re ready to settle down and start a family. And regardless of age, most Americans want their own cars and to live in larger houses. Check it out:

And most Americans want to live in the suburbs, doesn’t matter what race or ethnicity…

Actually, a good number of Americans still want to live in cities. But that doesn’t mean they want to live in high-density urban areas. After all, most American cities have car-friendly residential neighborhoods. If we counted these neighborhoods as suburbs within city limits*, then about 80% of Americans looking to buy a home want to live in the suburbs, as per this chart:

I suspect it’s mostly young adults attracted to dense city living, with its night life and mix of offices, apartments, and shops. However, the Big City/Bright Lights thrill tends to wear off in time, especially when thoughts turn to marriage and family. And then what most Americans want - “overwhelmingly”, according to a recent analysis by Core Logic - is to live in detached houses, whether in small-town suburbs or big-city suburbs. Few want to live in tall apartment buildings, either mid-rise (5-12 floors) or high-rise (13+ floors), unless they’re too poor to live elsewhere. And the density movement will not prevail unless you can convince a lot more people to embrace apartment living

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* I’m not being arbitrary here. The Bureau of Justice Statistics already counts big city residential areas as suburbs if their housing density falls below a certain threshold. In Classification of Urban, Suburban, and Rural Areas in the National Crime Victimization Survey, the BJS classified well over half the residential areas of “principal cities” as suburbs.

References: 

More Americans now say they prefer a community with big houses, even if local amenities are farther away by Vianney Gomez/Pew Research August 26, 2021 

Preference for Detached Properties Pushes Single-Family Rents Higher by Molly Boesel/ Core Logic  August 17, 2021 

The influence of urban form on GHG emissions in the U.S. household sector. Lee, S. and B. Lee (2014). Energy Policy 68: 534-549.