A lot of people simply dislike density beyond the density found in small towns and suburbs and are willing to pay a bit of a premium for that living condition. The author even "admits that the ideas of the Garden City and the Decentrists made sense on their own terms: a suburban town appealing to privacy-oriented, automobile-loving personalities should tout its green space and low-density housing. [Their] anti-orthodox frustration stems from the fact that their anti-urban biases somehow became an inextricable part of the mainstream academic and political consensus on how to design cities themselves[.]"

I noticed that the author mentions that a busier city street is safer from violent crime but doesn't acknowledge that very busy streets are also havens for pickpockets, whereas you generally get it both ways on mostly-vacant-except-cars streets in lower density areas with little to no violent crime.

Really recommend reading the book as she addresses all of that in depth.