What's wrong with exurbs, if people living there don't need to commute downtown?

I think the OP is referring to the fact that exurbs are currently hellish because everyone living there commutes downtown. They'd have a stronger sense of community and identity if residents spent their lives actually living there, rather than sleeping there: the neighborhoods would become more like "towns" and less like "exurbs". Some NYC examples would be Yonkers, most of eastern/central NJ or the western half of CT.

Anecdotally, I've spent a fair amount of time living in both environments, and for me the quality of life difference is night and day. The lack of proper "towns" within commuting distance of NYC means that we have to live in town-y neighborhoods within the city, which are much more expensive to than the 'burbs, and don't come with an acre, a pool, and free parking. The apparent lack of towns means we're eventually going to leave the entire metropolitan area, which is kind of sad, since we like working here very much.

The exhurbs are hellish whether or not people use, because the land use is terrible and everything requires a car. (And aesthetic reasons that largely follow from the above, but which I could rant about at length.)

Just because there's no mass commuting doesn't inherently mean the exurbs are cured of that. People could still shuffle arround funneling roads making traffic to go to the mall. Every has lawns but no one has nature. Everyone is still isolated.

Traditional rural towns and villages are actually quite dense---you must discount the surrounding land. I mention the carbon tax because I think it's that or highwaymen needed to force people to clump up.

\[BTW, I think the variation is key: density should be "fractle" "scale-free" or whatever other similar buzz ord one wants to throw out. Everyone gets stairs and nature.\]

I generally with you. Do you have examples of towns that you think pull this off well?

Most towns I think of as pleasant in the US (I’m mostly familiar with western Massachusetts, central CA, and the border towns of NJ/PA) are still basically inaccessible by any mode of transportation other than a car outside of downtown. I don’t believe they would score high on your scale, but maybe I’m missing something!

I've never lived in a town, but I'm thinking premodern ones where everyone had to walked. Or through in bikes and 5x it.

No reason with enough carbon and land value tax the towns in the places you mention couldn't recover though. Plenty of nice Berkshire and foothill downtowns.