Re: affordability - I don't know about Burma or Brazil, but in the US, safe, medium-high density neighborhoods with walkable commercial districts and an active civic life are very expensive compared to the car-bound exurban cities in the same metropolitan area. So much that they are only accessible to the upper-middle class to wealthy.
Also, cities didn't invent slavery or bring on disease. These were on the increase from the onset of agriculture due to the demand for labor and the co-habitation of humans and domestic animals.
In fact, there may be genetic evidence of this: There was an article linked on HN yesterday that tried to explain the apparent loss of marker diversity in the Y chromosome after the advent of agriculture to male agricultural slaves being denied the right to reproduce.
This is nostalgia. For most of human existence, we did not farm. We lived in small hunter gatherer bands in very small numbers migrating over vast open landscapes.
But that doesn't invalidate the dream of being a freehold farmer in today's world. It's no reason to prohibit being a small independent yeoman farmer the way North Korea has.
And there's no reason to prohibit building a traditional city and living an urban life the way US central planning has outside a few grandfathered exceptions which have become incredibly expensive because demand rises while supply cannot grow.
Interference with US city organic expansion is primarily due to zoning regulations and nimbyism, and more than anything it results from people who have a romantic love affair with keeping the city exactly the way it is without accommodating for inevitable growth.
Pretty much the only projects that can get approved are those from huge organizations who have the money and power to overcome years of opposition until they finally can get projects approved.
The average guy who wants to convert an empty building into a cafe, warehouse, or living space, or remodel an area faces excessive red tape.
This is nostalgia. For most of human existence, we did not live in cities, sipping lattes in outdoor, safe, cafes with clean water. We lived nomadically or in small tribes and villages. The invention of the city brought disease, slavery, slums, corruption, and a whole host of other problems. The "traditional free way of life" was not living in a city where you couldn't be a farmer, but had to work for someone else on someone else's land.
Comparing North Korea to the US is just a non-sequitur.
This reeks of hipster snobby elitism.