Nor do the authors buy the left's aesthetic argument. The problem with suburbia is that, in spite of all its regulatory controls, it is not functional. The houses themselves are fine. But when they're laid out in the form of sprawl, they waste resources and undermine everything that people traditionally move to suburbia for. There's nothing to walk to at all, except streets that look exactly like your own.
Sprawl is as much a matter of regimentation as of anarchy.
Since World War Two federal mortgage guarantees have subsidized home building by taking much of the risk out of buying a new home. Home ownership is undeniably a good thing, but these well-meaning incentives fostered sprawl. The pipe that gets laid and the asphalt that gets poured to equip new suburban neighborhoods is another freebie, subsidized by the tax base in the older, more compact parts of town. Ubiquitous zoning laws made life more pleasant when they separated houses from soot-belching factories and stinking slaughterhouses. Engineers design towns according to stringent codes that favor cars over people.