There a dramatic amount of understatement here.

"A little less walkable" is untrue. Meandering suburban layouts are dramatically less walkable - we're not talking about even the same order of magnitude.

Here's a commonly cited diagram of the difference in walkability between a grid layout and a sprawl-suburb. Both of these are real places, not hypothetical illustrations:

http://hbr.org/hb/article_assets/hbr/1005/F1005B_A_lg.gif

"A little less" is an understatement bordering on the edge of untruth. There used to be a better high-res version of this map that I can't find anymore - the right side is Ballard, Seattle, I've forgotten where the left side is (IIRC Dallas). The blue is the area reachable by walk from the central starting point in a given time (IIRC 10 minutes at average pace).

Note that Ballard is far from a "perfect grid" layout - there is still ample delineation between arterials and side streets. The grid is also lightly broken up every few blocks to prevent people from speeding right on through, while not making pedestrians go out of the way in the wrong direction.

The notion that sprawl-type neighborhoods are somehow safer for pedestrians (and conversely, grid-style layouts are more dangerous) also doesn't bear out in reality. Dallas, TX (a particularly famously suburban city) has a pedestrian fatality rate of 1.7 per 100K pop. NYC, the mother of all grid layouts (a perfect grid, even), clocks in at 1.8 per 100K. There's nothing to suggest grid layouts (perfect or otherwise) are intrinsically more dangerous to pedestrians.

The whole traffic business also doesn't jive:

> "Reduce through-traffic- not because "outsiders are undesirable" but because through-traffic is noisy"

Except non-sprawl suburbs with grid layouts have been restricting through-traffic for decades. Throw down a few of these: http://www.nowtopians.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/mosaic-...

They're wonderful and keep side streets from becoming arterial relief valves, while allowing you all the walkability and accessibility of grid-based layouts. No chokepoints, no gates, no driver blasting his way through trying to find a shortcut to work. They also do a great job of curbing drunk drivers, who are more likely to get beached up on one of these than in the side of a house.

They look pretty good too: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8002/7132823357_600fba9ee3_z.j...

Some people even make them into little parklets, though I'm not sure if I'd want to hang out there: http://www.vancourier.com/polopoly_fs/1.577052.1376349174!/f...

People who live in these neighborhoods aren't idiots. This isn't a win-lose scenario - this isn't pedestrians vs. safety vs. noise. We can have our cake and eat it too, in fact many neighborhoods around the country do. Besides the "uniformity" thing, there's really nothing that the sprawl-type suburb solves that hasn't already been solved in non-sprawl suburban developments. You can live in a house with a yard with a BBQ with a deck with a garage. You can have space for all your stuff. You can still walk to the grocery store. You can still save money and take the bus to work without it being a giant pain in the ass. You can still have nice parks nearby and your kids won't go to school in a skyscraper.

The opposite of the sprawling suburb isn't towers full of people stacked on top of one another, it's another type of suburb altogether.